Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

A beautifully written book. Really enjoyed reading this. Thanks to publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read

This one has been lingering, nagging, on my Netgalley shelf for the best part of a year. Possibly I was put off by the memory that The Monster's predecessor, The Traitor (which, like this, had annoyingly been stripped of the succeeding '...Baru Cormorant' for the UK edition's title, leaving a deeply generic rump) was the book I was reading as 2016 began, and we all remember how 2016 went. On top of which, I found that book a maddening mix of brilliant bits and infuriating ones, and the general feeling even among those who'd loved it seemed to be that the sequel wasn't on the same level. Still, comes a time, doesn't there? I won't say because we're now at the point where things can hardly get any worse; things can always get worse, somehow, and of late they usually do. But if I'm taking the Event as an injunction to clear my backlog, that definitely needs to include the potentially cursed book festering with feedback required.

The series' tangled politics, both personal and global, are a bit of a struggle to get back into after a four-year gap, even if one year of that is my fault; further, at times they resemble the sort of 4D chess people try to find at the back of the latest fucknuttery from Washington or Westminster, when generally that's just dumb – so as with stories hinging on conspiracy theories, it's no fault of the writer if some of the appeal has now been sapped by reality. But set against that, it felt like the bits that pushed me away from the first book aren't here – I want to say The Monster feels more writerly, more fabulist, but neither of those feels quite right. Maybe it's just that for all the ongoing torture and betrayal, it feels more fun, more sure of itself and so able to make its points with a lighter touch? Soon enough, it didn't entirely matter if I couldn't always quite parse which compromised person was doing which horrible thing to which equally damaged individual, let alone why: I was enjoying it at the level of pulp, where the ingenious traps and the stand-offs are their own reward. Except that a lot of pulp is a lot less pulpy than its reputation suggests (often I find myself thinking, this is a print medium, there is no budgetary constraint which makes an action scene more expensive than dull filler, so why is so much of pulp so plodding?), and often it's propagating all manner of iffy theories about dastardly foreigners, and the evils of women with agency. Whereas this? Never a dull moment (well, so long as you're into the subgenre of fantasy where economics play a big part), and devoted to asking the right questions. Why are people like this? How far can they be changed, and would the cure be worse than the disease? How does one bring down a pernicious system when it's intertwined with the means by which the world is fed and innoculated? When culture is always a thing in motion, a business of interchange, is any attempt to preserve it a category error, or is thinking like that just playing into the forces of homogenisation?

This time out, we see more of the world in which these questions are examined (though again, it's anyone's guess how much of the first book I've forgotten at this point), and it's an odd one. In The Traitor, Falcrest seemed emphatically the villains of the piece, coming in with their horrible taboos and mucking up everyone else's far more chill societies, but here it's much clearer that other places have also their taboos - so while Falcrest may frown on homosexuality (albeit less so among the wealthy at home than colonised people, of course), and Taranoke has no problem with that, Taranoke instead has a rigid prohibition on dating outside one's own decade; elsewhere we see gender constructions which, though not Falcrest's old-fashioned biological essentialism, have still their own strictures against which some bridle just as much. The technology, the navy, the imperialism which operates so stealthily at first, and absolutely the vaccines, are sort of 18th-century-ish. But then the warnings on grenades, the dialogue, are very modern. And all of this filtered through value systems which sometimes mirror those operating in our world, and other times really don't – as in the exoticising of white skin, the navies of swaggering women looking to pick up disposable boys in harbour, the assumption that of course men can't be expected to control their emotions like women do (though I think our world may slowly be coming around on that last one). Part of the point is presumably that 'progress' is an easy Western story and societies don't necessarily go down a given tech- and ideology-tree like a game of Civ, but it still feels like a world that works better as a place in which to illustrate certain points than one which can be pictured as evolving organically - not that this isn't a perfectly legitimate use of fantasy, mind, just ask Lewis Carroll. Which came to me as a hyperbolic example, but the more I think about it, this series is the story of a clever young lady who finds herself undergoing all manner of disconcerting changes as she wanders a world full of people who, each mad in their own different ways, are also mostly convinced they're entirely sane. And when her initials are BC, the implied missing term is A...

Baru Cormorant, then. In the first book she worked at the top of a colony's revolution against imperial Falcrest, her goal all along to bring the revolt down, a double agent so that she might then make herself an unalienable part of the system, even letting die the lover and leader the system assumed she would rescue and whom they could then use as a hostage for her good behaviour. Now, though, now she can operate unfettered, and really bring Falcrest down. Except of course that she's still fettered – by her guilt, her remaining compunctions, and the fact that as much as she tends to forget it sometimes, she's not the only one with a plan. The position that she's attained is that of Cryptarch, an extra layer whose function is initially and explicitly unclear: "No empire needs a camarilla of secret conspirators. Parliament, the Ministries, the Admiralty, and the Judiciary – these organs are enough to keep the blood pumping. We are not a government. We are not the eyes, or the ears, or the mind of the Republic. We are parasites, And if we ever cease to benefit that host, the Republic will expunge us." But then they're referred to as special advisors, and there's a mention of "Falcrest's obsession with bright-eyed savants", and even before they go on a secret journey to distant lands, it hit me: this is an empire which, poor bastards, has six competing Dominic Cummings. What is the plural, even? Cummingses, maybe? That would suit the Gollum-ass motherfucker.

Anyway, all of this is played out against a canvas of rival superpowers, cancer cults, board games which recall both Banks' Player of Games and Parks & Rec's Cones of Dunshire (I especially enjoyed the variant rules according to different cryptarchs' theories on eg nature versus nurture), and a horribly topical finale where a plague is loose, with the desperate and angry weaponising infection even as the powers that be use quarantine as a bludgeon. Dickinson writes it all with a wonderfully supple and nasty way with words: "That's like a joke, in that we'll both have to pretend we think it's a joke so we can work together civilly. That's my favourite kind of joke." Or "Shao Lune sneered, quite enchantingly, her face like a wonderful painting of your worst enemy." Sometimes it's encapsulating even more than that: "And he had said to her: when the work is complete, no one and nothing will act without our consent. "By volition" will be a synonym for "by decree"." Once, he even manages to update Stalin's most chilling line so as to make it even worse and a lot more now: "Make enough death, and like any other currency it loses its value".

Underlying all this, though, there's the more personal story, most obviously of whether Baru can save her soul, or indeed her people. Paired with her quest is that of Tau, an opposite number from Falcrest's rivals, the easy-going, assimilating Oriati Mbo: shorter-lived, poorer, "our inferiors in every way" - but happier, and weirdly able to work around everything Falcrest has so far thrown at them. As against Falcrest's Incrastic philosophy of purity, they work on a sense of interconnectedness called trim, and Tau fears a terrible wound in theirs, one which threatens the whole world: "of such things, the Whale Words tell us, are the destinies of empires made. Not of armies or great notions of the glitter of wealth, but the most delicate motions of our hearts." Dickinson understands these little motions just as well as the geopolitics and the currency fluctuations, right down to the niche stuff like the vengeful edge to the victim's envy of others who've escaped, or being attracted to someone in part because of a mutual ex. Though inevitably, it's not fun stuff like the latter which hits home hardest when this is read in lockdown, so much as lines like "Did she understand at all what had been done to her? How her ideas of happiness and fulfullment had been shaved down into the certainty of grief and loneliness?"

Plot: 4/5
Characters: 4.5/5
Writing: 5/5

The Monster (the sequel to The Traitor) was another sprawling geopolitical fantasy full of twists and scheming. It wasn't as mind-shatteringly brilliant for me as the first book but it was still very intriguing and well worth reading.

This book started exactly where the previous one ended. We met the main character Baru again and got more insight into her motivations. Then the story took a wildly unpredictable turn involving a quest for immortality, new characters, new points of view and general chaos (in a good way). The Traitor focused on Baru's machinations to gain power and destroy the empire from within but The Monster was bigger than that. Baru had the power now and she using it to achieve her goal whilst trying to outmanoeuvre the manipulations of everyone else.

Baru's cool, indifferent façade shattered away and we got to see her more vulnerable than ever before. For much of the book she was completely lost, reeling from grief and feeling horror at the destructive consequences of her actions- but only after she'd done them. She didn't know how to handle the moral cost of taking down an empire. She knew what she wanted to achieve and told herself that she didn't care about whoever ended up as collateral. It was hard to tell if she truly thought her actions were for the greater good or if she saw herself as a monster, just like everyone else. The Empire had nothing to hold over her and therefore found her terrifying- and rightly so. But as her control over herself and her situation slipped it became increasingly difficult to tell if she was the puppeteer or the puppet.

I think the most impressive aspect of this book was how much it expanded on its world. We are told all about the federation of Oriati Mbo which had completely different politics, beliefs and culture to the Empire of Masks. However, all the new variables added to the story made the plot go a little out of control as if it was frantically trying to arrange everything for the next book.

This series is unlike anything I've ever read before. It's so unashamedly brutal, daring and clever and in its own odd way, it works. Overall, The Monster was a gripping read and although some parts felt too outlandish and unnecessary I still have high hopes for the next book in the series.

You know when a book makes you feel as though it’s tearing your heart out with every page that you read? Where each word written is carefully selected to just spell out pain and that pain leaves you in intense agony? Well that’s this book.

The Monster takes up pretty much exactly where The Traitor leaves off. And when I say the first two chapters were the most painful of my entire life because of it, I mean it. Following all this (and subsequent) pain, the story unfolds by expanding the world that has been set up in Traitor. Falcrest is on the verge of war with the Oriati Mbo. Baru, now an Imperial cryptarch, is stuck between competing desire of two other cryptarchs, and her own plan to avenge Tain Hu. Meanwhile, Ormsment, the admiral who she betrayed in the first book, is on her tail, intent on killing her.

The thing I loved best about this book is the way the story built up and developed across the three acts. Each act has a sort of crescendo in and of itself, but there’s also a larger crescendo encompassing all the acts, such that everything comes to a head right at the end, weaving together all the strands and characters of the book. And it’s so intense at times it leaves you breathless. That’s my favourite thing ever when reading a book, so that this one does it multiple times, forces you to put the book down even as you don’t want to, just to breathe, I loved so much.

In addition to this, the way little things are revealed, that either link into Traitor, or their importance only becomes apparent later on, and it’s all woven together is just masterful. Watching it all come together, and having those oh moments, gives you such a sense of satisfaction. And then, at the end, the little hints at what’s to come? Just *chef’s kiss*. (But also that I can’t talk about and need to so please, read this series so I can talk about it thank you.)

Anyway. All of this to say, read this series. Please please read this series.

"This is the story of Agonist. Baru Cormorant as a cryptarch: secret lord of the Imperial Throne."

* * * 
3 / 5

I adored The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Several months on, that book has still stuck with me and I’ve been recommending it all over the place. If someone asks me, “read anything good lately?”, they ain’t gonna get me to stop talking for the next fifteen minutes as I tell them about Baru Cormorant, light of my life. The Monster Baru Cormorant is still beautifully written, lyrical and immersive, but suffers from middle book syndrome so bad.

"Baru needed a sword for a spine, so that if she ever bent from her purpose, she'd be cut"

We pick up where we left off, with my beloved Baru and her lover Tain Hu. I won’t spoil it if you haven’t finished The Traitor yet, but be assured it dashed my heart upon the rocks. Baru has sacrificed everything to claw her way up the rings of the ladder. And now here she stands, proud and broken and glorious, wearing a mask of the Empire, waiting to betray it. Now part of their inner circle, Baru sets sail from Aurdwynn and embarks on a new task, to unearth treachery and secrets at the edges of the Masquerade.

I’ll start with the good. What did I love? I loved Baru, broken and sharp to touch. Baru, who knows what she wants and for whom no price is too high. Baru, who terrifies the Masquerade because now they have no hold over her. Baru, Baru, Baru. She is at the heart of this series and she is glorious. Also, the prose. Like the first book, The Monster is deliciously quotable and there are so many more I could have included in my review. Third, the variety of characters and cultures. Dickinson writes diversely, deftly crafting different kinds of societies and lifestyles that are so very distinct, and don’t feel like direct ‘reskins’ of European cultures.

"Oh," Baru said, as the world creased around her, a mark in the page, before this moment and after

However, this book definitely suffers from middle book syndrome. By that I mean that the author knew how he wanted to start (the first book), and knows where he wants to end (the last book), and the middle book is acting as a bridge between the explosive start and the, doubtless, firecracker of an ending. There is a big arc set up involving the cult of the Cancrioth that had so much promise to be weird and wonderful, but it was never really wrapped up. The plot got cut short too early as the author sacrificed closure for a cliffhanger of an ending.

The Monster Baru Cormorant is a great book. It is enjoyable and complex and has Baru has made my top ten characters list. But it is also slow and plodding and it didn’t satisfy me as a reader in the same way that the first did.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of The Monster Baru Cormorant.

This is amazing book, we return and join Baru straight from where we left her after the first book, whilst a great read, I felt it wasn’t quite as good or entertaining as the first, it seems to need to spend its time plot building here more and although stills great I just noticed a difference from the first in my enjoyment. But like the first book, a morally grey, thought provoking and well written complex story, you’ll find it here

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Dickinson's first book The Monster (or The Monster Baru Cormorant, depending where published) was a truly different take on fantasy, introducing us to Baru, a young woman in a newly colonised territory now ruled by the Imperial Republic of Falcrest. As well as showing the economic and cultural damage done to Baru's people, the book gave us a determined and ruthless hero who set out, by rising within the Falcresti administration, to destroy the oppressor from within.

The Monster - published today - picks up right where The Traitor [etc] left off. To earn a place in the hierarchy of Falcrest, Baru fomented a rebellion (destroying a Falcresti fleet to demonstrate her bona fides to the rebels) which she then betrayed. As a coup de grace, she executed her lover, the duchess Tain Hu, by drowning her, a powerful scene repeated at the start of The Monster. Now Baru has the "in" she wanted to the élite of Falcrest and she can do as she wishes.

If only life were so simple.

The Monster pulls off the awesome feat of being, if anything, even better than The Traitor. While the latter was superb in demonstrating the rottenness of colonialism, and the corruption of Baru in her quest for its overthrow, it was very preoccupied with strategy, tactics and war. The present book, on the other hand, takes the struggle every much into Baru's soul and visits its consequences on her. The betrayals she has made have unmade her; the injuries she suffered have cut off part of her sight (or is that, too, an outworking of guilt?)

And what she did has set enemies on her. The Falcresti Navy, whose ships Baru burned and whose sailors she murdered as an agent provocateur, has not forgiven. Nor have the erstwhile rebels. But it also turns out that far from being a disciplined, orderly polity, the powers in Falcrest are effectively warring barons, contesting as much among themselves as with their external enemies. Wielding different powers and representing different interests - navy, secret service, science, church, Parliament - they blackmail, bribe and scheme in the name not only of Falcrest but of different, longer term goals. Masks are worn in the Empire of Masks, loyalties unclear, and politics is a great game.

In The Monster the apparent central question is whether or not there will be war with the Oriati Mbo, a southern power very different and very alien to Falcrest. This potential conflict between two mighty opponents seems to hold the seeds of world chaos, yet there are those who would plan exactly that.

The real question is, I think, slightly different. As these devious cryptarchs play their game, I found myself asking, what does winning mean? Falcrest itself is, interestingly, not portrayed except through it agents: we don't meet its people at home while we see a lot of its rivals and subject peoples and their lands. What even is Falcrest? is it real at all? I wondered.

In contrast to that mystery, loved the Oriati Mbo and its people. Here Dickinson gives us a very different culture from those in the previous book, a world revolving around the idea of trim, something never exactly defined but which seems to be a mixture of fate, luck and being in good spiritual standing. In a couple of flashbacks we see the impact of this on the lives of characters who will be important later on - and eventually, when Baru collides with an Oriati ambassador, we also see their horror at the spiritual knots she has bound about herself through her actions in the first book.

It's, in many ways, a grimmer read than The Traitor, focussing on a wounded Baru who is no longer manipulating events but rather being driven by them; drink sodden, fleeing enemies who are able to strike and strike again. The fact that Dickinson still makes this compelling and at times even funny illustrates his eeriest knack for producing writing that gets under your skin - or perhaps inside your mind - and continually comes back with pithy asides and observations about power, human nature and human frailty.

I was also impressed by the range of characters here - represented as from a teeming mix of races and cultures, with non-binary people very visable and women in many active roles, especially in the Falcresti Navy. (There is a running joke of these Navy women assuming that men will be impulsive and emotional).

This is the sort of book that cannot be rushed, each conversation, each scene, reveals and conceals new layers of meaning with the relationships between old allies and new enemies bringing whole new dimensions even to events I thought I'd understood.

A great read, with a rollicking sense of life whether in its depiction of the Falcresti navy women, of the scheming Cryptarchs or the teeming world of the Oriati Mbo. Don't deny yourself, get it now.

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.