DRC Review: A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett
Release date: 1 April 2025
Rating: 3.5-4/5
Book box(es): Inkstone Books, The Broken Binding
Synopsis: The brilliant detective Ana Dolabra may have finally met her match in the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.
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
At the risk of getting absolutely pelted by rotten eggs by my fellow, like-minded fantasy enthusiasts, I’m going to rain on the parade for this one. Perhaps I was hoping for more of what The Tainted Cup offered: mystery combined with a more traditional, high-stakes action fantasy and seasoned with fantastic characters who have quirks all bundled together to make a well-balanced meal of a great story. Bennett really went slow, heavy, and intricate for A Drop of Corruption. As I inherently despise detective stories, I didn’t like this installment as much as the first. I found the detection dry and the goings-on so incredibly complicated and all over the place. My eye balls rolled back in my head several times from the drag. I will say that all of my perseverance paid off at the end—some of the stuff I wondered about the world and the characters actually had on-page answers instead of teasing cliffhangers. In a world of string-along fantasy, the relief of those reveals alone made me hug my eReader.
Perhaps what I found so encumbering had to do with the fact that Din features heavily in this one. Ana comes in closer to the end, and I didn’t get that constant interaction between her and Din that provided such entertainment for me in the first book. Here, Din does nothing but wander around grudgingly, sleeping his way through the locals and whining all. the. time. Din was bummed. I was bummed. The story was a bummer. While the mystery in the first really propelled me through the story, this one shifted gears and ruminated in an armchair with a pipe and smoking jacket, like an old BBC episode of Poirot. Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a good, dry mystery. I can only take small increments of them at a time, however, and this one spanned 480 pages.
It doesn’t matter, though. I still didn’t peg the culprit, had no idea even how to solve the blasted mystery at all, and Ana swooped in and perked the story right up before dropping an absolute banger of a bombshell right at the end. I think maybe I just love these books more when both Ana and Din show in them at the same time. I’ll read the next one, so just take my money anyway, I guess.
My thanks to Del Rey via NetGalley for the DRC, for which I willingly give my own, honest opinion.
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