A Drop of Corruption
Author: Robert Jackson Bennett
Reviewer: Sophia Rose
Rating: A+
What I’m Talking About:
After the harrowing case and succeeding events in the opening book, The Tainted Cup, Din and Ana are faced with a new macabre case that is only the tip of the tentacle and has ramifications for the whole empire. A Drop of Corruption was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and my expectations were high, but RJB met that and raised the bar even higher.
A Drop of Corruption is book two in the Shadow of the Leviathan: Ana and Din Mysteries set in a fantasy world. The set up of world and characters was strong in the first book so they really need to be read in order.
Din is sent ahead for this latest case to get started on the case preliminaries of visiting the crime scenes and meeting the local officer in charge. He’s unhappy because he wants to be a soldier on the front lines defending the empire and doesn’t see himself as very useful working as Ana’s assistant on criminal cases. On top of this desire to do something glorious, he’s being pressured even harder by his deceased father’s creditors who gouge him for even more each payment and are bleeding him dry.
Still, Din is diligent and even apart from his memory adaption that allows him to memorize and recall everything he has taken in with his senses, he observes and intelligently processes the early moments of the case. And, this case is a lulu from the start. A locked room mystery and a victim who doesn’t exist.
He’s also pretty good about getting along with the locals. The region is outside the empire, but tied to it. Things are politically volatile. This case might be the spark that ignites and destroys the tentative peace and negotiations.
Into this situation, Quixotic Ana shows up, here’s his findings on the case and startles every one with her brilliant, but shocking deductions. If she’s right, this simple though bizarre murder is only a small part of a larger well-crafted plot.
A Drop of Corruption is dense reading, but riveting from cover to cover. The world, the characterizations, the plotting and the writing that thrusts the reader deeply into the world of the book are incredible. Ana and Din’s relationship began and strengthened as detecting partners in book one, but book two is what goes to the heart and challenges Din to find meaning in what he does and to get a strong inkling into the mystery that is Ana, his boss.
The plot built slowly, with blips of excitement along the way so that the tension was taunt by the time the climax rushed over the reader in waves of breath-stealing twists and reveals, rather than one big moment. Some I saw coming, and it didn’t take away from the excitement one iota.
Now, I am left satiated, but jittery for the next adventure for this pair. I recommended the first book as a favorite read of the year and here I am, pronouncing the second just as fabulous as the first. Run don’t walk to get this series.
My Rating: A+
Sophia Rose
About the Book:
In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, a Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—vanishing from a room within a heavily guarded tower, its door and windows locked from the inside.
To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial detective, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
Ana soon discovers that they are investigating not a disappearance but a murder—and one of surpassing cunning, carried out by an opponent who can pass through warded doors like a ghost.
Worse still, the killer may be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud, where the Empire harvests fallen titans for the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.
Din has seen his superior solve impossible cases before. But as the death toll grows and their quarry predicts each of Ana’s moves with uncanny foresight, he fears that she has at last met an enemy she can’t defeat.
Release Date: April 1, 2025
Publisher: Del Rey
Series: Shadow of the Leviathan #2
Genre: Fantasy Mystery
Format(s): hardcover (480 pages), e-book, audiobook
Book Source: NetGalley