A Drop of Corruption follows The Tainted Cup. Din is an experienced apprenticed assistant to Ana Dolabra, an investigator with highly eccentric habits. Din has been magicked to have a perfect recall, which he uses to serve his investigator’s eyes and ears out in the world. Now Ana and Din face their toughest case yet and the highest of stakes. How can they catch up to a murderer who gets into spaces no one can and disappears without a trace?

Like TTC, we get a fully story arc with more worldbuilding that sets the stage for future volumes. RJB cheekily described The Tainted Cup as A Game of Thrones and Knives Out, which is pretty accurate. And like TTC, A Drop of Corruption is a murder mystery combined with a political fantasy and a fair amount of bio horror. There are obviously some Holmes-Watson vibes as well along with Attack on Titan.

I really enjoyed the first volume, and I really enjoyed this one too. I think fantasy mysteries are particularly hard to do well because a good mystery leaves room for the audience to make informed guesses, but the audience often doesn’t understand the rules of the fantasy world. It means that the denouement can feel unsatisfying. That’s not the case here– RJB strikes this delicate balance perfectly. No spoilers, but we also start to see some very interesting cracks in the Empire, and I’m excited about where the next volume will go.

Robert Jackson Bennett is one of the finest fantasy writers working today. His prose is exquisite and he crafts wonderful worlds with fabulous people and stories to populate them. This story is a perfect reflection of his abilities. Ana and Din are interesting characters, working for the Iudex as investigators of strange and unusual crimes. RBJ’s use of language in describing the place and times of the setting place the reader, almost, physically into the story.

I have enjoyed these first two stories of this Khanum Empire where the beasts are enormous, the plots are filled with political intrigue, and the characters are uniquely designed to survive these difficult climes. I highly recommend the Ana and Din Mysteries (Shadow of the Leviathan #2), especially if you enjoy your fantasy stories with some excellent mystery elements!

4.5 stars out of five

Quite a different read from the first book, but very good nonetheless. I personally enjoyed this one a bit more than The Tainted Cup. It felt less foreseeable for the most part, and the main characters were very nicely fleshed out. The main villain felt a bit cliché and more like a brain than a person, but that might have been by design. Evil is not necessarily charisma incarnate.

I especially liked what the author did with Ana, and I cannot wait to see where this is going. Ultimately, the mysteries surrounding the leviathans are still shrouded in the unknown, but I expect answers in the next book.

(Mild spoiler below /!\ )

I would not be surprised to see our antagonist still alive in the sequel. We shall see—killing a character behind the curtain usually doesn't mean death, but I might be proven wrong.

I advise those who liked The Tainted Cup to give this one a read—they're in for a ride !

This second installment in the Shadow of the Leviathan series is just as entertaining as the first. And while this is definitely a continuation of the story, one could definitely read this as a standalone novel and be highly satisfied.

Robert Jackson Bennett is a master world builder and storyteller. And, we know Bennett has created remarkable characters in Ana Dolabra and Dinios Kol, but in this book we get introduced to another interesting character, Tira Malo.
These three take the hunting of the murderer to new levels in the medieval-esque society of Yarrowdale.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Del Rey, Inklore, and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

The criminally underrated Robert Jackson Bennett is back. I can really do nothing but gush for any of his book's. Probably why Netgalley keeps sending them to me(I know I don't have to mention Netgalley but I really, really want to).
Why should you read this book? Well, the world building is amazing and as good as the world building is the character development is even better. Ana and Din seem a like the familiar Holmes and Watson idea but like anything like Rjb's other novels it goes much darker and much weirder.
I'd like to describe this book but to be fair I couldn't do it justice, it's something you have to read to get it.
I have no criticism for this book other than I read it too fast and lost a fair amount of sleep because of it.

I could join Din and Ana on their adventures time and time again. The bizarreness of their partnership, their individual journeys and the world that they are trying to leave better than they found it is captivating. The eclectic genre-blend of fantasy, sci-fi and murder mystery continues, with our ever-witty and bickering investigative team always 3 steps behind our walk-through-walls perp.

The sequel doesn’t disappoint with more world-building, politics and gruesomely described deaths - which just adds to the dark tone of this world.
This book is very plot-driven, and while we have some character development, there is probably more in book 1 than in book 2. In saying that, we learn a little more about Ana and her ‘nature’, and we see Ana and Din grow more comfortable with each other.

This is parts murder mystery, political conspiracy, sci-fi, and fantasy. There are always parts you will guess along the way, but the final tie together will keep you guessing until the end.

I can't wait to read anything else this world has to offer!

thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the e-arc!!

i don't know how to review this because it feels like epic fantasy in a cozy background kind of way wrapped up in a big political mystery. much like the first book. i read that one on a very bad day, but this one after a good rest, and clearly there is a difference.

i want to commend the author on the spectacular worldbuilding that doesn't cease to amaze me. this world just feels so real and rife with magic-not-magic (see: augments and kings that live for hundreds of years and leviathans) and the sheer volume of it feels so atmospheric in a way that reminds me of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. i usually loathe long descriptions and stuff but this one was a welcome surprise. though it might have benefitted from having a glossary.

the mystery itself was so big and i loved how it was posed as a challenge not even Ana can solve. the slightly deranged mentor-calm mentee dynamic between Ana and Din is always so nice to read, and is absolutely the highlight of the book for me despite the central mystery they're solving. though, goddamn i did not expect that plot twist at the end, and the whole investigation to get there gave me an unsettling feeling that wouldn't leave even after the epilogue. (spoilers!! it was the prince who was the king's murderer!! yet there is so much else going on that this really feels like an understatement)

" the dead cannot be restored. vice and bribery will never be totally banished from the cantons. and the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist. " well said, Ana. i applaud you.

with Ana's secret on what she really is finally revealed to Din and possibly the Empire coming to claim the Yarrows, and the introduction of Malo's character, i am so excited to see where this series goes!!

I had high expectations for A Drop of Corruption but I could have never hoped the mystery could exceed that of The Tainted Cup. This book was brilliant on so many levels and I completely loved it! If you're a fan of a duo reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, I'd highly recommend adding this series to your TBR.
A Drop of Corruption picks up some time after the events of The Tainted Cup. Ana and Din have now been working together through several smaller cases, but have recently been called to Yarrowdale, a port town located within a kingdom not quite within the empire. Here Ana and Din are investigating the disappearance of a member of the Imperial Treasury and what starts as an unusual case only becomes stranger and more complex as the investigation progresses. Not only are Ana and Din navigating the complex political situation in Yarrowdale, but it seems the disappearance (and murder) of the Treasury official may have something to do with the high security compound known as the Shroud that sits in the bay. The Shroud is where leviathans are processed for their various materials and it’s also where experimentation occurs by a secretive group of modified Imperials.
Though I would love to get into some of the specifics of the story, I truly hate to give away too many details because for me half the fun of a mystery is learning these new little components that can so drastically change the trajectory of the story. I think it’s safe to say we get to learn more about different governmental entities like the Apoths, who wander into the jungles as security and work with dangerous compounds, the Treasury folks who employ a great deal of people with Din’s abilities and also try to broker deals with foreign kings. The Shroud, when we finally get to learn about what it’s for, is a fascinating and terrifying place that we get to see first hand through Din’s investigations. Possibly one of the most exciting parts was learning more about Ana, even though that didn’t happen until the end of the book - a few hints were dropped throughout, but boy, the confirmation at the end was pretty sweet. I can’t wait to see where that particular aspect goes in future installments.
I am delighted to say that I loved A Drop of Corruption even more than The Tainted Cup, and I am stunned because as I’ve said before, the first book in a series is usually one of my favorites. There’s just something about the discovery and world building that delights me, and I think the continual unraveling of both the mysteries and our characters keeps me engaged. I can’t wait to check out the third installment, which will hopefully release in 2026.

Many thanks to DelRey, PRHAudio, and NetGalley for the preview. All opinions are my own.

This was another fantastic Din & Ana mystery. We have a completely new setting and a new impossible mystery to solve. I really can't emphasize enough how much I love our duo. Din is so earnest, but has learned so much from Ana. And she's just so brilliantly bonkers. But we do learn some more about her this this, and I'm still not sure my brain can comprehend it.

The mystery again takes so many twists and turns, and again the stakes are super high. This is a dangerous sci-fi world, so of course an extremely life-threatening danger must be neutralized along with finding the mastermind. I was on the edge of my seat, jaw on the floor, as Ana revealed all at the climax.

The author's note is required reading at the end too. I will continue to devour these stories as long as RJB writes them, and can't wait for the next! Highly recommended!

A locked-room mystery, a brilliant but eccentric investigator, and a world where magic fuels an empire—this book had me hooked from the first page.

What I Loved:

✔️ Intriguing Mystery – A Treasury officer vanishes from a locked room, and what starts as a disappearance turns into a murder investigation that only gets more complex. The layers of deception, political intrigue, and impossible clues made for an addictive read.
✔️ Ana Dolabra is Fantastic – She’s the classic genius detective—brilliant, unpredictable, and always ten steps ahead… or at least, she usually is. Watching her face a seemingly unstoppable opponent added real tension.
✔️ Din as the Watson-esque Assistant – His dry observations and loyalty to Ana made for a great dynamic. He’s both impressed by her intellect and exasperated by her eccentricities, which added some levity to the high-stakes plot.
✔️ Magic and Mystery Collide – The concept of dissecting fallen Titans for magic-infused power is fascinating. It adds an almost sci-fi element to the fantasy setting, and the threat to the Shroud raises the stakes beyond just solving a murder.

If you love locked-room mysteries, detectives with Sherlock-level intellect, and fantasy worlds packed with intrigue, this is absolutely worth reading. It’s a thrilling, cleverly plotted mystery with high stakes and a compelling duo at its heart.

Grateful to #NetGalley and Del Ray for the ARC!

The second installment of Ana and Din's world and a great followup to the Tainted Cup! Ana and Din are sent to the outer reaches of the Empire to solve the mystery of how a Treasury official was abducted from a locked room.

I am NOT a mystery/thriller reader because I often find the endings and "twists" are really convoluted and poorly laid out. That is not an issue here. It is incredibly impressive how the author manages to weave the fantasy world-building, character development, and mystery plot in one novel. This is quickly turning into one of my favorite series and I am already counting down for the third book!

⌞ 4.5/5 stars. ⌝

ana and din are back at it again! rjb you've mf done it. this world is so unbelievably interesting and full of history that I could never even dream of being this good at worldbuilding. and the personality!!! there was PERSONALITY!!! din, constantly sleep and sex deprived. ana, quite literally losing her marbles alongside her pupil. eating nasty foods, rambling, rambling, lots of rambling. the newest addition to the roster, malo, is a snarky and funny character with a strong backbone. I hope we get to see more of her in the next book.

this was a wonderfully complex murder mystery, so different from the last but it definitely had the same substance (ana figures everything out with her mega brain). the stakes were a thousand times higher, there was court intrigue, political divide, GREED, BETRAYAL I mean cmon. we have a criminal (who is seemingly just as smart, if not smarter than ana herself) on the loose, and who else but din would be better to send right into the middle of it?

you could market this as a horror/thriller and I would believe it. besides the usual body horror that is common in this series, there is genuine dread. fear of the unknown, because it is unknown for basically the entire book! there's a fear of failure—because although we've seen ana and din's exemplary detective work—when faced with a foe such as the one in this book, what if there's just not enough time for them to solve the mystery? that thought was constantly at the back of my head.

now I didn't give this 5/5 stars because as much as I enjoyed the unraveling of this mystery, I didn't enjoy the mounds of dialogue that felt like filler. recall that earlier, I mentioned ana's rambling. it felt very boring to read since it was essentially used as a history lesson, and from my experience reading fourth wing, this is not the best way to divulge info dumps. if you asked me to remember anything she told din, I couldn't. I read it but I didn't actually take anything in. I also think that the final reveal might not be as exciting to some as the last one was. in a way I think this was brilliant because I felt the exact same way that ana did. up until the very end, I was hopeful.

a drop of corruption is just as the name suggests—a complex murder mystery with a dark, sad story at its core. i'm so sad that I actually have to sit here and wait for the next book. it was easier last time, but now I really really need to know where this is heading next!

5/5 ⭐️
This series continues to be exceptional and reminds me why I love fantasy in the first place. And book two just may be even better. Probably because we now have a sense of the world and are growing used to Ana and Din’s….uniqueness.

This series continues with its sequel to show how brilliantly it is written, and how under appreciated it is. Because this series is doing exactly what I want to see more of in books. This author is taking this overdone setup of the Sherlock and Watson-esq mystery but making it fantasy. And what makes this series exceptional is that it feels so completely new. I’m not sitting here going, 😓 uh not this again, I’ve seen this exact thing twenty times in the last year alone. No. Even though this author uses familiar tropes of both the fantasy and mystery genres, they always feel completely new. The world, the characters, the plot, feels completely new and undiscovered for me as a reader, even though if you think about its core components, it’s actually not.

This second book, like the first, brought me so much joy and relief. Where the vast majority of the stories I’ve read over the last few years felt copy paste to the point I could predict what was going to happen by the end of chapter one, this felt like drinking fresh, cold water after only drinking warm tap.
But let’s talk a little about the actual book.

This second book expanded the world. We went to a different corner of the empire. One so different from the corner we were in during the first book. Yet it felt familiar. Despite the landscape and politics being on its surface different, the people and the powers and the dynamics felt familiar to the first book. Which it kind of should. Kind of like how despite outwardly Dorne in Game of Thrones seems wildly different from Westeros, the people and the conflicts and the power struggles are pretty much the same.

While our world expanded, giving us more information about the empire and its history, we also got to uncover a little more about our two main characters. I think I might know what Ana could be? I have theories at least. And Din. Damn, Din went through the Percy Jackson treatment. Remember how Percy portrayed himself as kind of mid. Like he’s kind of powerful and kind of cute. Only for us to get the spin off series where we were gained more povs and through them we learned Percy is actually super powerful and super hot. Yeah Din went through the same thing. At least for me. I totally pictured him as mid. Like so average in looks and experience that he could be forgettable. In this one he gained the name, pretty boy. And Din showed us the skill and competence he has gained since joining Ana.

The mystery in this story was also exceptional. I was constantly left changing my guesses with each new twist and detail. And yet, I never guessed the final twists. Like the mystery and detective work reminds me of why I first loved Sherlock Holmes and mysteries in general. The best way for me to describe my experience is to compare it with Knives Out. That movie series created something so familiar for the genre, yet so new. That is exactly what this book series does too.

At the end of this very long winded review of me trying to preach to you to read this series, all I can do is say once again, this is exceptional. This series’s use of the familiar made it comforting, but twisted everything till it felt completely and utterly new. It was relieving in a world where the vast majority of the books coming out are beginning to feel identical. Like if you’re going to write something, what are you bringing to the table? What is something completely new you can add onto the genre? Instead of giving us something AI probably could spit out.

So yeah. Read this. You won’t be disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for providing an advance reader copy of this book for my honest review.

...the scope/magical "hidden" [urban fantasy] world with magic-related crimes, sometimes makes the world questionable how hidden the magic is...

...in here I could see it a little bit. With the scope getting bigger, with the crimes connecting to something huge or something that could change the whole landscape of things. I guess it's fine that we're just getting "major" events/cases per book. But it's something that's in the back of the mind. It's unfair to compare it to crime tv shows like CSI where they have dozens of episodes that could have small cases that doesn't really do anything huge, just a complete bottleneck episode. Plus, with the magical world not hidden, makes this one more interesting [compared to Urban fantasy/mystery].

I love the new cast of characters, the new location, and the new weird things RJB have written in here. While the mystery, imo, is a bit easier to solve [by the readers], I just like it being a locked room mystery. But the real strength of this book is the worldbuilding, we have Yarrowdale from the reach of the Empire, we have characters that have new set of abilities, and I think this is a bit more political heavy compared to the first one. I have some minor gripes with the mystery but as a whole it's alright.

With a bunch of plot threads and new characters which could return in the future. I wonder what's RJB plans are, since I've read that he's willing to write more Shadow of the Leviathan novels and this surely doesn't feel like a middle book.

𝒜𝑅𝒞 𝐵𝑜𝑜𝓀 𝑅𝑒𝓋𝒾𝑒𝓌

𝘼 𝘿𝙧𝙤𝙥 𝙤𝙛 𝘾𝙤𝙧𝙧𝙪𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣
by Robert Jackson Bennett
432 pages
Due April 1, 2025

This is a fantasy mystery mashup series that I fell in love with thanks to fellow bookstagrammers.

If you missed 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙏𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝘾𝙪𝙥, I am giving you plenty of notice to fit it in so you are ready for its amazing sequel.
Read these if
💪🏻 you enjoy dystopian sci fi fantasy
🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♂️ enjoy detective duos
❓like complex mysteries
🧬 enjoy the sci fi elements of sci fi fantasy
🗺️ appreciate complex fantasy world building with attention to political intrigue
👩🏻‍🦱 enjoy rich character development

This has quickly become another must read sci fi fantasy series. I love the eccentric and relatable characters, the interesting modifications they have and the extra added elements of mystery and suspense. These stories are built to be twisted cases that are difficult to solve without the help of Ana and Din.

QOTD: Have you read a book that you would label a genre mashup? What is the title? If you haven’t- what genres would you like to see combined in a book?

Thank you to the author, @delreybooks and @netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC before it was published in exchange for my opinion.

#murdermysterybooks #scififantasybooks #adropofcorruption #bookstagram #bookrecommendations #bookreviews #newbooks #arcreading #netgalley #dystopianbooks #dystopianfantasybooks #currentlyreading #newbooks

Every time a new Robert Jackson Bennett book comes out, I read it way too fast and then feel something I mostly otherwise feel after eating an entire bag of Cadbury mini-eggs: not regret—never!—but longing to return to the start, to experience the whole thing over again. I want to have both the anticipation and joy of discovery, as well as the satisfaction. I’m sure there’s a word for it in German.

Bennett’s books are, I should emphasize, far better for you than candy, and far more elaborately laid out. They’re smart and complex, a whole meal worth savoring, and yet that obsessive snacking impulse remains. You can’t portion them out or be reasonable about them. They must be devoured.

A Drop of Corruption is delicious, and more, it deserves all the non-food-based compliments as well: it’s propulsive, compulsive, tense and intense, engrossing and even, maybe, a little bit gross.

Yes, there’s a bit of body horror and bio-horror here, worthy of the VanderMeer-est Weird. After the more austere coding-magic of his previous Founders Trilogy, this is very much a change of pace, and it works as well as everything Bennett does, which is to say, brilliantly.

The setting, in case anyone’s forgotten since the first book, is what I’d describe as Biohacked Roman Empire with Occasional Kaiju. Huge creatures called Leviathans attack each year, and would ravage the land and everyone in it but not for the Empire’s defenses. But the Leviathans are constantly evolving, and so the defenses must as well. Using insights and reagents gleaned from the Leviathan’s bodies, plus more from the various biomes of the Empire, society has cobbled together ways to enhance human bodies, minds, and medicines.

Our leading man, Din, is one such enhanced citizen. He has perfect recall, which he uses in the service of criminal investigations, and also in his service to Ana, his eccentric and delightfully foulmouthed boss. Ana is an even more highly-modified savant, capable of absorbing and distilling vast amounts of information. This makes her a brilliant detective, and also an enormous pain in the ass. Especially lately, as Din feels internal and external pressures to leave his current position and take up arms defending the Empire more directly from the Leviathans.

Their current case is so unpleasant that it only adds to his motivation. A murder has been committed in a backwater vassal kingdom, not truly part of the Empire, and therefore even more of a densely political powder keg. The victim, a Treasury employee, should have been a small and mostly insignificant part of ongoing negotiations regarding the autonomy (or lack thereof) of the kingdom, but of course there are overlapping and competing conspiracies. Before long, Din and Ana are mired in plots and in the human misery they both arise from and sink to, mostly metaphorically, but also quite literally. The setting is a swamp, and Din can’t help feeling mired at every step.

Din struggles to accept the many degradations of power, and his own place both repairing and perpetuating them. “I was just doing my job” is so often a scathing indictment of moral abdication, the refusal to take responsibility for choices and actions with real and devastating consequences. But it’s also a reflection on human systems, whether empires or kingdoms or industries, that necessarily remove people from full culpability. Once we step beyond individual subsistence—and really, as humans we were never fully independent of each other, we were always social animals—we bear only parts of the responsibility for the systems in which we participate. And we have never fully figured out how to share out that responsibility, although our imperfect justice systems try.

Bennett has always been concerned with the perils of empire, especially the seductions. Empire can be attractive. It can accomplish so much, propel such development. But that achievement always at a cost, and those who bear the cost do not often see the benefits. More even than the last book, Din must contend with those costs at an all-too-intimate distance. Corruption, greed, hubris, and ignorance; madness, slavery, torture, and death.

“I was just doing my job” isn’t just a feeble defense, though. It’s just as much the humble refrain of the public servant, the person taking on more responsibility rather than trying to accept less. Unsung, underpaid, and certainly under-appreciated, those who repair the breaches don’t just help the empire, according to Bennett. They are the Empire, not just the best but the only thing that makes it.

This picks up the same theme Bennett explored in City of Swords, the second book in his Divine Cities trilogy, about what it means to be part of, and to lead, within an organization that uses violence as one of its tools. This time it’s the justice system rather than the military, and as ever, he has a nuanced view. Ever since Vigilance I’ve been impressed with Bennett’s ability to get at the moral complexities underlying the worlds he creates. He never goes for the simple answer, nor does he fall into easy good/evil dichotomies. I think Vigilance never got much attention because it was so bleak. Here, there’s a bit more hope.

Hope—and a heaping helping of schadenfreude. It was extremely satisfying to read about an idiot ruler and his squabbling advisors all getting their comeuppance. But this is not just a takedown. That would be too easy, and Bennett never does easy. A Drop of Corruption does its damnedest to turn our attention to the true heart of the matter: not kings or traditions, but people, and alleviating their suffering.

In the end, Ana pronounces what I think is the most thorough condemnation of a villain that can be managed in this era. With tyrants as with serial killers, to dwell on their misdeeds risks glorifying them, and there seems to be no satire obvious or brutal enough that some people will not take it in earnest. If evil is banal, then we must find some other kind of insult to lob at the most hideous of the billionaires and despots, and Bennett, I think, has found it. The word is boring. And it’s so utterly true: watching a few tech losers appease tyrants, watching despots try to become kings, watching people who think they’re smarter than they are cut corners and risk others—this is the same shit people have done for thousands of years. It's not special. Dealing with it, we must accept, is generally not special either. Though there can be moments of great glory and searing defiance, mostly the work is that of an exterminator, chasing down the roaches who think they own the place.

Fortunately, unlike so many books in this genre, Bennett actually provides an alternative way forward. As so many fantasy authors are finding, moral complexity on an individual level is no longer enough. There’s a real hunger for works that grapple with what comes after the Dark Lord, what replaces the Mad King and the whole enterprise of monarchy. And Bennett manages to make the building and mending of systems so much more interesting than destruction.

A Drop of Corruption will be published April 1, 2025.

On a technical level, this is probably excellent: the prose is as great as Bennett’s always is, Din’s voice continues to be fun, and as best I can tell (I’m not a good judge) the mystery that needs solving is very well-constructed! Lots of early readers have loved this, and I think I can see why.

Unfortunately…I was really bored. I was interested initially – the first bit of the mystery, trying to find a man who has vanished, had me hooked, though in hindsight I wonder if most of that was just me being excited to return to this world. But I very quickly lost interest. Which is probably on me: I don’t tend to care about detective-y stories, which means this probably isn’t the series for me – but I loved book one so much I expected to enjoy Drop of Corruption too.

I mean, middle books in fantasy series always have this problem: in the first book, we’re learning about the world, which is entrancing with the right storyteller, but book two has to hold our interest without that. It probably doesn’t help that Drop of Corruption takes place outside the empire, in a nation that wasn’t interesting from a worldbuilding perspective (it’s not a Medieval Europe-lookalike or anything, but the trappings are pretty familiar, with nothing that stood out to me). After being hypnotised by the strangeness of this world in the previous book, that made Drop of Corruption a letdown.

An even bigger disappointment was the gradual realisation that no, this book has nothing at all to do with the previous one. This trilogy doesn’t have an overarching plot; Drop of Corruption is functionally a standalone. I know plenty of readers won’t mind this, but I want series that are tied together or standalones with a much bigger plot than this. (Exceptions exist, like the Cemeteries of Omalo trilogy, but that has a magic combination of prose, worldbuilding, and characters that can keep my interest despite the smaller-scale, unconnected plotlines. I don’t care enough about Ana and Din as people to want to read about them for their own sake, and Bennett’s prose is super readable, but not what I’d call beautiful.)

I really felt like the plotline of Din’s debts was a waste of time; it was barely an issue, and neither was Din’s desire to leave Ana’s service and go work on the Walls. (Ana promises at the start of the book that if Din hasn’t seen why what they do is important by the end of this job, she’ll help him go, and maybe I’m just being Very Autistic, but I didn’t feel that Din’s points were ever addressed properly – and therefore don’t understand what happened there.)

All that being said – most people who loved the first book are going to love this one too, I have no doubt. And I’m happy for them! Even I, who didn’t love it at all, feel obliged to give this four stars, because it being wrong for me doesn’t change that it’s (I think) a great example of what it wants to be.

But for me, Drop of Corruption lost or set aside most of what I loved about the first book, and I’m not sure that I’ll pick up book three.

Even better than The Tainted Cup!

I am having so much fun with this series. Even though it is a high fantasy setting with an incredibly detailed world, the tone of the stories reminds me very much of urban fantasy mysteries I've enjoyed over the years. Once again, the plot is a murder mystery, and, once again, the delightfully funny banter between Din and Ana drives the narrative.

Before beginning this series I saw comparisons to Sherlock and Watson and I rolled my eyes and thought yeah, whatever, but it's actually a fairly good comparison in this case. Ana is just as brilliant as Cumberbatch's Sherlock, and even more prone to eccentricities and social faux pas. Din narrates the story Watson-style, recounting Ana's brilliance with no small amount of bafflement, while also showing ingenuity of his own.

The mysteries in both books have been really well-crafted, layered and satisfying. I've gotten much better at discovering culprits and spotting wild twists after years of reading mysteries and thrillers, but I have so far found Bennett's mysteries impenetrable. I think it is because there is so much going on and each mystery opens up to an even larger mystery before it is solved. By the time I got to the "Aha! So it's..." point, Ana was confirming what I'd figured out in the next paragraph.

But while much of this book is fun, underneath it is something deeper-- a criticism of autocracy in a genre enamored by kingdoms and divine rule. The author's note is a must-read.

Now to wait for the next book.

I absolutely loved The Tainted Cup (Pacific Rim plus Sherlock Holmes? Shut up and take my money) I was lucky enough to get an ARC of this book and it did not disappoint! The magic system and writing style are so immersive and the descriptions of the contagions had me genuinely grossed out. I was totally stumped with the mystery and the reveal at the end was so satisfying. Ana continues to be amusing as ever and I was glad we learned a bit more about her background. Kol was put through the wringer in this book but he held his own and is becoming quite the investigator - I just hope he can reunite with Strovi soon. Also loved the addition of Malo and hope we see more of her in the future.

All in all, a great sequel and I can’t wait for the next one.

This second story of inspectors Ana and Din doesn't disappoint. The setting moves to a jungle-forested kingdom, Yarrow, as the intrepid duo become mired in an investigation involving murder and intrigue in a harsh, decadent autocratic culture in a state of decline and denial. There are plot developments involving the all-important extraction of materials from leviathan bodies encapsulated in a bio-shroud, involving vast wealth and vitally central to the Empire's survival.

Once more the characters are well-portrayed, especially the leaders of factions in the Yarrow court and the mysterious group of Apoths. We get to see some light and amusing experiences involving Din, and surprising revelations about the nature of the formidable Ana herself. And the clues, mysteries and unveilings of secrets are bound to keep readers, like I was, engaged till the last minute.

This time round there perhaps was a big of a saggy second third of the story, and some of the vivid atmosphere may have been less than in the first book. But on the plus side, the earlier philosophizing of the characters has been pleasingly trimmed and the cracking dialogue is probably even sharper.

Thanks to Netgalley and DelRey for an ARC of this book.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)