The Traitor Baru Cormorant

This is the truth. You will know because it hurts.
  p.11

We open with an epigram. I like epigrams! This is doing a lot of work. It warns readers who aren’t in the mood for a dark read to flee. It claims that truth is painful, and that pain can establish truth. Readers should be suspicious: is something painful inherently more valuable and truthful? What about love and joy? This epigram is an act of deceit, establishing one of Baru’s character flaws.

A note on structure. Before I set a single word down in Baru Cormorant, I blocked out three acts, each of ten chapters, each of about four 1000 word scenes (subject to change). This let me know when I had to key up tension, and when to key down. I think a lot about arcs and the cycle of tension, and I hope that makes the book compelling. In each structural unit I try to map out an arc. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: truth, pain, lying, author commentary

Baru was still too young to smell the empire wind.
  p.15

A double-meaning here. Baru can't smell the Trade Wind, which circles the Ashen Sea (and enables Falcrest's naval domination, hence the name 'empire wind'). But she has also previously been unaware of the arrival of Falcrest's actions on Taranoke; their first appearance in the narrative is not their first time exerting influence on Taranoki culture.

As noted later, Baru is seven in this scene.

Tags: trade wind, colonization, unreliable narration

The Masquerade sent its favorite soldiers to conquer Taranoke…
  p.15

The first page of the book focuses on Baru, the Masquerade, then Baru again. We are with her, counting the ships. But we are also arriving with the Masquerade, seeing her do things that will make her valuable to us. We are colonizing Baru, shaping her into a character who tells us a story, and she manipulates us by focusing on things we’ll find interesting. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: colonization, unreliable narration, author commentary

...watching firebearer frigates heel in the aurora light…
  p.15

I’m torn about this flash-forward. I wanted to tell readers, hey, don’t worry, this book will have action! But it’s cowardly to jump forward and then back, just for excitement. And the sentence might be overloaded. Firebearer or aurora, perhaps not both? (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: navy, ships, author commentary

...the kelp for ash, the ash meant for glass...
  p.15

The Ashen Sea is actually named for the useful ash you can get from burning its plentiful kelp. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, Ashen Sea, author commentary

...Halae’s Reef...
  p.15

Taranoke is meant to be its own creation, not an analog for any Earthly place. But I can see why people start with Hawaii as a basis, with names like this. Another major landmark near Taranoke is the Navel, a creepy blue hole. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, author commentary

'Look, Das,' Baru said.
  p.15

Das, here, being a translation of a Urunoki plural for 'father'. Baru is addressing both Solit and Salm.

Given the cultural acceptance of polyamory and communal child-rearing, these would be a natural part of Urunoki, unlike the awkward-sounding 'fathers' or 'Dads' in English. 'Das' is a good translation.

Tags: language

...callused hand pressed against his husband’s bare strength...
  p.15

It was a struggle to characterize these two in very little space. I wrestled with this sentence because I didn’t want to code Solit as effeminate and Salm as masculine. I think it turned out okay. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: gender, author commentary

...loved her mother and her father dearly, but she loved to know things just a small measure more, and she had recently discovered cunning.
  p.16

Even at age seven, Baru’s unable to disentangle her emotional life from her desire for knowledge, which becomes her desire for power. Poor Baru! Note also that Baru is already an active agent, manipulating the plot. One of the design tenets of Baru’s character is that she is highly agentic. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: knowledge, power, author commentary

She opened her mother's hand-copied dictionary...
  p.16

Taranoke has written language, and a good understanding of glassworking and optics (given their production of telescopes); but they have not, it appears, developed a printing press.

Tags: Taranoke, language

See also: p.16 (a copy number)

...the Urunoki alphabet...
  p.16

A descendant of Maia Urun, just as the people of Taranoke are descendants of the Tu Maia. They settled Taranoke while trying to find Oriati Mbo, ahead of the first wave of militant Maia expansionism. Were there prior inhabitants on Taranoke, cruelly displaced? I don’t know! (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, language, Tu Maia, author commentary

...her mother’s dictionary...
  p.16

One of the few pieces of characterization Pinion gets. Although she’s a huntress, she also loves books and knowledge. I have a bunch of scenes with her interacting with Solit, but they didn’t make this book. Family configurations on Taranoke are flexible, but in this case all three of the spouses are in love. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: language, Pinion, author commentary

...A Primer in Aphalone...
  p.16

The Falcrest trade language. It’s rendered in the text as a fairly Anglic language, because I want to make it the most familiar-seeming to the reader, so as to seduce and implicate the reader in Falcrest’s perspective. Mwa ha ha! (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: language, author commentary

There was a copy number in the bottom corner, almost higher than she could count.
  p.16

The Falcresti have discovered the printing press, and are using it to spread their cultural influence.

A precocious seven year old can count past 100. If the copy number is almost higher than Baru can count, then there are probably hundreds of these primers on Taranoke already.

Tags: language, colonization

See also: p.16 (hand-copied dictionary)

Where the sea curled up in the basalt arms of the Iriad cove...
  p.17

Sometimes I get nervous that my prose is slipping and I try to write a Cat Valente sentence. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Catherynne M. Valente is an award-winning American short fiction writer and novelist.

Tags: influences, author commentary

...beneath the fields of sugarcane and macadamia and coffee that grew from the volcanic loam...
  p.17

Andisols (soils formed from volcanic ash) are incredibly fertile, and have high concentrations of minerals and other useful materials such as glass. This supports Taranoke's extensive agriculture. It also provides the raw materials used in the lenses of their telescopes.

Tags: Taranoke, geology, agriculture

...not just Taranoki fishers and felucca, not just familiar Oriati traders from the south, but tall white-sailed Masquerade merchant ships.
  p.17

Building that association between the Masquerade and cleanliness, purity, astringence. The black = evil connection is cliched and tired. Let’s do evil white. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

In our world: white sails were also economical; canvas would be bleached white by sunlight and salt. Dyed sails cost money, weighed more, and could be less resistant to the weather. Even tanning the sails (which would improve durability, and lend a reddish-brown color) would be costly for larger ships.

In our world: A felucca is a single- or double-sail boat of Northern African/Mediterranean origin.

Tags: ships, author commentary

...bobbing floats of koa and walnut...
  p.17

In our world: more mixing of cultural influences. Koa is a flowering tree endemic to Hawai'i. Walnut is a genus of trees originating from central Asia, which were then spread throughout Europe and North America.

Tags: Taranoke, ships, ecology

...drummers sounded in the warmth and the light...
  p.17

I worry this reads as too generically tribal, but I really like drums. Taranoke’s fairly small, flat social units are prone to gossip and bickering, but really good at building inviting social environments. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, music, sociology, author commentary

She tried determinedly to count them and keep all the varieties straight.
  p.17

Baru’s gifts actually aren’t in raw mathematical operations, although she’s quite good at them. But she does have an excellent working memory span — the ability to hold information online, in the brain’s workspace, and manipulate it without losing it. Most people are limited to 5-7 items. If you can ‘chunk’ the items, the way we do with phone numbers, you can hold more. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, mathematics, author commentary

...the shapes that Baru imagined when she read about panthers.
  p.17

As a trade hub, Taranoke learns a lot about the world, although some of it is very fanciful. The Oriati love tall tales. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, Oriati, author commentary

Baru, pay attention!
  p.17

Baru is good at learning, but not quite as good at being taught. She works best with an intrinsic motivation. Later we see her treating history and geography as dull... but once they’re keys to her forward progress, she picks them up rapidly. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, author commentary

...hard coin and reef pearl...
  p.18

Gotta get that hard currency theme rolling. The Taranoki use a lot of different currencies for trade, but they prefer those with intrinsic value on any market... until now. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, economics, author commentary

...the different fold of eyelids and flat of his nose gave him away... stubborn jaws, flat noses, deep folded eyes, their skin a paler shade of brown or copper or oat.
  p.18

The ‘unmarked state’ is the person we assume we’re reading about when we don’t get any physical descriptions. For most Americans, it’s a white American male. But Baru’s unmarked state is a Taranoki person of indistinct gender. So all the appearance tags used to distinguish populations in Baru’s world have to be relative to Taranoke... which can be quite a trick when we want to describe what a Taranoki looks like!.

A key goal here was to establish, first, that neither the Falcresti or the Taranoki look like any racial group on Earth. They aren’t fantasy French or fantasy Maori or fantasy, well, anything. Why do I care so much about this? Because racial groups on earth are — yes, for real — social constructs. There are no clear genetic dividing lines. There’s no reason they should appear on another world.

Similarly, the ‘Falcresti’ racial group is a political construct. They’re actually quite a diverse bunch. Cairdine Farrier here is ‘classically Falcresti’, in that he resembles a person born in the middle latitudes of their turf. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

While most readers will picture Farrier as classically Western European, he is described as having epicanthic folds.

Tags: Taranoke, Farrier, ethnicity, author commentary

'Why are they bald?'
  p.18

Baru’s first interaction with Cairdine Farrier is her refusal to reply to his question. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, Farrier, author commentary

...they had made their fisherman friend blush.
  p.18

They’re hitting on him. Sexual agency is a pretty important subtextual theme. So is the construction of gender roles — the fisherman is used to a culture where sex is a matter of mutual chemistry, not propositions. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Falcresti sailors are accustomed to propositioning men when ashore (as opposed to the inverted gender customs in our world).

Tags: Taranoke, navy, relationships, gender, author commentary

See also: p.19 (a paternal frown)

He had heavy brows, like fortresses to guard his eyes.
  p.18

Farrier in particular is marked by a lot of eye imagery. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Farrier, eyes, author commentary

'What was I thinking, trying to sell broadcloth here? I’ll go home a pauper.'

'Oh, no,' Baru assured him.
  p.18

Farrier is able to engage Baru by giving her an opportunity to display knowledge, implicitly granting her power. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, Farrier, knowledge, power, author commentary

...sheepskin palimpsest...
  p.19

‘Palimpsest’ by Stross and Palimpsest by Valente are both very good. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: influences, author commentary

Baru caught the fly and crushed it.
  p.19

Setting up Baru’s physical dexterity, an enormous red herring which I build up a lot so that readers will expect her to win a swordfight or shoot someone. If Baru’s success ever depends on such crude physical violence, she’s truly at wit’s end. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, violence, author commentary

Then she asked about something she already knew, because it was useful to hide her wit...
  p.19

Baru loses this ability as she ages, a symptom of her rising inner rage and pride. She tries it again when she gets to Aurdwynn and fails to follow through. Baru has a very hard time concealing her own talent. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, knowledge, deceit, author commentary

The man watched the guards with a paternal frown, as if afraid they might need supervision.
  p.19

Farrier is bothered by the sexual agency demonstrated by his guards. (And, if these are the same guards as in their next appearance, then one of the guards is Farrier's ward, Tain Shir; another reason he may feel 'paternal'.)

Tags: Farrier, Tain Shir, gender

See also: p.18 (their fisherman friend)

'Conquest is a bloody business, and causes plagues besides.'
  p.19

Farrier is telling on himself here; whether he knows it at this point or not (although he most likely does), the plan for the assimilation of Taranoke will involve the intentional introduction of plague. Biological warfare through the introduction of disease is a recurrent theme throughout the books.

Tags: Farrier, colonization, disease

'We’re here as friends.'
  p.19

The bastard believes it. Farrier has been engaged in a war of ideas against another Falcresti luminate for decades now, each pushing a different philosophy of how best to help the world. Both are grotesque. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Farrier, Hesychast, philosophy, cryptarchs, author commentary

'Because if I understand my figures, that means you are taking all the things we use to trade with others, and giving us paper that is only good with you.'
  p.19

This is a more complicated scheme than Baru probably realizes, since it only works if the Taranoki want the paper money. How did the Masquerade get the engine turning? How did they convince Baru’s people that paper money was worth having, if the Masquerade ships prefer to buy with paper but sell for gold and gem? They must have got the hook in somehow, but Baru was too young to catch it. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, Taranoke, economics, author commentary

At that his mouth pursed, as if the idea of fathers troubled him.
  p.19

Even for the institutionally homophobic Falcresti, Farrier is a homophobe (and his homophobia is influential in driving that institutional homophobia). It’s a shame he’s in charge here. Falcrest’s ideological homophobia derives from their beliefs about heritable behavior: in their ugly competitive worldview they see queerness as a condition that can enter the germ line, hurting the fitness of entire populations. The queer rights movement within Falcrest has made some headway by arguing that homosexuality should be permitted as long as the people involved have no children. This is still a pretty shitty position to be in, especially if you’re bi, and Baru wouldn’t want to settle for it. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Farrier, Falcrest, queerness, discrimination, heredity, author commentary

'...because a cormorant was the only thing that made me stop crying.'
  p.19

Again, one of Baru’s character flaws. She has trouble drawing strength from human connections. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, author commentary

'You’re going to have a brilliant future. Come see me again. Ask for Cairdine Farrier.'
  p.20

Nasty bastard. Farrier’s motives are noble, from his own perspective: he believes that genius can come from anywhere, and that the Empire has a responsibility to identify bright children and hit them with the very best education and indoctrination. Farrier’s own credibility depends on his ability to find good students. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Farrier, author commentary

...as if he had swallowed his own snot.
  p.20

Gross, and an authorial vote for Farrier’s hypocrisy, since the hygiene-obsessed Falcresti would be disgusted at the image. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Farrier, author commentary

...a sleek red-sailed frigate...
  p.20

I really love boats. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: ships, author commentary

...climb the volcano and watch their proceedings...
  p.20

Baru probably doesn’t make it too far up the slope. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, Baru, author commentary

But father Salm did not buckle on his shield... father Solit fed her no pineapple and asked for no details.
  p.20

These faintly singsong passages are expressions of Baru’s youth and her connection to Taranoke. They grow rarer as she moves farther away and gets older. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Salm, Solit, Baru, Taranoke, author commentary

'Once they have built it,' Salm would say, 'they will never leave.'
  p.20

Most likely, Solit and Salm are discussing the construction of the school. The two of them correctly recognize the cultural influence over Taranoke it will grant the Masquerade.

Tags: Salm, Solit, education

'When can you start smithing again?'
  p.20

Economic turmoil on Taranoke began before Baru was even aware of it. Some of it was caused by Masquerade intervention in trade routes and the fallout from the Armada War. Although her parents are a huntress, a blacksmith, and a shield-bearer, none of them are working those jobs right now. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, economics, author commentary

'Go to Lea Pearldiver’s home and get some pumice.'
  p.20

Surnames on Taranoke are indicated by profession, rather than family lines.

Pumice is a porous volcanic rock. In our world: pumice has been used for cleaning and personal care as early as Ancient Egypt.

Tags: Taranoke, language, geology

Clearly there had been some mistake: her parents had been happier last year than this.
  p.20

Baru loves her parents! But looks at that relationship as her ability to control her parents’ happiness. Oh, Baru. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Baru, relationships, author commentary

Baru had always been taught not to speak to plainsmen...
  p.20

Again, it was vital to me that Taranoke have its own internal politics. It wasn’t a perfect place before the Falcresti arrived. But they do know how to get their chisels into any gap. There’s probably another Masquerade mission on the plains, stirring up trouble. (source: The Traitor Baru Cormorant read-along: Chapter 1)

Tags: Taranoke, author commentary