Skip content
Give audiobooks, support Alphabet Soup Bookstore! Start gifting
Bookseller pick
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of Alphabet Soup Bookstore.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting Alphabet Soup Bookstore with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

$28.34

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Christine Marshall

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 14 hours
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

In Seth Dickinson's highly-anticipated debut The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a young woman from a conquered people tries to transform an empire in this richly imagined geopolitical fantasy.

Baru Cormorant believes any price is worth paying to liberate her people-even her soul.

When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home, overwrites her culture, criminalizes her customs, and murders one of her fathers, Baru vows to swallow her hate, join the Empire's civil service, and claw her way high enough to set her people free.

Sent as an Imperial agent to distant Aurdwynn, another conquered country, Baru discovers it's on the brink of rebellion. Drawn by the intriguing duchess Tain Hu into a circle of seditious dukes, Baru may be able to use her position to help. As she pursues a precarious balance between the rebels and a shadowy cabal within the Empire, she orchestrates a do-or-die gambit with freedom as the prize.

But the cost of winning the long game of saving her people may be far greater than Baru imagines.

SETH DICKINSON is the author of the Baru Cormorant novels and many short stories, as well as much of the lore and backstory of Bungie Studios’ Destiny. Seth lives in New York City.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of Alphabet Soup Bookstore.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting Alphabet Soup Bookstore with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

“Smart. Brutal. Gut-wrenching. You'll be captivated from the very first page. Dickinson is a sly, masterful writer who pulls no punches. Get ready to have your heart ripped out through your throat. Highly recommended.” —Kameron Hurley, author of The Mirror Empire

“Not many books have me literally flailing with delight. The Traitor Baru Cormorant did. Fascinating characters, a world imagined with wonderful depth, and storytelling that succeeds on both an epic and a powerfully intimate scale. This is really something special.” —Sunny Moraine, co-author of Line and Orbit

“A beautiful, perfectly formed crystal of a novel borne out of a tight plot mated with elegant language.” —John Chu, Hugo Award-winning author of ‘The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere"

“Seth Dickinson skillfully combines intrigue, action, and philosophical musings to create a suspenseful and deeply satisfying read. An intelligent and accomplished first novel reminiscent of Le Guin in its reflections on imperialism, colonialism, and the attractions and corruptions of power.” —Una McCormack, New York Times bestselling author of The Crimson Shadow

“Dickinson has written a poet's Dune, a brutal tale of empire, rebellion, fealty, and high finance that moves like a rocket and burns twice as hot. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a mic drop for epic fantasy.” —Max Gladstone, author of the Craft Sequence

“An extraordinary debut--powerful, complex, and passionate. I was blown away by it.” —Kij Johnson, Hugo Award-winning author of "The Man Who Bridged the Mist"

“Amazing and inventive.” —Tobias Buckell, New York Times bestselling author of the Xenowealth series

“A provocative work, the sort that makes readers wonder: just what is the author doing here?” —Locus on the short fiction of Seth Dickinson

Expand reviews

Want the printed book?

Get the print edition from Alphabet Soup Bookstore.

Get the print edition

Powered by Bookstore Link

Give audiobooks, support Alphabet Soup Bookstore! Start gifting

Alphabet Soup Bookstore is proud to partner with Libro.fm to give you a great audiobook experience.