![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() When the Empire of Masks - called the Masquerade by those who defy it - begins trading with Taranoke, Baru's parents are wary and suspicious of the Empire's encroaching ways: Their paper money, their invasive treaties, and most especially their views on hygiene, which limit parenthood to one mother and one father only, mutilating "sodomites" and "tribadists" in punishment. She lives happily with her mother Pinion and her fathers Salm and Solit, learning the names of birds and stars, counting everything she can find. So too does Baru Cormorant, our heroine, "daughter of a huntress and a blacksmith and a shield-bearer," raised in the seaside nation of Taranoke where children have several mothers and fathers in a single family. It seems impossible that the economics of a fantasy world should be so viscerally riveting, but they are, and it's incredible: You think you're on solid ground right up until you feel that ground closing around your throat. To read The Traitor Baru Cormorant is to sink inexorably into a book that should not be anywhere near as absorbing as it is - to realize that the white-knuckled grip with which you hold it was provoked by several consecutive pages of loans, taxes and commodity trading. This book is a tar pit, and I mean that as a compliment. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Traitor Baru Cormorant Author Seth Dickinson ![]()
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