The Tyrant Baru Cormorant Reading Notes Act One

ACT ONE: Baru's Choice.

29/7/20 - First 100 pages or so

It is finally here! I just finished Alex White's Salvagers trilogy and the second part of Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb trilogy, but nothing is closer to my heart than Dickinson's human disaster Baru. When last we left her, her patron Cairdine Farrier (Itinerant) had sent her off to find the Cancrioth, a cancer cult that he suspected of still existing in the Masquerade's neighbour's Oriati Mbo. We know what Baru's goal is - learn how the Masquerade is run, get to the centre of its power, and somehow find a way to destroy it to revenge and free her homeworld (we also know that it is a fallacy to think that you can change things from the inside, or that doing so won't change you into something you never expected int he process). Itinerant's goal is winning an ages-old ideological fight against his competitor Hesychast (Cosgrad Torrinde), an eugenicist who does not share his belief that ideological indoctrination (giving education, health care etc to conquered nation to absorb them into Falcrest) works. Both Hesychast and Itinerant are trying to find a way to absorb the Mbo, but each of them has their own ideological approach, and each of their proteges is being used to prove their respective theories (along the lines of nurture/nature). 

In The Monster Baru Cormorant, we met the Oriati Mbo the first time, through flashbacks into the childhood of Tau-indi Bosoka, Abudmasi Abd and Kindalana eshSegu - who start out as friends, but then become something more complicated when their individual relationships change and when young Torrinde and Farrier begin to study them. The Mbo is essentially different from Falcrest, which is an expanding empire that uses science, education and trade in addition to pure violence to expand its borders. The Mbo isn't expanding, but in spite of lacking what Falcrest sees as "progress" (even though Falcrest is as ideologically crippled as any place - obsessed with eugenics, obsessed with cleanliness, a mirror of the British empire, which exported its violent homophobia and "values" to its colonies), it has existed successfully and continuously for thousands of years. Its citizens die of plagues, they share what Falcrest considers a weird religion centred around the idea of "trim", an ethics of an "unshakable belief in the intrinsic and inalienable humanity of your neighbor". Trim cannot be manipulated or purchased, it cannot be exploited, it cannot be separated from the community. It makes Oriati Mbo a place utterly foreign to Falcrest, and incomprehensible not just to Itinerant and Hesychast, but also to Baru. 

At the beginning of The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, Baru once again wakes up after severe trauma and tries to orient herself - in the past, she has lost half of her vision, something else and foreign has taken over one of her hemispheres (something that is, perhaps, the love of her life Tain Hu - which would be befitting of me just having read Harrow the Ninth, a whole novel about two lovers sharing one body). She wakes up to her patron Farrier, who is anxious to find out if she has found the Cancrioth, as the fate of the empire depends on it, and the outcome of his fight with Hesychast. Farrier thinks that he can turn the Oriati against itself if he reveals the continued existence of the cult that is so taboo, that causes horror in each Oriati they have come across. Hesychast, as a eugenicist, has a lot of reasons of his own to be obsessed with a cult that believes in passing down identity through cancer. 

Baru, for her part, reveals in the flashbacks to what happened after she woke up on the boat with the Shadow Ambassador, Shao Lune and Tau-indi that she had plans of her own. The Cancrioth take her back to their massive ship, the Eternal, which is hidden inside the volcano off the coast off Kyprananoke. While being interrogated by someone she soon realises has no official permission to do so (a woman who is as desperate to find Abd as Tau-indi, even though for different reasons - turns out that to prove their trust in him, the Cancrioth gave Abd one of their cancer lines, and the woman's - Kimbune's - husband had it before him). She realises that there are different factions on the Eternal (the Womb is not in accord with the Brain - they are named after where their tumour grows). She also forms a plan where she will bring horror and destruction upon Falcrest by finding whoever has the Kettling on board, and taking it back to the Imperial seat. It's a pretty horrible reveal that is right in line what we already know about Baru, that she is willing to do pretty much anything to make Tain Hu's death and the death of everyone else who has died for her mean something, including, apparently, biological warfare. Former bedmate Shao Lune also calls her out on not having made any progress towards anything ever since she started drinking herself into oblivion ("Really, Baru, what have you done lately except run from your problems and fall into traps? You’re ruined."), and after revealing that she is still working for Xate Yawa (and put a tracker on the Eternal), she asks her to make a better offer to her. She turns out to be an excellent spy, who finds out all kinds of things about the Eternal. She is quite efficiently points out to Baru that perhaps her whole idea of being close to the top of Falcresti authority is a mirage, because maybe there's a whole other order above her (because how could she ever believe that the authority would lie with so many foreigners, and so many women). We still don't know who Stargazer and Renascent are, but we do know that Baru, in the present tense, as she is being interviewed by Farrier, is in a straitjacket and cannot see (remember that Xate Yawa kept threatening her with the pick...).

Baru also still has a hard time comprehending that just because she doesn't believe that trim is real, being cut out of it equals the worst thing possible for Tau-indi, whose entire life has been dedicated to the Mbo. She's done horrible things to Tau ("Once again she’d dragged someone infinitely better than her to their doom."), who is still convinced that the whole reason for the brewing war is the misunderstanding in their friendship with Abd and Kinda (the former who is now carrying the cancer, the later is trying to forge a bond between Falcrest and the Mbo to prevent war). We also flashback to their time together on Prince Hill, when both Kinda and Tau intervened when an angry mob appeared to kill the two hostages (after the horrible outcome of the Mbo raising a fleet to fight Falcrest, and having thousands of their people burn). 

Elsewhere, in the complicated hierarchy of the Imperial Navy, mutineer Juris Ormsment stumbles across Aminata, who is so desperate to find Baru and find out if she is true (and has a letter from Tain Hu in her pocket, asking her to be her knight). Ormsment thinks that if she can prove Baru's betrayal, it will mean a way back into Falcrest, avoiding to be trialled as a traitor. Aminata is haunted by what she is has done in the embassy, burning people to death to prevent the Kettling from escaping (another reminder how horrible the Kettling is, and how dark it is that Baru wants to use it, regardless of what Falcrest did on Taranoke). 

And some other things: 

• Dear Iraji, who I worry for constantly, thinks he is one of Baru's only friends, and would be willing to trade places with her, in spite of how much the idea of returning to the Cancioth horrifies him. 
• Ormsment has sent a ship to arrest Baru's remaining parents, but we've gotten a good hint towards the end of Monster that her second father Salm may be alive in an imperial prison. 
• So the tumours the Cancrioth plant in people basically function like Trill symbionts, preserving the memories of the host bodies but adding the thousands of years of the cancer to the person?

30/8/20 - Next 100 pages or so

In the present, where Baru is blind and bound by Farrier, assuming something horrible has happened to her (she is also, uncharacteristically, referring to him as "Mister Farrier", which doesn't sound right at all), she confronts him with Shao's idea that the mission was nothing but a ploy to get the three foreign cryptarchs away from Falcrest while Hesychast and he finished their little struggle over whose theories will dominate the future of empire. He does as much as confirm this, but also insists that what she has found out about the Cancrioth is essential. 

In the far past, on Prince Hill, we finally get to the moment that has been hinted at for a while: after managing to turn back the mob with their princely powers, Kinda and Tau are confronted with the horrors of warriors who have aligned themselves with the Cancrioth, and come up the hill led by a woman with "too many shining eyes". Their reaction is one of visceral, total horror - their house warriors and Abd's manage to defeat the force, and the woman self-immolates, but what Tau misses at the time is Abd's deep fascination with this group, and the realisation that the terror that the Mbo have suffered under Falcrest are perhaps correctly answered by the body horror of the Cancrioth. It lays the groundwork for him eventually approaching them for support in his mission to outfit ships, and his decision to carry one of the strains. It's something that Tau and Kinda cannot give him, a power beyond theirs. 

"This, Abdumasi was thinking. This is what we become when we are desperate. We grow thorns from our skin, we shout ancient words, and we beg our people to stay away from us. For we cannot be bent from our purpose, which is revenge."

Also, Baru is now on coke, thx Shao Lune. While on "mason dust", the Brain, who Baru approaches because she thinks that we will get the Kettling from her, tells her the history of the Cancrioth. Born from an age when slavery was not the taboo that it is now in the Mbo ("The Cancrioth was born on the principle that life had value. At first, though, it was merely market value."), they were a class of what we would now call scientists, tasked to find an end to death - and they eventually stumbled across the Uranium fields, which gave them the opportunity to grow cancer. She also explains to Baru that she still does things, instead of having others do them for her, because it comes with a particular kind of power to have people come to her for advice and to tell people how and why to do things (something Baru relates to her riddle about the three ministers). All of this is about different types of power, and what it achieves. The Brain also tells Baru that she doubts the usefulness of trim in this age, which she refers to as a childish ethics for an age that kills children - something that will not help the Mbo to stand up against Falcrest. Baru summises that the Brain thinks that Falcrest will win the coming war. 

She makes Baru a truly horrible offer - to get the Kettling, she would give her a lethal strain of something called "baneflesh", which is a malignant cancer they are growing in pigs, so that she would put an end date to her life in exchange for the plague that would end Falcrest. The whole scene - from the Brain taking Baru into the sty with the cancerous pigs, to the ending of the first act - is like a descent into hell, as Baru stumbles from catastrophe to catastrophe. As much as she has lived for her revenge, she cannot bring herself to die for it (and yet, in the background there is the suicidal Baru that began when Tain Hu drowned, who very much flirts with the idea of ending things).  She stumbles away, but then Ra poisons her with egot to abort a baby that never existed. Delirious, she has a conversation with a still-furious and still-inconsolable Tau-indi, who blames her for spending life like coin. 

And into the midst of all of this, all the other threads come together. Iraji, poisoned by Xate Yawa, presents himself to be exchanged for Baru. The one person Baru thought she saved is back with the people he feared the most, and has identified himself as the missing carrier for the strain that is now inside Abd.And then, just as Baru is leaving with Kimbune, who is also looking for Abd (because she has found proof for an argument, a very important want, that she needs to show him), Aminata appears out of nowhere. 

Aminata, who Tain Shir has recruited as her proof of concept: that Baru will sacrifice anyone she has ever loved if only to make the sacrifice of those who have already died worth it. Aminata is an offering to that theory (and Tain has no doubt that she will die - she is just curious if Baru will stop at Salm, who she must be in possession of). And oh how many offerings Tain Shir has - in addition to Aminata (who embraces Baru, and immediately tries to figure out if Baru is guilty, with no happy answer waiting for her), she has Tain Hu's household, which Baru thought safe back in Aurdwynn, tied up on her boat - including the diver Ulye Xe. 

It opens something up in Baru, a realisation, which is part of the lesson that Tain is trying to teach her: that regardless of how much she thinks she is acting against her sponsor and against Falcrest, in the end, she is following precisely her Incrastic indoctrination. She is the perfect example of Itinerant's perfect self-ruling subject, a citizen who no longer needs to be ruled, because through indoctrination, all of their actions align with the empire. "I can always rationalise my obedience as my own will". Whenever she has denied herself pleasure, or left her feelings until the moment when time was almost running out, she was following a path that Farrier laid out for her when she decided to go to the Incrastic school, to find out what was happening to Taranoke. There is no way to change the Masquerade from the inside, because it inevitably changes you from the inside. 

It all goes back to Tain Hu's old question: "There is a difference between acting out their story, and truly obeying their story. Do you know what it is?" And hopefully, at some point, Baru will remember the answer. 

But for now, everything goes up in flames. Shir shoots at Baru, but Aminata sacrifices herself, as so many have done before (luckily, her armour holds the arrow). And out of nowhere, Hesychast's perfect proof of concept appears, and glitches: Iscent Comprinde no longer responds to her command word, and has instead learned to use it on herself, to program herself in whatever way she wishes. And right now, she wishes for Tain Shir not to kill Baru. They disappear into the waves just as Xate Yawa pulls up with the troops. 

• slavery is such a taboo within the Oriati Mbo that slave jokes have become a racist way of mocking Oriati soldiers who have joined Falcrest. Aminata still doesn't find them funny. 
• Poor likely doomed Lindon (with his patron missing) finds out that his Navy is getting defunded, with powerful forces within government using the opportunity of Ormsment's actions as justification. His rival, Ahanna Croftare, has quietly privatised her own First Fleet. 
• How funny, that so many people are looking for Abd and the person that has seen him last is right here where all the action is. 
• Poor Iraji. 
• Poor Tau-indi.