A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
2025’s A Drop of Corruption is the second book in Robert Jackson Bennett‘s latest series, THE SHADOW OF THE LEVIATHAN (or, alternately, THE ANA AND DIN MYSTERIES). Set in the same world as the first book, The Tainted Cup, A Drop of Corruption is a glorious magic act, filled with misdirection, mirrors, impersonations, disguises, codes and clues. It also holds a contemplation of the nature of kingdoms and kings.
Dinios Kol, who goes by Din, is an engraver, so called because his brain has been modified to remember every single detail of everything he experiences. He is part of the Khanum Empire’s large bureaucracy, specifically the Iudex, their version of a justice department, and assigned to the famously strange Investigator, Ana Dolabra. This outing takes Din and Ana beyond the borders of the Empire into a small client-state kingdom called Yarrow, to solve what first seems to be a locked-room murder.
The murder itself is a puzzle within a puzzle, but that is not the only obstacle to justice.
In The Tainted Cup, Ana and Din worked against a background of urgency, in a city where the mysterious leviathans or titans try to come ashore every rainy season. Sometimes, the behemoths breach the huge sea walls and advance, wreaking transformative havoc, since every part of their bodies is wildly magical. The risk of a leviathan incursion grew with each page of that book.
In this case, the backdrop is overtly political. A prior Yarrow king accepted aid from the Empire and made a deal that in one hundred years, Yarrow would be annexed. Times have changed, and as the handoff grows closer, the current king of Yarrow is digging in his heels. Imperials are viewed with suspicion and hatred by many, with hope by some. The murdered man was a member of the imperial Treasury contingent of the Empire, a group that is there to discuss everyone’s least favorite topic, taxes.
Din is assigned a Yarrow partner, Malo, who is a warden. As they struggle to gather facts and present them to Ana, the whole crime suddenly flips. It’s no longer merely a locked-room mystery, but a case involving an imposter with near-impossible access to hyper-secure locations, including the palace. He leaves taunting notes at the scenes of his crimes, implying an attack against the Empire. He may be linked to the uptick in smuggling Yarrow has faced on its crumbling canals. More seriously still, he seems to have a connection to the Shroud, a vital and secret base of the scientist Apotheticals, on an island off the shore of Yarrow.
The magic of Bennett’s world is biochemical. Potions and solutions called “grafts” are used to change human physiology, and nearly all of it comes from the bodies of the leviathans. Once a leviathan is dead, it decomposes rapidly. By a coincidence of geography, Yarrow’s island is outside of the leviathans’ territory, but close enough to let imperial sailors haul a carcass to it. Protected by a magical, quasi-sentient veil, the site is home to some of the biggest breakthroughs in Apothetikal magic. Most recently, they created something that is a literal game-changer.
While Ana and Din are more like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin than Holmes and Watson, the adversary in this book is practically Moriarty. One new graft developed at the Shroud, called augury, enhances brain function, especially pattern recognition, data analysis and prediction or modeling skills. Ana soon figures out that their quarry is using this graft. These are Ana’s own skills, and normally she would be able to best him. On the other hand, he has had months or years to plan his scheme, and he is aided by the new graft. In this book we see the degree to which Ana is willing to risk both Din and herself to complete a mission.
We learn more about Ana in this book, and more about the Empire, specifically the “lost race” of the Khanum. The discussion of the leviathans brings up more questions and some discomfort about the creatures themselves and the true nature of the relationship between them and the Empire. All of this takes place in a country where political power is concentrated in the hands of one person, for good or bad.
Malo is Din’s window into the Yarrow society, and clarifies things for him, but she isn’t just an expository character. She has her own motivations and dreams, and is also a person caught between two cultures, and perhaps fitting in neither.
The writing, especially when Din travels into the jungle in search of their adversary, veers into the phantasmagorical at times. The power of leviathan blood (not to mention other organs, tissues and fluids) makes the threat against the Empire believable, and as people still try to block and divert Ana and Din, their frustration grows more believable too.
I had two small disappointments with this one. The first was Din’s interrogation of two Apoths who are influenced by augury. After all the build-up and warnings, I found them a let-down, although I did like their eccentric mode of dress. Ghrelin, Din’s official translator, was a more convincing example of an altered mind. Secondly, it seemed obvious to me what the adversary’s true target was, yet Ana, Malo, and Thelenai, the commander of the Shroud, took a long time to agree with me! I didn’t truly believe in the adversary’s motivations until I read the confrontation scene, in which Bennett made him passionate and convincing.
In addition to providing a riveting story, this book expands our view of the Empire, good and bad, and deepens our understanding of Ana. Din has his own problems but never veers away from his duty. In one of my favorite moments, Din, confronted for the first time with an up-close view of an autocracy, decides that the “bureaucratically bland” Empire is still better in comparison.
Din, however, does not view the Empire through rose-colored glasses. As the Empire’s appetite for annexation seems to wane, Din realizes that the Empire is delaying or breaking its promise to the thousands of enslaved people in Yarrow, who have waited a hundred years for freedom, since slavery doesn’t exist in the Empire. This book also looks more pointedly at the Empire’s dependence on the monsters they allegedly built walls to keep out, since literally every layer of their society is dependent upon magic that springs from the leviathans. Consolidation versus distribution of power, while not the front-and-center story, informs every aspect of this political thriller.
Mostly, though, A Drop of Corruption is a stunning magic act, with Bennett playing fair, yet misdirecting us (and his characters) at every turn. And like every great performer, he leaves us wanting more.
Agreed! I have loved both of these books. I wasn’t as perceptive as you at guessing the true target, though, so that didn’t take away from my enjoyment.