Synopsis
In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.
To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.
Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire’s greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.
Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.
Review
The Tainted Cup was one of my favourite new fantasy books of last year and I was very excited to dive into the sequel. This inventive fantasy mystery series is set in a world where giant monstrous leviathans are a constant threat, following a pair of detectives in service to a vast empire who use their unique skills to solve murders. In the empire, many people have magical augmentations that give them abilities that are usually uniquely suited to their role in the empire’s bureaucracy. This includes our narrator, Din, whose perfect memory makes him an adept detective, especially when partnered with his ingenious and eccentric partner Ana.
In this second instalment, Din and Ana are dispatched to investigate another gruesome and mysterious death at the empire’s fringes, in which a man seems to have been kidnapped from a locked room and subsequently brutalised. Yet this doesn’t feel like a rehash of the first book, because this time we get a glimpse into the world outside of the empire as our protagonists are sent to Yarrowdale, a distant canton which hosts the Shroud, a kind of bizarre organic fortress where workers dissect dead leviathans to harvest their magical properties on behalf of the empire. The inventive worldbuilding keeps a sense of freshness to a story that could easily become formulaic.
Of course, it’s the characters who steal the show, and they’re very much out of their comfort zone in this new setting. Din struggles between his own ambitions and his duties to the empire, while Ana is her usual utterly chaotic self and their banter-filled interactions are endlessly entertaining. As before, the protagonists are surrounded by an array of colourful characters, and I particularly loved Malo. Din’s narrative voice is perfect to tell this story, with both humour and vulnerability contrasting his often wild and unpredictable mentor. It gives me Sherlock and Watson vibes, but still feels fresh and new.
As with the first book, the story starts with a strange death and swiftly gets more complex with stakes that climb higher as Din and Ana are drawn deeper into the mystery. Bennett deploys pacing expertly to keep tension high and the mystery is so well-crafted that I had trouble guessing what would come next and was left staring open-mouthed at the page when it all came together seamlessly.
I’m always happy when a sequel lives up to its predecessor and that was certainly the case here. A Drop of Corruption maintains the quality of the first book in the series while building on the world and the characters and delivering a hugely entertaining story. If Bennett wasn’t already on my auto-buy authors list, I’d have to add him to the list for this series alone. Masterful stuff!
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