A Drop of Corruption (review)

A few months ago I read the intelligent fantasy The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett and enjoyed it. Now I have finished A Drop of corruption which is the second book in the series. The narrator is Dinios (Din) Kol. He works for Ana Dolabra. Together they are the equivalent of a police detective unit. But this takes place in a very different world than ours.

They work for the empire of Khanum. It is a powerful empire, but it is beset each year during the wet season with enormous creatures, called leviathans or titans, that wander ashore from the sea and destroy everything in their path. Or they did before gigantic sea walls were erected. These sea walls have to be maintained and armed and manned by the legion to keep the leviathans at bay. The blood of the leviathans is useful to produce drugs and augmentations to the people of Khanum that imbue them with specific powers. Some have heightened analytical abilities, some have increased sensory abilities, etc. Our narrator, Din can reproduce memories perfectly. This is a useful thing where recording technology does not exist. So Din “records” things for his boss Ana. But Leviathan blood can also produce some very dangerous results.

Ana is the most enjoyable character in the series. She is brilliant, eccentric, and snarky. Ana is the kind of character you want to spend more time with, but Bennett wisely, I think, limits our exposure to Ana. Less is more. Instead, we spend all our time with Din. We see the world through his eyes, even his sometimes exasperation with Ana (though he would never allow her to see that). At times Din thinks Ana is mad, but there is always a method to her madness. There is also a mystery about Ana’s origins. We get a few tantalizing clues about that.

The investigation centers around a man who disappears from a locked room, and whose dead body is recovered miles away. The murder happens during sensitive diplomatic negotiations. It becomes obvious that one branch of the government is keeping secrets from the others. That is just the beginning of the twists and turns that the two investigators have to navigate. But it is not so convoluted that it loses the reader.

I look forward to the next installment of Ana and Din.

Star Liner

Comments

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...

The Linear Nature of Time

Go Go back Go back to the time before Before you did it Before they did it Before it was done to you Before the toast fell on the floor Before the catastrophe Before the mistake Before time’s scars Before Go Go back Redeem it Rework it Fix it Go back No you cannot Go back Star Liner

Why Walls Don't Work

At the peak of the Roman Empire, the empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to Brittain, from northern Africa to southern Germany. But the great conquering emperors like Trajan learned that conquering land was easy compared to holding on to it. In fact, Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, was known for shrinking the empire and consolidating Trajan’s gains into a more defensible set of holdings. This made him not popular among his generals who wanted glory and spoils. But he understood if you stretch yourself too thin, you can wind up with nothing. To consolidate the Empire’s holdings in Brittain, he had a wall constructed from Solway Firth to the Tyne River. Construction began in the year 122 AD. The Empire had never been able to subdue the highland Scottish tribes, so this wall (Hadrian’s Wall) divided the “barbarians from the Romans.” It was a solid piece of engineering with forts and towers scattered along it to keep the “barbarians” out. Hadrian’s successor, Antonius Pius...

A speculative mind

Search This Blog