This review contains spoilers. It also has very strong opinions.
The Traitor
The Traitor was hands down the best of the three books. I sucked it up and got super excited when there was a tense moment (panicking slightly at the battle of Sieroch!) but was disappointed at the end. The twist was great but Tain Hu's fate absolutely didn't work for me. I thought she might die in the battle and was worried, because it felt like the kind of book where this could happen, but then she didn't and I was relieved. I wanted to see more interactions between her and Baru and how the following books might develop their relationship.
Instead, Dickinson decided to kill his gays after all, and the death just didn't work for me. This isn't because of the twist- the twist was actually really good. But I didn't buy the hostage situation of the cryptarchs and I found it laughably stupid how it was handled in the remaining books. The end of book one promises 'oh look Baru has no hostage so she will wreck fucking havoc'... and then book two lets the reader down completely because Baru doesn't do anything of notice (or at all). I'll talk more about this later.
So, the relationship wasn't shown and Baru hides her feelings, doesn't think about her relationship to Hu, doesn't pine for her, doesn't consider anything related. All she does is express her lust a few times and there's some description of how hot and strong Hu looks, but nothing really about how Baru feels about her. Thus the relationship is non-existent and I could not feel any pain when Hu dies. Added to that, the whole situation felt unreal. Surely, if cryptarchs without hostages are so dangerous/powerful, then the cryptarch with Baru at the end (Apparitor) would not let her kill Hu? The book constantly tells us about how dangerous she will be if she has no hostage... and then this supposedly super-brainy institution of the Throne and its cryptarchs just lets her hostage slip out of her hands/die. I imagine the possibilities for book two if Hu had lived as a prisoner/hostage... and I can see so much potential for this series not to collapse!
The book has other problems too that I could ignore because the plot was good (until the last few pages). The characters (though likeable) are very shallow and not even Tain Hu is more than that. Dickinson made a good sketch but didn't really fill it out with any of the characters but (slightly) Baru. Baru usually acts like an idiot in social relationships but was adept in her plotting. I also had hopes for the second book and Baru's character development- which is entirely thrown away when Hu dies.
There are quite often way too many descriptions and too long-winded ethical discussions.
The Monster
I read this book because I liked the first one (sans the ending) but primarily because I wanted to know what actually happened to Tain Hu. I couldn't really believe Dickinson would shoot himself in the leg by killing her... but then throughout book two he kept shooting himself by mentioning her all the time. It got annoying quick. There are many reasons why the Hu-is-guiding-Baru thing doesn't work. The biggest of all is because Hu and Baru didn't really have a relationship- at least not one that was shown enough in book one to make me really feel for them. I'm usually a crier when good characters die- but I didn't cry when Tain Hu died. I thought she was a cool character with a lot of potential... but considering Baru's relationship (of lack thereof) with her and her weak character beyond the sketch of a headstrong warrior woman trope she wasn't really much of interest (Hence why I read the book to find out that she was still alive- so her character could really be developed and loved before she actually dies.)
The plot of this book was very weak. A lot of nonsense things were happening but nothing of substance. Baru didn't do anything except throw a party and then sail to another island. There was nothing of notice here that made me want to read book three... and I also didn't like the new additional character view points. I didn't like any of them and felt like they were poorly handled. A sailor on shore leave does nothing but fuck... in very graphic ways. A non-binary character does... absolutely nothing except hate on their friends. Oh and there's a woman who survives everything because she won't let herself be mastered bla bla bla. Her reasons are very weak and so is her vendetta. It gets worse in the third book too. (More on that later.)
The things Baru does do (does she actually though?) fall together by coincidence and are very weak. There is no real plot. A lot of space is wasted by additional viewpoints and endless discussions about loyalty and other repetitive things (such as the cryptarchs' purposes and the feud between two of them). Yes, I get it, one is trying to prove his theory, the other is trying to prove another. The book mentions these are twenty times each and I got bored after the first two times.
The characters are even worse. There's a bunch of secret super brain people (the cryptarchs)... and they sit together on their little ship and bicker and bitch like teenagers. The intelligence Baru showed in book one is gone. Any 'threat' I might have felt from the other cryptarchs (Apparitor and Durance) evaporated by them standing around and yapping about nothing of import.
This book wasn't for me but I did finish it. I constantly hoped Tain Hu had somehow survived just to put some tension into the plot. If she lived as a hostage... The stakes would be so much higher and perhaps there'd finally be some insight whether/why/how Baru loved her.
But no. Hu's dead. So is the tension in this book and the stakes of the series.
The Tyrant
This third book is the hands down the worst. The second book was so-so and the third book degenerates from there.
At the end of book two Baru is captured after having done nothing whatsoever the entire 100k+ words. In the third book she gets hit by painful injuries (that she and none of the other characters should survive by the way) one after the other. It reads like Dickinson thought: 'I heard somewhere you should hurt your characters! There we go!' and went with it without considering what was really meant by those words.
There is again no emotional impact on anything Baru does (or rather doesn't do). Baru's dragged around by this group and then that. She suffers constantly from various injuries (missing fingers and various brain damages and being almost-keelhauled at some point) and it just gets too much. At this point I've lost every hint of why Baru might be likeable or how she plans to do anything when she's going from unconscious and suffering to unconscious and suffering every other chapter with no real progress in the plot.
The main antagonists don't do anything either. They're just trying to run away.
The main villain doesn't show up except in the scenes happening in present tense.
Baru's smarts from the first book are gone entirely. There's no agency and no emotional investment in anything... and then plot twist she finds out half of her brain is someone else's (or at least she thinks it is) and suddenly after that her character takes a 180 degree turn from what she was before. There is no hint anywhere before around the 40% mark that she's going to change and how it might happen. Then suddenly after 45% Baru is a completely new character. She turns from calculating and smart and sacrificing for the greater good to 'we must save everyone! Hippie-Yay-Yay-Yo!'
And it's just not believable. I get it- reversals and changing characters are cool. But there needs to be some setup! There needs to be a believable change! The only reason she may have changed is the book's version of karma and some pseudo-enlightened dude telling her 'what goes around comes around' (Don't get me started on this tangent of the boring and weak side-main characters...)... but it's not clear in the book? I'm also thinking the change might be because she couldn't sacrifice 'her oldest friend'... but she can sacrifice the woman she ostensibly loved (after not interacting with her in any meaningful way except having sex once?)? Eeeh?
I am so not buying it.
Final Thoughts:
I read somewhere that Dickinson might not publish another Baru book.. He's lost his wind and is no longer super interested in it... and no kidding of course not! He shot himself in the foot so massively killing the love interest at the end of book one that he had to come up with enormous amounts of bullshit to even fulfill his three book contract! He's also removed the main adversary (while hinting at others... laughably) by the end of book three and there is just no more juice unless he wants to build up a whole new villain and... well. I imagine he's exhausted about the drivel of books two and three. 300k words of absolutely no emotional investment and random non-plots will do that to you.
In summary:
Read the first book and leave the other two. You think you're in for a great political/economic epic? You're not. You're in for boredom and senseless plots after the first book. Save yourself the trouble and the money.
