In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.
Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.
At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior—but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.
As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.
By an “endlessly inventive” (Vulture) author with a “wicked sense of humor” (NPR), The Tainted Cup mixes the charms of detective fiction with brilliant world-building to deliver a fiendishly clever mystery that’s at once instantly recognizable and thrillingly new.
Review:
Dear Robert Jackson Bennett,
My fellow reviewer Janine put this book on her Best of 2024 list and of course I was very tempted because I am familiar with your writing and in the past it worked really well for me. But I was also resistant to trying it, because you manage to go ahead and kill just the characters I end up liking the most in your books. Of course I ended up caving in when I saw this book on sale.
Din narrates the book, so I am going to keep my fingers crossed that narrators in the story do not get killed too often. Readers just watch and see how this time it will happen at the end. I know the second book is coming out in April of this year, but I have no idea if more books are planned. The two series that I have read from this author in the past have been trilogies (well, I actually have not read the third book in the second trilogy), so if this anything to go by maybe this will be a trilogy too, but I have no idea.
I inhaled this book in two days. This is the kind of writing that really works for me. I would not call it too descriptive, but it portrays pictures in my mind and as I may have mentioned in the past I always cherish when a writer manages to make me *see things* because it does not happen often when I read. I can sing about the world building in this story – original, rather dark world, which the author reveals to the reader in one detail after another. I mean, *the death by a tree grown from the person* certainly stuck in my head for a long time and yes, I could have done without this image, but this “detail” ends up to be something very important in the story and then details just kept appearing and the world became more and more alive on the page. There were no info dumps, there was nothing about this world that I was confused about when I finished reading. Oh, I am sure we will learn additional things about this world in the next book/s and moreover I think some things will turn out to be not as they seem, but the author achieved what he wanted I think for the reader not to be frustrated with the lack of knowledge of the world building at the end of this book.
Before I bought the book I did see in the reviews that Sherlock/ Watson overtones could be seen in the story and I agree that overtones/ some call backs were there, especially with Ana, her brilliance and some eccentricity and her being bored when she does not have puzzles to investigate and “crushing” after the adrenalin rush during the investigation. She certainly reminded me of Holmes that way even though both she and Din are very much their own people, not carbon copies of Holmes/Watson. I loved how the Ana and Din investigator/assistant relationship grew by the end of the story, mostly because Din started to trust her more I think even though there is still a way to go and one can see clearly that Ana cared for him and wanted to protect him when she could. Din has to overcome a lot and I think he has a lot of baggage to get rid of in the next books. I really liked him.
I really liked the mystery investigation, too. I liked how it went from smaller aspects to bigger and bigger and how it ended up where unfortunately it was supposed to end up and the biggest culprits were caught. I liked that Ana and Din caught on to some things earlier in the story, but the biggest revelation happened closer to the end.
Yes, there is a potential of romance for Din, yes, I would love to see it very much. Why B+ as a grade and not A? Obviously it is still a very good grade, but I cared very little to nothing for most of the secondary characters and I hope for more development for them in the next book/s.
Grade: B+
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Sirius
Sirius started reading books when she was four and reading and discussing books is still her favorite hobby. One of her very favorite gay romances is Tamara Allen’s Whistling in the Dark. In fact, she loves every book written by Tamara Allen. Amongst her other favorite romance writers are Ginn Hale, Nicole Kimberling, Josephine Myles, Taylor V. Donovan and many others. Sirius’ other favorite genres are scifi, mystery and Russian classics. Sirius also loves travelling, watching movies and long slow walks.
