Light Spoilers, Obviously.
This one is a tough read! I haven’t read many fantasy stories that go this hard into the utter brutality of colonialism. Sterilization, assimilation, imported diseases, camps… this book has it all!
The story begins with a subjugation of a tropical island called Taranoke by the Imperial Republic of Falcrest (The Masquerade Empire). The Masquerade surrounds the island, forces the coastal inhabitants to sign treaties with them, builds boarding schools for the islander children to be brainwashed in, persecutes the native sexual practices, lets disease run rampant across the island, sets the coastal residents to war against other tribes on the island, forces everyone to trade in worthless paper currency… etc.
The protagonist Baru Cormorant, a really horny lesbian psychopath, decides early in her life to infiltrate Falcrest’s political infrastructure and attempt to transform the evil empire from within. Because that always works, right? The novel follows Baru’s transformation from innocent islander girl to ruthless strategist. She studies really hard and becomes the “imperial accountant” of another nation far from her home.
The novel doesn’t really give you much to feel good about. Baru has her little victories, yes, but neither herself or the reader are satisfied by them. Every situation is another step through a machine so vast and complex that it is impossible to imagine that Baru will ever actually succeed in changing anything. On her path to “success,” she tramples thousands. She is constantly making decisions that harm innocent people in the name of saving her homeland. There are hints of romance throughout the novel, yes, but since homosexuality is viewed as unhygienic and punishable by death in the empire, Baru’s love life comes out as repressed homoerotic pining. Baru does a lot of pining in this book.
There is Tain Hu, the warrior queen of Vultjag, who allies herself with Baru. The two go on an amazing adventure and even start a rebellion against the empire! It goes really well!
And yet, the whole book feels off. Like, things happen constantly that seem unbelievable. Miracles, chance encounters, plot vehicles that are just too convenient to be true. That’s because they ARE unbelievable. By the end of the book, you realize that nothing can be believed. This fantasy world is faithless and evil. “Traitor” is only the first book in the series, but my stomach was so knotted up by the end that I am not sure I want to continue. I will continue, but I don’t know if I will like it. I will keep reading only to see how far Baru will fall, and if there is any chance whatsoever that such a character can be redeemed by the end. Surely, the entire series is bereft of joy.
The thing that stuck with me the most, though, is the part where Baru learns that her home island of Taranoke has been renamed to “Sousword.” It makes you realize just how impossible Baru’s task is. While she is away from home trying to climb the corporate ladder, her homeland is falling deeper and deeper into assimilation. We don’t get to see what happens to Taranoke, but I suspect it will be far too late when Baru finally gets her triumphant return. There is a dread throughout the entire novel that her quest is doomed from the very start. Doom and foreboding and hopelessness embody the text.
This book gives me strange insight into the mind of the person that recommended it to me… A mind is a perilous thing. Filled with precipices and dead ends and locked doors. It is often difficult to appreciate that other people are playing their own game, and it is a privilege to be let in at all.