The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade #3) by Seth Dickinson (Tor Books, 2020)
★★★★★
A double agent working to shatter the empire she serves finally obtains the power she covets, but its use will devastate millions of innocent people.
I was mega-hype about this book, and Dickinson does not disappoint in the least. We get a ton of plot and character development, and everything feels polished in a way The Monster Baru Cormorant sometimes did not. (I wrote a spoiler-y, tinfoil-y review of that entry here.)
Brief aside: I actually re-read Monster in advance of Tyrant’s release, and in the process developed a greater appreciation for the second book. In particular, the worldbuilding of the Oriati Mbo, something that I glossed over during first read as “oh yeah, a fantasy society built on being nice, cool,” I better understood this time as being in dialogue with movements like disability justice and transformative justice that insist on systematized care. And owing to the recent revelation that someone in my life is a charismatic serial abuser, the central question for Baru in that book, regarding the distinction between “someone who [is] truly good and someone playing at goodness to gain power,” took on new meaning.
Also, Cairdine Farrier is Tom Nook send tweet.
So, Tyrant—it’s everything I wanted. It’s Baru’s anticipated dark night of the soul (which hurts; oh my god, Tau) and her journey through it, culminating in the satisfying resolution of many of the open questions of Monster (and Traitor). Every chapter is gripping, making this 650-page tome unputdownable. Spoilers ahead.
Tyrant raises the question of whether Baru, who has schemed and sacrificed so much to destroy Falcrest, can find a way to move forward that doesn’t unleash genocide or leave innocents’ lives shattered in her wake. Central to this question is “the riddle of the three ministers”—three ministers who have been poisoned make their most powerful threats to gain the antidote; who triumphs?—and Baru’s recognition that the answer is whoever contrived to put them all there.
Faced with the power of the Kettling, a plague that would kill hundreds of millions and then her, Baru runs from the choice. Forced to confront the ways she’s been complicit in empire, she, the savant, chooses lobotomy, chooses the eternal peace of no longer having to fight, or even know. But it’s in her moment of deepest vulnerability and authenticity that she makes an unexpected ally.
We were each others’ only hope for grace.
Thus begins Baru’s climb out of the darkness. But what paths remain to her? Here Dickinson continues his exploration of care-as-praxis. Coaxed by Xate Yawa’s tentative support into recognizing the essential humanity and agency of others, Baru embraces a different form of power, one rooted in this ethos. To practice trim is to cooperate (in the game theory sense), believing your opponent will also cooperate. It is “giving without hope of getting, in the hope of getting without needing to ask.”
This delightful recognition that not all games are zero-sum—that the solution might lie beyond the ministers’ dining room—happens to our characters again and again:
It was all about to go to shit, one way or another. And here Aminata was, kneeling with Iraji’s blood on her hands, surrounded by magic, helpless to make a difference—
Not helpless. Never helpless.
“Excuse me!” Aminata bellowed. “I have a suggestion!”
It is core to Baru’s development of her own endgame strategy—in an ever-so-satisfying return to form—of total economic monopoly (with a side of Darwinism in the back pocket). And it is all predicated on “the great [being] made out of the small, and the world [being] made out of people.” It is all predicated on grace.
Tau, who had called her a wound, a hole in the heart, did not think she had consumed Kyprananoke. Did not assume she’d given the order.
It was trust and faith beyond anything she deserved.
Other characters’ Losses of Self are no less compelling. Tau-indi, cut out of trim and “everything [they] have ever cared about,” experiences a devastating depression—and a recovery—that I suspect might mirror Dickinson’s self-professed own. (I sincerely hope the author has taken, and will continue to take, all the time and care he needs.) Aminata, who’s done nothing but further the Navy’s cause, is ultimately Other, and is shot by her own marines for it. Svir must abandon Lindon and their child to return to the homeland he hates. These often deftly interwoven character stories moved me in their own right, and I’m glad they got the screen time I wished they’d gotten in Monster. I’m even curious how Ormsment’s story might turn, since vengeance is what’s brought her to her nadir.
I need everyone to read this series. Five stars without question!
⚡ TINFOIL SECTION ⚡
I would like to preregister my hypothesis that Renascent is some kind of algorithm/information escrow, perhaps related to the “gossip protocol” that is used to route encrypted mail.
Stoked about seeing more of the eastern supercontinent! And still holding out for Zawam Asu.
Baru’s hubris at the end is worrisome. Can’t see how telling Farrier too much won’t come back to bite her…
So many ways for things to go wrong. So excited. (But patiently excited.)