The Tap of Doom
A review of A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
My teaching schedule this term is really heavy, which is entirely my own stupid fault, but makes it really hard to find the mental energy to read at night (as opposed to playing mindless games in bed until I drop my phone on my head). I made an exception, though, for the new book by Robert Jackson Bennett, who has become one of my favorite genre authors working today (he’s also a good follow on Bluesky).
A Drop of Corruption is the second in a series of episodic fantasies— either “Shadow of the Leviathan” or “an Ana and Din mystery” depending on your preference— set in the massive Khanum Empire, which is plagued by seasonal incursions of “Leviathans,” gigantic sea beasts that crash ashore wreaking havoc and destruction, whose blood has powerful mutagenic qualities that warp and distort living matter. Only, “plagued” might not be quite the right word, as they’re also something of a blessing— the scientists of the Empire have figured out how to use tissues extracted from the Leviathans to modify humans and other living things— magical fertilizers, healing grafts that cure diseases, and concoctions of drugs that can enhance human capabilities temporarily or permanently.
The “Ana and Din” of one of the series (sub)titles are examples of this. Dinios Kol is an Engraver, whose memory has been permanently enhanced to allow him to perfectly recall and document events that he witnesses. He is the chief assistant assigned to Ana Dolabra, whose own modifications make her supernaturally gifted at figuring out patterns and… rather eccentric. She goes around blindfolded in public, is brusque well beyond the point of rudeness, and is prone to odd enthusiasms for music or games or exotic foods. Both are employed by the Iudex, the judicial arm of the Empire, and roam the provinces solving crimes, with Din serving as Ana’s eyes, ears, bodyguard, and sundry other roles.
This is a well-worn formula in the mystery genre— Holmes and Watson, Wolfe and Goodwin, etc.— and Bennett is not the first to import it to a fantasy setting. It’s a particularly spectacular fantasy setting, though, one that is shockingly alien in many details while also being populated with vivid and believably human characters.
In this book, Ana and Din have been dispatched to Yarrowdale, which is technically not part of the Empire… yet. It’s a quasi-independent kingdom one of whose rulers agreed some time back to merge with the Empire; the details of that merger are still being hashed out in delicate diplomatic negotiations between the King and various imperial officers. It is also the somewhat reluctant host to the Shroud, a massive and closely guarded structure in which the most elite Apothetikals process the carcasses of slain Leviathans to extract the compounds and reagents that power the Empire.
Against this backdrop is set a locked-room mystery: an officer of the Treasury was set to Yarrowdale to assist with the ongoing negotiations, then disappeared from his lodgings the night he arrived. Some time later, his body— or, rather, a piece of his body— was found in the swamps that border the kingdom, and Ana and Din are sent to work out what happened. Which, as you can probably guess if you have even a passing familiarity with any of the overlapping genres in the Venn diagram holding this book, leads them to uncover a larger and darker conspiracy with profound consequences for Yarrowdale, the Shroud, and the Empire as a whole.
This is, fundamentally, a mystery novel, so I won’t talk more about the plot save to note that while it’s not a complete surprise where it ends up, all the individual steps and story beats along the way are handled very well. The continual unfolding of the setting is the real treat, here, though, as it dives deeper into the world of the Empire and the basis of its sciences. Bennett really excels at creating settings that are utterly weird but also follow a kind of rigorously worked-out logic from their bizarre beginnings. To my mind, this is maybe the highest pleasure that speculative fiction offers, thus, staying up late to finish the book despite my general state of exhaustion.
If there’s a weakness in this it’s that the nature of the plot and setting can hardly avoid having bits that are obviously in conversation with current events and issues in real-world politics, and some of those are a bit… on the nose. I am unusually sensitive to overly-blunt satire, though, and this didn’t really trigger my negative reactions, though it came pretty close to the line. I suspect most other people who are likely to read and enjoy this sort of thing would not be bothered by that aspect at all (though other bits might be more upsetting— it’s not really a book for the squeamish).
This is part of a series, but it’s the loose and episodic sort you get more in the mystery genre, rather than the tight “1/Nth of a complete book” type more common in fantasy. So you could probably safely read this without first having read The Tainted Cup. But since that is also an excellent read in many of the same ways, why would you do that? If anything about the above description appeals to you, get them both, you won’t be sorry.
There’s a quickie book review, written while proctoring an exam. If you like that, well, as noted at the top, I don’t read as much as I would like these days, but here’s a button you can click to get more when I do:
And if you want to talk more about this book or any others, the comments will be open (but beware of spoilers):