I really enjoyed this book. I’ve grown to really appreciate the characters Ana and Din after having read about their adventures in two books now. I know the author seems to write fantasy trilogies before moving on to a new story, and I’m already anxious, worrying there will only be one more book in this series! The world building in this series is incredible. I want to read more about life in this book’s world and highly recommend this one to anyone who likes a good mystery/crime story (even if you don’t think you like fantasy stories).

My thanks to NetGalley and DelRay for the ARC of A Drop of Corruption, in exchange for my free, unbiased review.

This entire series is smart and very well written. My only beef with this sophomore effort was its length. It took me forever to finish this one. The twists and turns, the ever-expanding cast, the red herrings all began to exhaust somewhat. What began as a locked door mystery proliferates into a heist narrative, then a poisoning, the biological warfare, all in Bennett’s already complex story world. I am still fully on board for his Holmes-Watson queering and disability take, but I will admit to feeling ready to be done with this one by the conclusion.

I am really loving this series and this one was maybe even better than the first! I love the characters and world building, although I do struggle a bit with descriptions of the land and a little bit with the made up language, but I just trust that he is creating this world and go with it! I love Din, because he is the best, and Ana continues to surprise me with her observations and revelations, I am always surprised by who the real” villain is. Very happy to recommend these books to fantasy and mystery readers!

4.5 stars. This is such a good book with amazing word building. I was never confused with what was going on. And the way things are described was very well done. I loved absolutely everything about this book and I am really hoping he is going to write another! I don't want this world to end but I don't think he is writing anymore. I love Din so much and Ana was a very interesting character. I also really like Malo and it seems that if there is another book she will be important in it. I loved the descriptions of all the grafts and I really liked all of the politics. I loved the mystery and I love how Ana reveals everything in the end.

I was very grateful to receive an ARC for this book, but unfortunately it took me awhile to get to it. I loved the first book in the series, the cast of characters makes this series. I did end up liking the second book a little less than the first. There were times in the book I felt a little lost on what was going on. Anna was a little stranger in this book than in the first. Malo was a great side character and I enjoyed her snarky remarks between her and Din. This book dives into what pride will cost you, and the damage it can cost those around you. I think the author did a really great job of showing this. His authors note at the end really makes you think. I look forward to continuing with this series.


Thank you Netgalley for the ARC from Random House Publishing Group.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an ARC.

I enjoyed this book even more than the first in the series! I appreciated Ana and Din’s matured relationship and found the mystery itself not as hard to follow. It was a lot of fun and you should definitely read it if you enjoyed The Tainted Cup!

A Drop of Corruption picks up where The Tainted Cup left off and somehow manages to be even better. From context, we find out that time has passed since Ana and Din's first mystery and they've solved a number of cases together. We catch up with them for a new mystery in a place that's not yet fully colonialized into the empire. Outside the small city governed by the empire, the land and people are ruled by an old-school monarch and nobility. Those at the top have a stranglehold on power and wealth, while those at the bottom live in poverty and slavery.

The mystery, a locked-room disappearance that turns out to be something much bigger, forces Din to cross the lines between empire and monarchy and encounter some of the worst aspects of both. But it's not just a challenge to Din. Their shadowy adversary has abilities to rival even Ana, and the extremes she endures to solve the crime end up revealing a lot about who she really is, both to Din and to the reader.

This sequel continues with everything the first book did well - a perfectly plotted mystery, more insights into this bizarre but fascinating world, and more development for the compelling main characters. But it also touches on our relationship with power and authority. What gives someone the right to rule? Why do we want to believe in monarchs, even when we know how often that power gets abused? Bennett weaves those questions into the plot without lecturing or becoming preachy.

A Drop of Corruption gets five stars from me. Smart, fun, thoughtful, and so well-paced. Can’t wait for the next one.

Thank you to the author, publisher (Del Ray) and Netgalley for allowing me to review this ARC with honesty.

*Ahem* WHY DID THIS TAKE ME SO LONG TO READ!?

Sorry, I loved the first book and this book also had some very fascinating world building that keeps going. I struggled a little bit during the mid section (which I truly believe was a me problem and less the book) but once I got through certain parts, I found myself loving the knew characters like Malo who I hope to see again.

Ana was always a very dramatic character that I can't help reading about but this time I feel like Din took the show with this book.

Lots of fun with this!

My Rating: 4.5 (rounded up)
(cross posted to GR)

I was so excited to receive an arc copy of this book. I loved the first book in this series and couldn’t wait to see how Din and Ana would fare in this one.

I wasn’t disappointed! The characters, the plot, the mind-twisting turns things took - I loved it all.

Thank you Del Rey and Netgalley for the ARC!

I loved this continuation of Din and Ana's story, and our deeper look into how the Empire functions. It was interesting to get to see parts of the world that weren't under empire control, but essential to the functions and life of the society. I liked that we got more of a look into Ana and her unique augmentation in this one, it explained so much but also left so many more questions then answers. Like, why was she chosen? Is she related to the Emperor? And what is her final goal?

I appreciated that we got to see Din be less stuffy and have more ambitions rather than just paying off his father's debt in this one. It was nice, getting to see him as less of a memory recorder and more of a person. I also love that Bennett made him a bit of a man whore.

I can't wait to read more of Ana and Din's story, and of the Empire they live in!

Love it when a sequel is even better than an already excellent first instalment! Not only do we get another mystery with constant twists and revelations that could only possibly be unraveled by the wonder that is Ana Dolabra, but we also get to see a lot more of both Ana and Din's history and a snapshot into what Din gets upto in his time off shift (did I miss in book one that he's a bit of a nymphomaniac?!). My absolute favourite thing about this book though was the addition of a new character in Malo who enters as a warden in Yarrowdale, the latest area our intrepid investigators are sent off to.

There's not much to say without serious spoilers but if you enjoyed The Tainted Cup then read this immediately!! I tonly gets better!

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A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennet is the second book in the dystopian mystery series Shadow of the Leviathan. Mr. Bennett is an award-winning author.

Ana Dolabra, a brilliant, augmented investigator, and her assistant Dinios Kol are sent to the edge of the Empire to investigate an impossible crime. A Treasury officer has disappeared without a trace from a locked room, in a guarded building.

Almost immediately Ana detects that they’re investigating a murder, done by an adversary who moves like a ghost. Worst, the killer is targeting a high-security compound, the Shroud, where the Empire’s greatest minds dissect fallen Titans and extract their magical blood.

I enjoy the high-fantasy in the author’s books and his world building. While I’m not much of a fan for detective novels, I enjoyed the first book in the series,The Tainted Cup, very much. In this installment, the author took a more deliberate, slower approach

The magic of the first book was the banter between Ana and Din, but in A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett Ana shows up somewhere in the middle. The ending is great as Ana figures out who the murder is, but it took a while to get there.

The eccentric detective and their admiring assistant is not a new invention, but it’s done very well. The series is well crafted, layered and each book has a satisfying ending. Mr. Jackson doesn’t leave us wondering about the mysteries of the world he built, and I actually got answers on several of the questions I had.

There’s a lot going on in both books, but I though this book had a lot more information to absorb besides the mystery. Not that I would have figured it out anyway.

The world building gets a bit complicated, and detailed but frankly I really enjoyed that part. The author’s note is also fascinating as Mr. Bennet discuss our fascination with royalty, even though there are more fallen kingdoms than active ones. Fear not though, as Yuval Noah Harrari mentioned in Nexus, maybe with the rise of AI, information and stories can filter to one person, maybe kings and queens of yore will be back.

I’m a huge fan of this book! I’ve loved everything that Robert Jackson Bennett has ever published, and this one was no exception. If you liked the first book in this series, this one will be right up your alley. These characters are excellent, and the mystery at its core keeps you guessing right up to the end. The worldbuilding Bennett does so well is pulled off without a hitch in this novel, and I’m hoping for many more books in this world. Read this!!

This took forever for me to read (forever being 2 months) every time I tried to read it before bed there was a lot more body horror than I was ready to deal with

I didn’t like this one as much as the first one. I can’t even say why for sure, it just never captured my attention fully until maybe toward the end when we were wrapping things up. There are a lot of interesting threads and it feels like it all should be super engaging but it didn’t weave together in the way I wanted.

3.5

"A tremendous disappointment" ~ Ana Dolabra

The prose continues to be beautiful. The imagery, world-building, and character creation is stunning as expected.

But I was bored. I kept having to remind myself to come back to the book and at around 70% I just started skimming to get to the end. The mystery was not compelling or particularly interesting. In fact, the most compelling writing came for me in the Author's Note about autocracy at the end of the book. Perhaps that note explains some of my dissatisfaction with this volume because it seems that the author sat down not with a story in mind, but rather a lesson to teach and I think the storytelling suffered for it.

I love this series so much! A Drop of Corruption absolutely lives up to The Tainted Cup, and it was fun jumping back into Din and Ana's story. This book does another great job of creating an interesting and creepy mystery set in a fantastical world, and even expands on the overall setting more. I honestly hope this series continues for a long time because I love learning more about the politics and cultures explored through the story.

Thank you Del Rey for the ARC!

This is my first book from Robert Jackson Bennett and it absolutely won’t be my last. While technically the second in a series, since it’s a murder mystery A Drop of Corruption is able to stand on its own. I’ll be going back and reading book one, as soon as my library hold comes in!

Our main character is Din, a young assistant investigator to one of the most bizarre (affectionate) detectives I have ever read. I’ve heard the duo compared to Holmes and Watson, but I don’t think that is fair to either set. Yes, Ana is brilliant at deductive reasoning but also she is so, so gross. Holmes would never. I say this with love because I really enjoyed the book and the character, but wow did this woman turn my stomach more than once.

The world of this series is one of organic inventions, vines grown into houses and ferns that have been engineered to detect contaminants. And many, many human augmentations. All of these are made possible by the blood of the leviathans, enormous sea beasts who come to shore once a year and who corrupt everything they might come in contact with. There is some fantastic body horror in this book, it reminded me somewhat of Annialation, though the stories themselves are very different.

There’s also of course the murder mystery that Din and Ana must solve, layers upon layers deep, and connected to the mysterious Shroud- the citadel out at sea where the leviathan’s dangerous blood is processed. I won’t say more about that as murder mysteries are more fun to discover with the characters. I definitely recommend this book!

Sherlock Holmes meets Annihilation, but in a dark fantasy pseudo-Medieval world. I could read infinite books in this world.

Life got in the way and it took me a bit longer to finish this one then I would have liked. Thoroughly enjoyed Din and Ana's newest adventure. It's like magic Sherlock Holmes. So many twists and turns, kept me guessing until the very end.

Thank you to NetGalley and RandomHouse for the ARC!

I loved this book just as much as the first one and I already can't wait for more in this series. The mystery is complex and engaging and while the world-building is detailed, it doesn't bog the pacing of the book down at all. Not to mention the banter between the two main characters is delightful as always.