A few qualms (on The Traitor Baru Cormorant)
The Traitor Baru Cormorant blew me away, though at the time, I found it hard to process a heavy, heavy ending.
Missives and commentaries from my ever-deepening obsession with a certain intricate novel series about colonialism, lesbians, money, cancer and boats.
Unmastered? (on The Monster Baru Cormorant)
The Baru sequel is astonishing in its breadth and strength of feeling. I loved it enough to write 10000 words about all the interesting threads.
The engine driven by the past (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 1)
‘How do you keep pulling this off, Seth?’ The third Baru Cormorant book got me writing a book’s worth of commentary. Let’s set the stage.
An odd flavour of history (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 2)
Tyrant opens in an epigraph, opening a tiny window into the ugly, messy history that inspired it. The history of just one small region of our planet is overwhelming. So why bother making up a fantasy one, which will always be smaller? Perhaps for the sake of defamiliarisation…
Anti-Wizardischte Aktion (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 3)
Last time round I doubted the cancer wizards. But I needn’t have worried: this book is doing something very interesting after all! What is the real power of a wizard? And what are the Cancrioth really like when we get to know them?
Mason dust in the wound (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 4)
Baru’s not had the best time in this series, and in this book she hits rock bottom. Tau calls her a ‘wound’ in trim, who is poisoning the web of social connections. Are they right? What is being ‘human’? And what happens to dear Baru when she finally connects with her dead-girlfriend tulpa on a lobotomy table?
The corpse-hollow (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 5)
Baru witnesses (another!) genocide on Kyprananoke. We take a look at the book’s treatment of it, its dark questions about agency, and Baru’s ecological angle on the horror of genocide.
Kimbune's theorem (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 6)
Capitalist economics, population growth, disease, cancer, radioactivity—the subjects of Baru Cormorant are all linked through the terrifying power of exponential growth and decay. In this book, Baru encounters a different angle on exponentials, through a famous mathematical theorem. What can this angle tell us?
Butchering an Empire (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 7)
As she breaks free of Farrier’s story, Baru hatches a grand new grand plan. But can it possibly achieve the desired result? Perhaps 17th-century economic history can be a lens to help us understand.
Horse-Archers and Anti-Mannism (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 8)
Baru’s plan all depends on having topped Tain Hu. No, really. We approach one of the most powerful egregores, gender and the sexual imaginary, as seen in a defamiliarised lens…
The Maniple (on The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, part 9)
One of the constants throughout Baru Cormorant is nasty things happening to brains. Let’s take a needle and poke around the world of lobotomies, brain cancers, ikejime, drug overdose and head trauma…
Exordia Advance Review
Seth Dickinson writes a fun book as a breather. Which for Seth means a brutally imaginative scifi cross-examination of sacrifice, genocide and the legacy of US imperialism. Let’s get our fangs into Exordia…