★★★★★ Two mysteries

A Drop of Corruption

Robert Jackson Bennett

Every speculative fiction novel is a mystery. We don't necessarily call it that -- the usual term is world-building. But the best F&SF novels don't just tell you about the world you're in: they make it a puzzle that the reader gradually solves. World building becomes world discovery. Some F&SF novels are also murder mysteries, with detectives and the big reveal at the end.

Robert Jackson Bennett's A Drop of Corruption is both. It starts out as a locked-room murder mystery. Ana and Din figure out how the murder was done almost immediately, but who did it and why they don't know. That is the mystery that most of the novel is concerned with. It turns out to be deeply tied to the nature of the Empire of Khanum.

Although I loved The Tainted Cup -- it was just so much fun! -- I didn't love the world-building. It felt perfunctory to me. This surprised me because Bennett is an author who is not afraid to go big. The Tainted Cup didn't feel like a Bennett novel to me.

A Drop of Corruption does. Or, to be more precise, it begins to. A Drop of Corruption is as much fun as The Tainted Cup, but it is something bigger and deeper, and we can glimpse where Shadow of the Leviathan is headed. In an Author's Note, Bennett writes,

... all the characters in this story— like all of humanity, apparently— have a little blank spot in their heads that says, “Kings. What a good idea.” The idea is powerful, and seductive, and should not be underestimated. To be a civilization of any worth, however, means acknowledging the idea— and then condemning it as laughably, madly stupid.*

I will certainly read the next book, and I expect the entire series, if I live so long.

I thank NetGalley and Random House/Del Rey for an advance reader copy of A Drop of Corruption.

*This quote is from an advance reader copy. It will be corrected if necessary when the book is released 1-Apr-2025.

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