What I Am Reading: "The Tyrant Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson

This book, the third of four in the Masquerade fantasy series, was well-timed. The imperial civilization in the story, Falcrest, values egalitarianism and merit and thus hides itself behind masks; and a major portion of the plot involves the potential release of a civilization-ending plague.

I had forgotten going in that this book was not the culmination of the series, and was reminded part-way through. It does an excellent job as a penultimate novel: it resolves several plots, and even lets the heroes have their moments of victory, while clearing the decks for the larger-stakes challenges of the endgame. My main problem was that, due to library backlog, I didn't get my hands on it until several months after it came out, so at the beginning I was foundering a bit in terms of plot and minor characters. I pieced things back together well enough to manage.

The books left off with Baru and her counterpart/rival, Xate Yawa, pursuing the Cancrioth, an ancient cancer-cult that passes down its lives and identities through transplanted living tumors. The Cancrioth originate in the southern nation of Oriati Mbo, the next target for Falcrest's expansion. Falcrest is an imperial power with a French Revolutionary flair - their origin story involves regicide, and they are dedicated to egalitarianism, scientific progress, and an ideology of eugenics called Incrasticism. The Mbo, on the other hand, are based on India (not only are they cited as having invented zero, but the book's dedication notes the violent opening of trade with India by Portugal, mirroring Falcrest's economic and mercantile methods). The Mbo are a loose confederation of people dedicated to the philosophy of Trim, which to quote a late summary on p. 602, holds that

"“The small was reflected in the large, the meek did have power to move the great, a kind word to a stranger could alter the fate of nations: for the great was made out of the small, and the world was made out of people”"

Baru and Xate Yawa are cryptarchs, secret rulers of Falcrest "advising" the lobotomized emperor. Baru, given the pseudonym "Agonist," is the disciple of Caradine Farrier ("Itinerant"), who discovered her when Falcrest economically and militarily took over Baru's Pacific-like home island of Taranoke in the first book and began the process of "cleansing" it. Farrier is a devotee of the idea that people can be reconditioned by their societies, to the point that governments will no longer even need enforcement powers because everyone will have successfully internalized social rules. Xate Yawa, "Durance," from the mountainous northern region Aurdwynn, also recently conquered by Falcrest, is a rival of Baru from the time that she was Imperial Accountant there and Yawa was in charge of the religious secret police. Xate is the disciple of Cosgrad Torrinde, "Hesychast," a eugenicist who believes that people are governed by biology, and who seeks a kind of Lamarckian inherited behavior explanation. Despite their obvious villainy, both Torrinde and Farrier have their moments, usually in their background journey to Oriati Mbo when they were younger, when they can make their twisted causes sound noble (usually while disparaging the methods of the other).

Both Baru and Xate Yawa are in deep cover, seeking to overthrow the Falcrest regime and liberate their homelands; and both have done terrible things to prove their loyalty in order to have the power to do so. Baru, in the earlier books, instigated and then betrayed a rebellion in Aurdwynn, and allowed her lover, Duchess Tain Hu, to die so that she would not be used against Baru as a hostage. This book finally allows for a confrontation between the rivals where Xate Yawa learns that she and Baru have similar objectives, and they decide to join forces.

Hesychast seeks the Cancrioth to learn their secrets of implanted memories through tumors, and Itinerant seeks them to reveal their collusion with Oriati leadership and spark a conflict between the confederation and Falcrest. Baru, meanwhile, starts the book seeking them to acquire a sample of the dreaded Kettling plague, to use it on the Falcrest metropole and destroy the empire. However, after she balks at the Cancrioth demand that she implant herself with brain cancer as an assurance of her lack of treachery, her crisis of self-doubt spirals until Baru, newly inspired by her split-personality with her deceased lover, Tain Hu, decides that it is better to "butcher" the empire into workable constituent parts instead of causing a "democlysm." She makes a new plan: to establish trade between the Oriati and the denizens of the western part of the continent, from Taranoke to Aurdwynn to the alpine feudalist Stakhieczi, bypassing Falcrest entirely. It would, however, be a trading concern built with Falcresti investment, causing a bubble that collapses their economy just as the alternate power arrangement is being formed.

In order to get to this point, several conspiracies must walk the knife's edge as Baru tries to bring people with competing interests aboard, often distressingly through the use of violence and coercion. She must solicit the help of those such as The Brain, leader of the Cancrioth bent on instigating a war; Tau-indi Bosoka, a laman (a third gender) prince of the Oriati Mbo whom she accidentally caused to be magically (Falcrest doesn't believe in magic, but it exists) cut off from the network of Trim, which binds all living things together. She also needs Tau-Indi’s childhood friends Abdumasi Abd, a merchant-turned-pirate, and Kindalana eshSegu, another Prince with an interesting secret in her past. Baru must also arrange a complicated lesbian marriage plot to offer the Necessary King of the Stakhieczi the claim to the seat of the Aurdwynni Duchy Vultjag and another principality, if he agrees to her trade scheme. This would come about through Baru’s own marriage to another woman, an Aurdwynn/Falcrest politician, who would then divorce her and marry the Necessary King. Baru, you see, has claim to the Duchy after declaring Tain Hu her consort during the rebellion, and Tain Hu had killed the heir to a desirable Stakhieczi Mansion, making her a "man" eligible for inheritance in that culture. Obviously, the book continues and even ramps up the series' tradition of LGBTQ representation and importance to the plot.

I also think, somewhat facetiously, that the book has a neoliberal outlook, stressing the importance of globalism and trade (though some characters criticize Baru's dream of the alternative anti-Falcrest network as essentially the same cultural expungement that they have suffered at Falcrest's hands). Though the book has a framing device that takes place in Falcrest (with a very satisfying payoff as Baru succeeds at one aspect of her plan), it again takes place mostly on a couple of isolated islands: the doomed Kyprananoke, a backwater abandoned even by Falcrest and left to die under despotic successor leadership and non-sustaining agriculture when the Cancrioth plague and a secret Falcrest weapon hurry the job along; and another island outpost, Isla Cauteria, where Falcrest has a naval station.

Baru simultaneously works on theories that would defeat Falcrest intellectually, including coming closer to a gene theory of inheritance that would explain the existence of "tribadists" (lesbians) like her and prove Incrasticism wrong. This plays in to her thoughts on the social side that "primitive" cultures have their own adaptations, learned from their ancestors, that can yield more success than modern science, uniformly applied by cold Falcresti technocrats. This part should be fun, I love some intra-fantasy intellectualism.

Overall, things are rolling along very smoothly with this series, and I look forward both to the final installation and, probably prior to that, a re-read to be able to appreciate the series in totality. I would probably continue to say that this is one of my favorite fantasy series.’

P.S.: Seth Dickinson couldn't have predicted the Coronavirus when he was writing his plague, but that doesn't mean that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton didn't show up. I am good at spotting them, I did find Trump in the Venture Bros. on my own.

"There was Mandridge Subahunt, leader of the Candid Party in [Falcresti] Parliament, jeering at a woman from Advance who has suggested that he was having an affair. Mandridge was the only man in Falcrest who could boast of his blatant social coercions and yet summon a thousand outraged supporters at the slightest accusation he was morally impeachable. At the far opposite end of the crowd, his inexhaustible leftist rival Truesmith Elmin shook hands with a file of donors, defying the ongoing rumors that she was suffering a slow poison." (p. 613-14)