The Tyrant Baru Cormorant

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson is the third book in the series and the longest yet. I went into it thinking it was the last in a trilogy, and it is not. The author says he has an ending in mind, but introduces a whole new weird part of the world in an epilogue and it wouldn’t shock me if it ends up being more than one book away. An obvious point of comparison would be George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire series, and while multiple points of view are used, the cast of characters, timeline, and scope isn’t quite as sprawling as all that.

This felt like a slog at times, but I think part of that was just how many other things I have going on. I first started reading it way back in May 2023. Thinking about it, this is a better book than the other two in the series. The world-building has really come together, although some of the parallels to our world might have been a little too direct this time. In contrast to the second book, it felt like Baru had more agency in this one and it seemed less like she was just getting swept along by events and mysteries.

I am not sure what made me decide to start this series. It was probably a discussion on an Ask MetaFilter post, since that’s where I pick up a lot of book recommendations. I remember when I read the first book in the series, I had thought it was science fiction and not fantasy, so I probably read about half the book wondering when it would start to go off-world. Dickinson’s next book (coming out very soon) is science fiction, so I’ve added that to my queue.