The Monster Baru Cormorant

The Traitor Baru Cormorant (published in the UK under the much less interesting title of The Traitor) is one of the best fantasy novels of recent years. Magnificently written, complex and involving, with an ending that was emotionally devastating.

This sequel (once again published as simply The Monster in the UK, which I can only assume is part of a cunning plan to make peoples' eyes slide over it on the bookstore shelves) opens up the world and admits other POVs that add to the dramatic tension, as we now know things that Baru doesn't. It offers new, rich and detailed societies, and covers lots of ground around gender, sexuality, colonialism, economics and philosophy. It's not your regular “farm boy finds out he's the heir to the lost kingdom” kind of fantasy book. If you want lost swords and dark lords, this one isn't for you. But if you want something to work at, something morally ambiguous where the heroes aren't necessarily the good guys, or indeed something where it's not even clear if there are good guys at all, something that will get your brain puzzling, this is very much for you.

On the downside, this is very much a middle volume book. It develops the story, but doesn't really resolve much, and Baru herself is left helpless and inactive for most of the book as she struggles to come to terms with the end of the first volume. It doesn't move very fast either, but takes its time getting pieces into place. Let's hope that Dickinson sticks the landing with the final part(s), because if he does he'll have produced one of the finest fantasy works of the past few decades.