I went into The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson incredibly hyped. The Traitor Baru Cormorant (the first in the series) was an incredible book. After I read it, I recommended it to anyone who would listen to me. Naturally, I dived into the second book riding high.
I’m not going to go into much on the story of The Monster Baru Cormorant but more of my feelings about the story as a whole. The first few chapters were gut wrenching and felt like the perfect start to the story. Very quickly though I started to realize something was off.
The main character, Baru Cormorant, felt dumbed down in a sense. Her intelligent edge had worn off in the second book. This felt like the case to me throughout the entire book. I never felt like they were the same character as the first book. The entire time I kept thinking I must have missed something early on to explain this feeling. The entire book she is constantly being outwitted or outmaneuvered by everyone around her. It never felt like she was in control of herself and the situations she was in. Of course this all seems hard to understand without giving specific details but just trust me. I will say that early on she does something so horrific that she is in deep mourning and anguish. I know this weighs heavy on Baru throughout and of course understandable but it diminishes her character.
The author also introduces new characters that I felt “meh” about (there is a third book in the series so maybe these characters have a solid payoff). The author also threw in these flashback chapters throughout the book that always felt jarring to me and incredibly boring. Again, I know this is all world building details but I let out a groan everytime these chapters came up. There were a few chapters that focused on the point of view of one of the other protagonists that also felt uninteresting.
Truthfully, there was so much going on from so many different perspectives that I felt lost and confused at times. I wholly accept that that’s on me and maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention. I did get to the point where I was counting down how many pages I had left in the book.
After I finished the book I did read that the author wrote so much he had to break book two in half. That would help explain some of the disjointedness of it all. Knowing that, I am more inclined to start book three right away but I think it’s best to take a pause from the series to let book two wash off of me in a sense.
I can’t say that The Monster Baru Cormorant is a definite skip in the series. It has to be read in order to understand and appreciate the entire trilogy. That being said, it was a chore for me to do that. The character shift and the pace of the book really made it hard for me to stay invested in the book. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to see what the end has in store for Baru Cormorant though.
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