The Traitor Baru Cormorant

I loved the start of this book. From Baru's childhood home, to the descriptions of the Masquerade's increasingly rigid and terrifying social structures, I was hooked.

Unfortunately, I found the rest of the book to be convoluted. Baru's character is assigned as the tax accountant to an unstable land called Aurdwynn, where we are very quickly introduced to dozens of dukes and duchesses who I read as being practically interchangeable with each other, and considering how most of them are slaughtered by Baru's plans or die in battle, there is little incentive to become invested in any of them. There seemed to be little to distinguish their voices from one another. Baru's take on rebellion through loans seemed weird to me - supposedly the population rises up for her, the Fairer Hand, because over a period of a few years she allowed them to take out loans of gold that had a note inscribed on them saying they were from her. I honestly don't think the common people would have noticed - when was the last time you looked at your money and thought about thanking the Treasurer of the United States, whose name and signature are on there. Since she is directly representing the Masquerade's interests, it seemed more likely that the local population would thank the Masquerade, instead of rebelling, if indeed these loans are to be believed to be some sort of driving force.

But most of all, I had a problem with the way the plot is handled. You find out at the end, that the entire time Baru has early on made a deal with the Masquerade's shady under government, so that while it appears from the outside she is leading a rebellion she is in fact neatly delivering the land, sans the ruling class, into the hands of the Masquerade. But since the narrative is largely told from Baru's perspective, it seemed like a weird shift to have a sudden reveal of something our character has been aware of the entire time, thus we as the readers should also have been aware. It seemed inconsistent. It was also hardly a twist - Baru says repeatedly that her entire goal is to get to Falcrest so she can change from within the leadership, which is exactly what she ends up doing.

I thought Baru was interesting, and overall the Masquerade society was chilling, and it left with a sense of oppression similar to 1984 or the Handmaid's Tale. I would be interested in a sequel, but the oppressive set up leads to feel any outcome would be just as bleak.

I should also say that this is one where the audiobook really fell flat - I read the first half and listened to the second, and the narrator was not a good choice for handling so many characters. They all sounded the same.