Download from here.  Unusual for them -- they mention to check back on May 4 so maybe that's when next freebie will be available.

 

There's also a booklikes bookclub to read these freebies at TOR Monthly free ebook book club.

 

Publisher page for more info on the book is here.  It's also the NPR Best Book of the Year.

This book starts by following Baru Cormorant as a young girl in Taranoke when her homeland is taken over by the Masquerade (or the Empire of Masks since they wear masks as part of their public personas). So we see the colonization and the start of the erasure of an indigenous culture and people and it's awful and harsh but I was invested in the character of Baru as a young girl so I was more or less sucked in.

 

Then she graduates from school and gets sent to this other land to act as Imperial Accountant and it was okay...but there was a lot about monetary policy and then there was a rebellion with battles and I just got kind of...bored. And the ending was therefore pretty meh.

 

Also it seems like a lot of the peoples who aren't the Masquerade are cool with homosexuality and polyamorous family structures but to the Masquerade those things are "unhygienic" which became more frustrating as the book progressed for reasons that involve spoilers. Maybe this ends up someplace interesting in later books, but I don't think I'll be sticking around to find out.

As of page 159, I'm pretty sure I'm done with this book. I was initially interested in the idea of a fantasy book about colonialism based on economic and political domination rather than military might. And the book is neither poorly written nor boring. But it is grim and cold, and while it is hardly the darkest book I've read, nor is the protagonist's life even close to the grimmest I've encountered, it is unrelieved by either an exciting plot or interesting characters. There's no humanity to these people; the book spins us through the typical overwrought "intrigue" scenes familiar to fantasy readers, but close to halfway through the book, not a single character feels like more than his or her political motivations. Even Baru, the protagonist, feels incomplete and cold. We're meant to believe that the memory of her homeland and trio of parents is a driving motivation, but we only ever see a couple of scenes of this and they are not particularly emotional ones. And since there's not much else to her, it's very difficult to empathize.

So while I could keep reading - it's not a terrible book - this one was leaving me feeling a little down after spending time with it and lacked sufficient redeeming qualities for me to want to put up with that.

I'm clearly in the minority on this one if you look at reviews, so it was somewhat heartening to meet up with my book club and discover they also had lukewarm feelings. Here's the thing: Dickinson crafts lovely prose. Sentence for sentence he is absolutely masterful. There were passages in this book I read over and over again. But when it comes to crafting a story as a whole? I just didn't buy in.

 

I loved the beginning of this book. The early chapters, when Baru is young and we get our first sense of how the Masquerade is trampling her people, had me sucked in and thinking this book would be a favorite. And then the story picks up, moves to another location, and stays there for the remainder. The rest of the book sets up scenarios, characters, and plot points, and none of them ever grabbed ahold of me or made me care. The plot attempts to twist and turn, but for me it just knotted - it seemed overly complex, and yet at the same time predictable, which is quite the trick. The supporting characters do things that seem convenient to the plot, but ultimately make no sense to me, thus breaking some of my suspension of disbelief.

 

And through it all Baru continues to tell you how awful she is, and is true to her word at least in that respect. That might be the thing that kills this book for me the most: I can't stand Baru. I read for character, and I just did not enjoy hanging out with this person for 400 pages. (Tain Hu on the other hand was pretty great. Lord knows what she sees in Baru.) For any Potter fans, this book reads like the Slytherin handbook - how to influence people and then screw them over for your own gain...the book! It's in the title. It's right there. But somehow that didn't make reading it any more enjoyable.

 

Here's the thing, if you like books that are rooted in political wheeling and dealing this might be your cup of tea. I mean, it's about vengeance through accounting, c'mon! And if irredeemable and terrible people aren't a big turn-off you also might love this book. As for me I need someone to cheer for, and I just couldn't cheer for Baru. I concede I'm in the minority here, so your milage may vary.

Ok, so here's the thing... I almost gave up on this book a couple of times. It just seemed like it was dragging inexorably, and I didn't feel much of anything for the world the author was busy building or the characters in it... but I kept coming back to the reviews on Goodreads. Most of them were five stars, with bunches of praise. So I preserved, wanting to know why!

And boy did I find out!


They say hindsight is 20/20, and that's certainly the case here. All that worldbuilding and character building that seemed to drag so achingly slow came together in one of the best twist endings I have EVER read! When I eventually cottoned on to what was really going on, I literally had to sit up and gape!

I can't really say much without giving away the plot, but I really, Really, REALLY hope this is a series! I need to know what happened next! And in the end Baru turned into one of my favorite characters... but I also kind of hate her...

Although the overall story deserves 5 stars, I had to remove a star for the initial drag though... surely that could have been avoided...