[Beskargam]

Heh, I passed along your short stories to most of my friends in college. They loved em. We're all keenly interested in getting your book when it comes out.

[SypheDMar]

If I don't get a chance to pre-order it, I'll buy it. Is there a preferred site that you recommend? I know I'm definitely going for hardcover.

[General Battuta]

Powell's! They're a really cool independent bookstore in Portland, OR.

Preorders are really important for a book's success, sadly enough. And since books sell so many fewer copies than games, your preorders make a bigger difference!

Here's Book Riot on this HEARTBREAKING and AMAZING novel

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

This book was on my radar for sometime, but it wasn’t until I finally got my hands on a copy and dove headfirst into the rich, bittersweet world, that I realized what a gift it is. The novel starts on the island of Taranoke, where young Baru Cormorant stands on the beach with her mother and two fathers as ships with red sails begin to pull into the harbor. The Empire of Masks has arrived and with them, they bring new math, star charts, tools, food, weapons, and support for the people of Taranoke. They also bring plague, rigid education, new metrics for “hygienic living,” and cultural/hereditary taxonomy and control. Their velvet-gloved hand begins to slowly choke Taranoke, and it’s only when Baru is already enrolled in one of the schools, kept from home, and one of her fathers goes missing that she sees the Empire for what they are: conquerors.

But Baru knows that the best weapons are knowledge, information, and strategy. She vows to save her home, by rising high in the ranks of the Empire of Masks, enough take it down from the inside. And so, at eighteen, she is sent as Imperial Accountant to the unforgiving cold of Audrwynn, a country to the north under control of the Empire; it is fractured and proud, and in need of an imperial hand to stave off rebellion. But smart as she is, Baru is young, and finds that she may have wandered right into a pack of wolves. But if she is save her country, her family, she’ll need to outpace the wolves around her, and prove her worth to the Empire.

This book is a brutal treasure in every way. Baru is one of the most complicated, best-written characters I’ve read in some time, who must balance agenda against agenda against personal feelings against everything at stake; she wears dozens of masks, switching so effortlessly at times, my head was spinning trying to keep track of them all (but in a good way). She is a fully realized, queer woman of color with agency and power, and is an amazing breath of fresh air in a genre that is getting better with representation, but still has a long way to go. The world she lives in is beautiful and heart-breaking, a mixture of Guns, Germs, and Steel and epic fantasy; there are hints of the supernatural in this secondary world, but for the most part, Dickinson focuses on the political maneuvering, character development, economics, warfare, and emotional arcs. His sentence-level prose is delicious, tightly focused, and he never treats the reader as anything less than capable and intelligent. Every page draws you in closer, until the end, when he delivers one of the most shattering and fling-across-the-room-y twists in a book I’ve ever read. I could go on, but I’ll just say: please, please, please read this heartbreaking, amazing novel. — Martin Cahill

[jg18]

Just preordered my copy in Kindle format. There are accessible versions of the Kindle app for Windows and iOS devices so I should be able to listen to it through text-to-speech.

[Luis Dias]

Hey, if you actually give me the correct "sides" of the book, I'll correct my new book cluster parametric object in Archicad

[Aesaar]

Battuta I'm overloading on hype.  You might say I'm being drowned by hype.  Maybe even tidally so.

(In that the hype recedes and then returns whenever the word Baru appears)

[Mongoose]

I was gonna have my brother get me a copy for my birthday, but then I remembered that it won't be released for a couple months.  Not sure if hype can be contained for that long.

[General Battuta]

Preorder! It'll help me make my week 1 sales look good. (**** preorders but it's all in the game)

[Phantom Hoover]

to be fair i have absolute confidence that my preordered copy of baru cormorant will function properly when it arrives

[General Battuta]

Your heroes are all morons. Luke? Totally naive. Ellen Ripley? You should be fighting the real enemy. Frodo? USE THE ****ING RING

Sounds like they need some advice from Baru Cormorant, via Tor.com!

How Baru Cormorant Would Overthrow Emperor Palpatine, Kill Voldemort, and Stop Sauron

[The E]

I have taken the liberty to un**** your link there.

[StarSlayer]

Just checked my preorder release date and looks like it will be arriving just in time for my birthday.

Thanks for the present Batts

[Luis Dias]

Humm, so according to you, Frodo actually followed Baru's advice to the letter!

[Axem]

Dear Baru,

I am an Admiral who is constantly freaked out by these unknowable space demons who took away my home. I want to make sure my people are safe for the future, but all I have are some ancient tablets and a horde of racist sheep that are ready to sell out our only ally.

What should I do?

-AHB

[Mongoose]

You name-dropped Sabriel and that makes me exceedingly happy.

[General Battuta]

You name-dropped Sabriel and that makes me exceedingly happy.

It's one of my favorite books (sequels inclusive, prequel not).

If y'all looking for good books, I recommend The Library on Mount Char and (for Starslayer and E in particular, but anyone who's interested in the collision of Lovecraftian occult and real-world espionage) the fantastic Declare by Tim Powers, which posits a secret Cold War race to survive and secure the entity on Mount Ararat.

[AdmiralRalwood]

You name-dropped Sabriel and that makes me exceedingly happy.

It's one of my favorite books (sequels inclusive, prequel not).

Very to both of these posts.

[Phantom Hoover]

Frodo? USE THE ****ING RING

man i don't want to get all nerdy here but what good is turning locally invisible and completely blowing your cover with the enemy going to do

[General Battuta]

Power according to your stature, it's not all Frodo

[Phantom Hoover]

and risk compromising your core leadership?? blackbird village would be appalled