I have a lot to say about this book. TLDR: it was great.
Now for the long version.
I read Monster immediately before reading Tyrant. Monster had been lurking on Mt. Readmore since it came out, and getting an ARC of Tyrant finally pushed it to the top of the queue, for obvious reasons. So I basically read them as one big book, and I’m glad that I did.
Monster is about a broken Baru. Bluntly, I didn’t like Baru in Monster. I could certainly empathize with her, but I didn’t like her. She was simply in too dark a place. She was prepared to do anything that would punish herself (because she felt she deserved it, because of Tain Hu’s death) and she was prepared to do ANYTHING to further her goal of destroying Falcrest (because to do any less would have meant Tain Hu’s death wasn’t worth it). I can appreciate a character crossing a moral event horizon, but it’s not exactly pleasant when that person is the protagonist, she’s judging herself far too harshly, and you’re spending most of the time in her head.
Plus, she just wasn’t the same Baru as we had in Traitor. That Baru was clever, she was a problem solver. She was an accountant. Baru the would-be bioterrorist just wasn’t a good fit. There were flashes of clever Baru, but only brief ones. She was too absorbed in her grief.
I’m happy to say that we get the old Baru back in Tyrant. She’s changed by her experiences, certainly, but no longer shattered by them. She is still seeking the downfall of Falcrest, but she’s trying to cause it by means of economics and trade routes rather than unleashing plagues. She wants to dismantle Incrasticism without destroying the Falcresti people. She would like to preserve things like Falcresti trade routes and covered sewers without keeping things like Falresti eugenics and corrective rape. It was a refreshing, and uplifting, change to see her really come alive again.
Parts of this gave me the same feeling as watching Memento for the first time. Wheels within wheels doesn’t begin to cover it. We don’t know what Baru’s plans are in any detail, and the nature of her head injury means that Baru herself doesn’t necessarily know them either. We don’t know what Heyschast and Farrier are planning, we don’t know what Svir and Yawa are planning, and we don’t know if Baru is working her own will, or Farrier’s. As people remark more than once, for someone who is trying so hard to undercut Farrier and Falcrest, her actions do seem to always be just what Farrier would have liked her to do. The gradual unravelling is certainly a brain bender.
We get a frame story, which is new. The book begins with a confused, very clearly not-OK Baru recounting recent events to Farrier, who is both sorrowful and very, very proud of her. I’ve worried from the beginning of this series that Baru would end up lobotomized and on the Imperial Throne. Seth wasn’t making me feel any better about that literally from the first page. Been rather upset about it, in fact, which is not a commentary on how anything turns out. Just that Seth had me worrying over it.
We learn more about the Cancrioth, and Farrier and Tau and Heyschast’s backstory. The past gets filled in even as things move forward. And while there is one hell of an interesting sequel hook, I’d also be content with the story ending here.
All in all a great read. Comes out on August 11, and highly recommended.