Today I finished the latest book in the Baru Cormorant series (fourth book remains to-be-released), The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. Y'all, Baru is so back.

! Spoilers for books 1 & 2 below !

 

If you've looked at other reviews for the series, you may have seen book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, referred to as the series' "sophomore slump." I disagree, but I understand where the feeling comes from. The Monster feels like a prelude, a setting of the board, for The Tyrant. The Monster puts all the pieces in place for the cascade of schemes and plays that come in The Tyrant. They almost feel like one book split into two (which is fair—taken together, they represent about a thousand pages and would make for one mammoth novel).

 

If you felt like Baru was too passive in The Monster and that there wasn't enough scheming going on, I can happily report those things are wholly rectified in The Tyrant. Having located the infamous and quasi-mythological Cancrioth at the end of The Monster, Baru wastes no time in whipping into full savant plotting mode.

 

The book starts off strong, with a clever framing: Baru is recollecting her encounter with the Cancrioth and what came after to a troublingly gentle Farrier, who is probing her for certain specifics.  (And by the way, Dickinson takes the cake for the most creative use of cancer I've ever seen in a fantasy novel.) This, combined with the occasional flashback continuing the story of Prince Hill, make for a beautifully chronologically 3D  look at our story, as past, present, and future all orbit around each other until they finally connect fully. 

 

Here we really see Baru and Yawa's rivalry take off, and it's delightful to watch these two go at it: the young upstart savant and the time-tested, battle-scarred old schemer. Even when they're aiming for the same goal they can't help but be at odds! And Dickinson never lets either of them slouch to give the other an easy win: he continues to excel at making sure the players around Baru are working actively towards their own goals, presenting reasonable challenges even to Baru's quick mind.

 

Tau-indi continues to be a standout character for me, and I'm not convinced their take on the world won't win out in the end. As they continue to press the importance of personal connection, and Baru questions who she's helping (or hurting) with her plans, and what the real victory will be, everyone around can't seem to stop themselves from wondering if Tau has a valid point about trim. This is perhaps nowhere truer than in the final reveals that bring the full story of Farrier, Cosgrad, and the Prince Hill trio into the present timeline. These interpersonal relationships formed when all these people were much younger are still echoing around Falcrest, the Mbo, and the Ashen Sea as a whole. 

 

The Tyrant perhaps more directly than the other two novels asks Baru what she is willing to sacrifice to destroy Falcrest. Already she has given up Tain Hu, her first love, to wield power as an unbound cryptarch. But in The Tyrant, Baru is confronted head-on with the civilian cost of taking Falcest out at the knees. Not of members of Falcrest's ruling class, but the everyday people both of Falcrest and of the other parts of the empire—of Aurdwynn, of Taranoki, of the Occupation. The Tyrant makes Baru confront whether she considers those lives a necessary loss to ensure Falcrest's downfall. In this way, the story never loses sight of the stakes, which Baru is constantly weighing—on one hand, the suffering and death caused by Falcrest itself, and on the other, the suffering and death which may result from knocking Falcrest out of play entirely. Dickinson balances them well. 

 

Baru underwent a lot of change in The Traitor, but remained largely static throughout The Monster. Her character is much more dynamic in The Tyrant, and she undergoes a lot of character growth both within and in how she relates to others, and even in how she processes the memory of Hu. She's forced to confront parts of her past that drive her reckoning towards the above question about sacrifice, and I got the feeling by the end that Baru had finally truly positioned herself, clear and steeled, for the fight with the empire. 

 

Also, we finally get a masquerade party—and really, how could we have a series called "The Masquerade" without having at least one masque? It goes just as well as you might imagine.

 

Based on the author's note, I'm not expecting to see book four anytime soon, but I will eagerly await it nonetheless—I absolutely must see this conclusion.

Crossposted to books , booknook and fffriday 

This weekend I finished my first playthrough of Disco Elysium, a primarily text-based game which involves investigating a murder in a fictional world.

 

It's difficult to know what to say about Disco Elysium. The game has, as you may or may not have heard, a phenomenal amount of text in it, and you will only encounter a portion of it on any given playthrough. Having been through it only once, I've seen only a fraction of the game's full text. And it has a lot to say.

 

There's no political scheme that makes it out unscathed in Disco Elysium, from the equivocating and ineffective centrists to the racist fascists to the nostalgia-brained royalists to the flailing and failed communists to the selfish capitalists. Revachol, the country in which the game takes place, is a former monarchy-turned-violent-communist-revolution where other, wealthier nations eventually decided to intervene and now Revachol is ruled by a coalition government of outsiders. Given this situation (the revolution was roughly fifty years prior to the events in-game), everyone has an opinion on politics here. 

 

And the writing is remarkable! Incredibly descriptive, willing to make dark jokes which fit the characters at play while also creating moments of beautiful poignancy and pretty brutal commentary on the state of Revachol and what's been done to it and its people. There are truly lovely moments in Disco Elysium, but this is by no means a light-hearted or cozy game. Revachol, and the neighborhood in which the PC works in particular, is a pit. It's been made that way by the events of the last century, but a pit it is, and one that is teetering on the outbreak of further violence.

 

Furthermore, the PC, whose name I will not share for story reasons, is an absolute wreck of a man. Whatever you are picturing, it's worse. At least a dozen times I looked over my dialogue options and cringed at having to choose one of those. This guy undoubtedly should have been kicked off the force years ago, and muses at one point about whether or not he was sent on this case as a way to clown a rival police department (because he's such a loser). But the writers certainly have created a memorable character, and the PC certainly stands apart from stereotypes of competent lone wolf detectives. This guy wakes up in the opening scene of the game and can't remember his name or what the case is he's supposed to be investigating. 

 

I really enjoyed getting the glimpses into the lives of the NPCs, which felt rich and varied, and you could really believe they had their own stuff going on when the PC wasn't around. Disco Elysium presents a colorful and believable cast of characters hanging around this struggling neighborhood in a struggling country trying to overcome both its past and its present. And it's hard to advance anywhere in the main story if you aren't helping some of these folks out; it's the connections with the people around him that help the PC succeed for the most part, and offering a helping hand to people who've long grown accustomed to being kicked while they're down is the only real way to start breaking down the mistrust and tension in the city.

 

Complimenting this triumph of writing is the artwork! Absolutely gorgeous; vivid, detailed, and full of so much character, both in the designs of the characters themselves as well as the captivating scenery. I was in love with the look of this game from the start and I'm still in awe.

 

Similarly, the voice acting here was great. Since the game is largely text-based, it really relies on the art and the actors to bring it to life, and they do not shirk. Each character voice is unique and appropriate to the given character; I can't think of any who stood out to me as weak links. A superb job by the whole cast.

 

My only complaint is that I was not in love with the gameplay. Advancing the plot, either in main quests or side quests, often relies on passing skill checks. Many can be re-tried ad nauseum, but will become locked once you've failed it, and can only be unlocked by investing XP in the necessary skill. The area you can explore is relatively limited, which means it's unfortunately easy to end up in the position of not being able to advance the plot because the checks are locked, and not being able to unlock the checks because you're out of ways to gain XP. It made parts of the game a very dull slog for me and I had to convince myself to keep going, at some points brute forcing my way through plot-necessary skill checks just to get things moving again.

The "thought cabinet" mechanic is also lacking. While it's an interesting concept and a great idea for story/gameplay integration (various events in-game can trigger thoughts which you can internalize for various benefits or drawbacks), it just doesn't work very well. It takes hours of in-game time to internalize a thought into the network--and time only passes when you're in conversation, so you can spent thirty minutes running around Revachol and not have passed a minute of in-game time--and you can't see before engaging with it what the benefits or drawbacks of a thought might be. So you may spend an XP and hours to internalize a thought only to realize it's useless, or worse, detrimental to your play style. Then you have to spend another XP to remove that thought. It's unnecessarily clunky. 

 

However, having played it once and being more aware of the constraints of the gameplay, I probably will play it again, and hopefully avoid that issue, because the writing and characters in the game really do make it worth additional playthroughs I think. On the whole it's a very well-done game and deserves the attention its received. 

Crossposted to gaming