The beginning of Monster was so confusing that I had to go back and reread Traitor (which was perfect). Having gotten re-familiarized with the setting and characters, it was back to the matter at hand. Monster is a flawed book, a fine fantasy adventure that lacks the ticking clockwork heart of Traitor.

Baru is now the The Agonist, one of the handful of Cryptarchs who secretly rule the Falcrest Empire, a conspiracy bound together by mutual crimes. Baru's goal is to destroy the Empire from within and liberate her home, and to do that she's lead a province into rebellion, betrayed the rebellion, and ordered the execution of the woman she loved. Tain Hu was supposed to be a lever to use on Baru, but she cut that lever off to give herself greater freedom of action. Baru's planned ascension is interrupted by orders from Cryptarchs with greater power, a quest to find the hidden enemy power of the Cancrioth, and by some blowback. A Falcresti admiral who Baru used in her plot wants revenge for the dead sailors, and Tain Shir, Hu's cousin and a failed student of Baru's mentor Farrier, wants to teach Baru a lesson about spending other people's lives like coins.

So it's off chasing the Cancrioth, the conspiracy behind the Mbo federation, while being chased by a mad admiral, on a ship populated with other secret rulers, including a Mbo Prince, the head of Falcresti intelligence, and two frenemy Cryptarchs. Baru spends the journey mostly drunk and moping, with occasional flashes of brilliance. But tension is introduced by artificially keeping characters from meeting and confronting each other honestly.

What I loved most about the first book was the terrifying iron discipline of Falcrest, the deliberate application of violence, training, finance, and sin to remake the world in their image of utopia. Monster goes broader, showing a deep split between those who believe heredity is destiny, and those who believe training is destiny. And the blowback is in some sense welcome. Baru has to face the shattering consequences of her action. The Mbo offer a whole different perspective, a world where human connections form a kind of magic that link everyone together. And behind it all is the Cancrioth, potential immortality through blasphemous altered biology.

This is really a 3.5 star book, but I'm rounding up because I like the series, and sentence to sentence Dickinson is still fantastic. Second books are hard, and I'm hopeful that he brings it back in the home stretch.