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Title: The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Author: Seth Dickinson

Narrator: Christine Marshall

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 09-15-15

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 269 votes

Genres: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fantasy: Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

In Seth Dickinson's highly anticipated debut The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a richly imagined geopolitical fantasy, a young woman from a conquered people tries to transform an empire. Baru Cormorant believes any price is worth paying to liberate her people - even her soul.

When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home, overwrites her culture, criminalizes her customs, and murders one of her fathers, Baru vows to swallow her hate, join the empire's civil service, and claw her way high enough to set her people free. Sent as an imperial agent to distant Aurdwynn, another conquered country, Baru discovers it's on the brink of rebellion. Drawn by the intriguing duchess Tain Hu into a circle of seditious dukes, Baru may be able to use her position to help. As she pursues a precarious balance between the rebels and a shadowy cabal within the empire, she orchestrates a do-or-die gambit with freedom as the prize.

But the cost of winning the long game of saving her people may be far greater than Baru imagines.

Members Reviews:

A triumph of a debut!

A terribly cunning display of the untrustworthy narrator (it's in the title, after all!) Baru is an incredibly engaging protagonist, and this fantastical political thriller keeps you guessing about loyalties, love, and what drives a person to ultimate treachery. This narrative weaves a spectacular warning to the readers: of social injustice, imperialism and the profound danger and power that comes from being truly alone in your mind. Machiavellian machinations in a spectacular feat of world building. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Great story, terrible reader

This is an incredibly incentive and gripping story. The audio book narrator, however, seems not to have been familiar with the English words "duchy" and "elided," which was frustrating and distracting.

Fantastic story, robotic narrator

Really enjoyed the story but the narrator sounds like a computer program and offers very little variance between character voices.

Read for detail explainations, skip otherwise

This is a hard one to recommend as it really depends on your taste. Especially since it's a long book, make sure you know what your getting into before starting.

As a child Baru Cormorant witness the Empire of Masks conquer her homeland. Not through war but with economics, trade policies and cultural assimilation. Baru vows to tear down this empire from the inside by pretending to be loyal to gain power. Will Baru be able to avoid corruption that comes with power, can she stand by and not only watch, but be the instrument of the empire in conquering another culture, or join their rebellion at the cost of her revenge. Will her outlawed secret desires be discovered?

It reads like a text book on colonialism. It covers in extreme details everything from economics, taxes & trade policies, cultural assimilation, diplomacy, naval & land battles, and family lineage. Often times it feels like the narrative is secondary to allow the author to show us the vast world his has created.

Personally, while I found most of the technical details interesting, and presented with purpose, it started to bog me down and become tiring the last third or quarter. I really liked the ending, I can't say anything about it without spoiling it but it reminded me of a classic story whose ending I also really liked.