The Tainted Cup
Robert Jackson Bennett
A surprising delight
I want to start by explaining my review title. I know of Robert Jackson Bennett from reading his Founder's Trilogy, and his Divine Cities Trilogy. Those were both very good, so I snapped up The Tainted Cup as soon as it was released. When I describe it as a surprising delight, I don't mean that I was surprised to enjoy it. I was surprised, however, to be able to use the word "delight" to describe it.
The Founder's Trilogy, and the Divine Cities Trilogy are both big stories. I might use words like "magnificent" or "weighty" to describe them, but "delight" would not come to mind. The Tainted Cup is a murder mystery, and it's just tremendous fun! It is, in fact, a fairly conventional mystery, though broad in scope.
The two investigators are Ana Dolabra and Dinios Kol. Ana is a sort of Nero Wolfe -- a recluse who seldom gets her hands dirty with actual in-the-field investigation. She leaves that to her apprentice investigator Din, who has been biotechnologically enhanced to have perfect recall. (In the Khanum Empire, such people are known as engravers). Both are neurodivergent. Din is, I believe, dyslexic. (The word "dyslexic" appears nowhere in The Tainted Cup, but Din's descriptions of his difficulties reading sound just like those of dyslexics.) Ana is hypersensitive to stimulation -- she wears a blindfold and is, as already mentioned, reclusive.
The story is told in the first person by Din. He is, in his own way, a gifted investigator, although his gifts lie more in the direction of terrier-like persistence. He is also a great straight man to Ana's outrageousness
Ana: “What an absurd thing! What the hell else do you know how to do?”
Din: I handed her the cup. “I do seem to be developing a talent for tolerating verbal abuse and mad questions, ma’am.”
The Tainted Cup is the first novel in a planned trilogy, the Shadow of the Leviathan Series. In his Acknowledgments, Bennett writes
I actually really enjoyed writing this one, and plan to write more murder mysteries,
so it seems likely that we will be seeing more investigations by Din and Ana. There are hints that future novels in the series might tend more to the grand scope of Bennett's earlier series. I will certainly read them.