i'm reading the baru cormorants

Over the past week or so I took some time off of work and mostly laid on the beach and read. One of the things I read on the beach was The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, and I'm currently halfway through the sequel, The Monster Baru Cormorant. I am bad at reading novels in general so the fact that I'm plowing through this one is a sign of how much I'm enjoying it. And a testament to my continued drive to Read More, I suppose. I'm not finished with the series yet so obviously I will keep any broader thoughts until I finish Monster and then Tyrant (the final book in the trilogy), but I'll say it is just impeccably written and worldbuilt. The author, Seth Dickinson, is a bit of a video games guy (he wrote a fair bit of Destiny 2 as well as, I guess, the main plotline of Subnautica 2, which is wild) and has gotten some high praise from my friends who played those games, but I have only thus far read his Baru stuff. The series is set in a fantasy world in a time period that roughly translates to…