Wait no I want to hear you hating on Baru Cormorant I tried to like the book but just couldn't
Hey! I have definitely done this before though I wouldn't have tagged it in any easily findable way but in short I had multiple people recommend it to me both irl and online with glowing reviews, and like, the premise (for those who haven't read it: girl from a queer and poly-friendly society that gets violently colonized by a homophobic empire is taken in by the colonizing Empire to be reeducated and decides to become a bureaucrat to specifically take down said empire financially) is fucking great.
The prose is lifeless. It's not like...easily identifiable as bad, is the problem. It's not overly purple (like, eg, Tumblr Holy Pomegranate Prose); it's not even a weird style. But I found myself reading through the book and realizing it failed to, well, bring any of the characters into life. It felt like someone was recapping the plot as drily and objectively as possible, except I was reading the book. Baru Cormorant is the main character and like. It's been a few years and obviously I never revisited it but I just do not feel like she had motivations other than "vengeance" and "lesbian".* I felt like I was reading a phone book. I think I described elsewhere as plot without character, and the thing is, I've read books that skewed plot w/o character and liked them! The Thessaly trilogy by Jo Walton is much more plot than character! But that was a story focused heavily on a society, where any individual character within it was only part of the larger narrative which in turn was a commentary on Plato's Utopia, ie, I was expecting a story that served as a philosophical treatise and that's what I got (and like, there were some good character moments) whereas like, it's called The Traitor Baru Cormorant, it follows Baru Cormorant, and because of how clinical and detached and flat it was, it failed to make me feel an emotional attachment to Baru Cormorant.
Obviously this is an opinion and there are plenty of people who have given it glowing reviews but there's also a LOT of people who have had the same reaction I did. Here's one I found from a quick search and I'm pulling two quotes that I wholly agree with:
"I was pretty bored for most of the middle of the book, which I'll go into more detail in the spoiler section below, and the reason for this is mostly the characters. Or really, the lack of character. They all feel interchangeable, forgettable, and dry. I've read some people describing it as reading history book depictions of characters and I totally agree."
and
"The other huge issue I had with the book is it feels very… mechanical. The world doesn't feel alive, the imagery is lackluster, and I didn't feel like getting immersed in the richness of the world and its lore. The writing is very focused on dialogue and Baru's internal thoughts, with the world itself coming out in crude brushstrokes."
Here's another I also agree with:
"I like the premise, and the themes and plot are my usual cup of tea. It was pretty disappointing, then, that I just didn’t vibe with this book. I had to force myself through the first half as I was very, very bored. Something about the narrative voice was cold and unfeeling, and I know that Baru herself is meant to be a bit of a distant character, but it meant that I wasn’t really able to connect with her and what she wanted."
*for a good book that hits some of what I'd hoped to get from Baru Cormorant I am once again recommending A Memory Called Empire. I would also add that the Terra Ignota series which I've mentioned a few times is not explicitly F/F but it's doing 5D gender chess stuff and it had an initially off-putting voice that ultimately justified itself, which made me love it more.
