However, as a protagonist, she is becoming alarmingly unlikable and at times I found myself rolling my eyes at her radical mood swings from rampant paranoia to insufferable arrogance. Other characters' POVs help us to frame this more accurately who see Baru more clearly than she's capable of seeing herself. Her "ends justify the means" philosophy to bringing down the Masquerade begins to feel disingenuous after not too long. This is very much in contrast to The Traitor, where she is leading the charge.Īs for Baru herself, she becomes harder to sympathise with. Throughout there is the constant sense that things are happening to Baru, rather than Baru making things happen. Only, it's a somewhat repetitive structure (particularly when schemes are hatched against Baru). The story essentially takes place over three islands, each acting as the backdrop for the acts of the story. Baru may be super smart and a cryparch, but I'm not, and frankly, a bit more spelling things out would go a long way.
In all honesty, there were times I felt Dickinson was so caught up in trying to show us how smart he and his characters are that he forgot about his audience. I can only imagine how difficult I would have found reading this over a couple of weeks or a month. You can pass this off by claiming "you just need to pay attention" and yes, you do - but I was, and even then, I was having a hard time of it. Unfortunately, there were times when I was genuinely stuck asking myself 'Wait, who now?' 'Who are these people?' 'Am I supposed to know who they are?' Cultures, groups and in some cases individuals spring out of nowhere in a few cases and before you know it you're caught in a whirlwind with many different faces and names, only you're not entirely sure what their connection to the ongoing events or other characters is. Above all, that's job number one for any writer. Seth Dickinson can write very well, but he sometimes seems to enjoy flexing his literary muscles over making the story clear for the reader. Now, it's entirely possible that I'm dumb (probable, even) but I honestly struggled to connect many of the dots in The Monster. I read it in the space of four days and even in that short a time, I struggled to recall all of the events that had transpired and why what was going was going on. Having loved The Traitor, I really wanted to to love The Monster. I needed to get this out there and I'd love to hear other opinions because so far I haven't noticed many threads about this book yet on r/fantasy. For those not in the know, The Monster Baru Cormorant only got released a week ago in the UK on Kindle.
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