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ninetalevixen 's review for:
The Monster Baru Cormorant
by Seth Dickinson
content warnings:
rep:
There are several interesting tropes and mini-arcs and revelations, social commentary, etc., but it often gets lost in the muddled bigger picture. Maybe the problem is that I absolutely lack Baru's savantry so I can't always follow her reasoning or scheming.
In general I felt like there was just too much going on, especially with the frequent POV/timeline switches (and the fact that each is differentiated by style instead of a label, e.g.) — honestly I had some difficulty keeping up with which characters were where, which characters knew what, which characters thought what ... and that made it difficult to really get invested in the characters.
So while the expansion makes perfect sense within the context of the series, and juggling so many perspectives sets up dramatic irony and humor, it just doesn't work for me. I do still care about Baru so I'll give the third book a chance, but if it's more of the same I may have to abandon the series.
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CONVERSION: 8.2 / 15 = 3 stars
Prose: 5 / 10
Characters & Relationships: 6 / 10
Emotional Impact: 4 / 10
Development / Flow: 3 / 10
Setting: 8 / 10
Diversity & Social Themes: 4 / 5
Intellectual Engagement: 3 / 5
Originality / Trope Execution: N/A
Rereadability: N/A
Memorability: 2 / 5
Spoiler
past major character death, grief & guilt, drugs & alcohol & sex as coping mechanisms, non-graphic sexual content, voyeurism, sexual harassment, marital infidelity (minor char's), queerphobia, racism & xenophobia, dub-con sex (initiated by a prisoner when other party is drunk), violence, physical & psychological torture, blood, being drugged, bad drug trip, eugenics, epidemic, biological warfare, transmissible cancer, mention of scalping, mentioned genocide, mentioned infanticide, mentioned stillbirth, mentioned sex conversion therapy & rape, death of butterfly, mention of dead dog, facetious suicidal ideation, prostitutionrep:
Spoiler
POC-coded WLW MC [Baru], POC-coded nonbinary MC [Tau-indi], Q/PoC secondray & minor charactersThere are several interesting tropes and mini-arcs and revelations, social commentary, etc., but it often gets lost in the muddled bigger picture. Maybe the problem is that I absolutely lack Baru's savantry so I can't always follow her reasoning or scheming.
In general I felt like there was just too much going on, especially with the frequent POV/timeline switches (and the fact that each is differentiated by style instead of a label, e.g.
Spoiler
Baru is third-person limited past tense, Xate Yawa is first person present, etc.So while the expansion makes perfect sense within the context of the series, and juggling so many perspectives sets up dramatic irony and humor, it just doesn't work for me. I do still care about Baru so I'll give the third book a chance, but if it's more of the same I may have to abandon the series.
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CONVERSION: 8.2 / 15 = 3 stars
Prose: 5 / 10
Characters & Relationships: 6 / 10
Emotional Impact: 4 / 10
Development / Flow: 3 / 10
Setting: 8 / 10
Diversity & Social Themes: 4 / 5
Intellectual Engagement: 3 / 5
Originality / Trope Execution: N/A
Rereadability: N/A
Memorability: 2 / 5