Review: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

Blurb:

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:

The sheer layering and complexity of this murder mystery plot grabbed me instantly and ran away with me cackling. What an absolute delight of a brain puzzle that I’m in desperate need of more! The Khanum Empire would be a total playground for botanical villains such as Poison Ivy (DC’s Batman), or Bushroot (Darkwing Duck). They would be living their absolute best lives here, surrounded by plants and living in them, too.

What Robert Jackson Bennett has done is quite remarkable. He’s given us a newly realized and unique world, full of potential where all things botanical are the essence of literally everything. You have houses made of fretvines, walls made of fernpaper, mossy beds and moss filled pillows, large shrooms that work as air conditioners as well as air filters, reed plumbing, small shrubs growing from the ceilings with glow worms living in the fruit that provide luminescence, and so, so much more. As far as I’m aware, no one else has written such a conceptualization before this, but I can tell you that I absolutely need more of it!

“That’s the nature of Khanum, eh? Safety and security for strangeness. Many are willing to make that deal.”

In addition to buildings, furniture, plumbing, etc. being made from plant materials, it is also used for a great many more societal advancements in this world such as being used in concoctions put into the reagents keys that open various locked portals & doors, suffusions that allow horses to travel faster and for longer distances than normal ones would be able to. Various suffusions and grafts are also utilized to enhance humans (kind of like the Borg, but with plants! :P ); like some will give you keen night vision, others will reward you with superior strength or a gift with languages, while others will give you permanent memory or sharpen your sense of smell to the point you know what everything is based on scent alone. How amazing is that? It’s an absolutely crazy and exciting world, if even a bit trippy, like you tumbled down the rabbit hole after Alice and you’ll run into the jabberwocky at any given moment. Or a leviathan perhaps in this book’s case >_>

The Tainted Cup took me on quite a journey of moods to be honest. When I read books I often can tell pretty early on what star rating they will have, which usually doesn’t waver much by the end. But this book?? It was something else entirely! In the beginning I was very much feeling it would be a solid four star for it being such a unique idea. Then as it slogged on for a wee bit with not much happening initially, that dropped to a three and a half-ish star. And then it just got to the point where I was feeling a potential slump if I kept on, so I was even leaning towards the idea of dnfing the poor thing at only 130 pages in. So I set it aside temporarily (1 day only) and picked up a different book, but I kept thinking about The Tainted Cup, which was glaring at me from the nearby table. So my stubborn streak kicked in. I was determined I would at least push on to the halfway point before I could reasonably decide whether to give up on it or continue. Now wouldn’t you know it, but that very next chapter got me hooked??

I was FINALLY immersed in this fantastically imaginative world and I was there to stay! Then I was ever so curious, metaphorically peeking over Din’s shoulder as he interrogated people, and new unexpected developments cropped up, fascinating little reveals here and there. And new events and bread crumb clues, more death, more questions, just MORE!!! I was enthralled!!

“The towers of justice are built one brick at a time. We have more to build yet.”

Din, whose perspective I’d initially been rather bored with at the beginning, grew on me more and more as we saw more of him out on his own and in his element, following his intuition and curiosity while he puzzled out each new bit of information gleaned. He is the assistant to the investigator, and to be more beneficial in his duties he has been altered as an engraver, someone who has permanent perfect memory. (That could seriously come in handy sometimes in real life, am I right??). As the story progressed more of his personality began to show, which I absolutely loved to see. He has this deadpan way of delivering snarky comments to his mistress, Ana, which had me smirking so often while I read. His humor is quite dry, but I loved it!

So why did I struggle so much in the beginning you may be wondering? Or you may not, but either way I’ll tell you all the same. There were a few reasons really. Initially it felt like the writing focused too heavily on sharing all the alterations of people passing in the streets, people who had nothing to do with the story, but more so attempting to immerse you as the reader in this world of altered people, I think. But rather than do that for me, it bogged the storyline down with superfluous information when I would rather have focused on the investigation! It felt info-dumpy when it didn’t at all need to be. If it was about characters pertaining to the storyline itself I would’ve found the information more useful. As it was though, it was all extraneous bits that detracted from my overall reading experience in that beginning quarter. 

That initial quarter also focused a little too heavily (in my opinion) on the eccentricities of our main character’s employer, this quirky and unconventional lady investigator named Ana Dolabra, instead of focusing on the murder mystery aspect. She is definitely a unique individual who feels very Sherlockian-esque in her deductive skills (as well as the lack of social skills and disregard of social norms similar to BBC’s Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch). Once things picked up pace in the second quarter you got to see enough of those personality quirks in action, which I appreciated and they felt more natural to me than the way things were handled in the opening portion. Just a personal preference I’m sure.

“I have always preferred patterns and the consumption of information to socializing.”

Additionally, you have this very effervescent botanical world that demands to be explored and a fascinating case to investigate, but you’re viewing everything from the perspective of this young man, Dinios Kol, who is seemingly entirely devoid of emotion or personality, so it’s like all the color of the world is leached away and you’re left looking at a grayscale world. This was just my feeling in that initial quarter of the book. As Dinios’s reserved personality began to shine through more in the next three quarters of the book, this sense of blandness was replaced once again with all the vibrancy and sheer vitality and The Tainted Cup skyrocketed to a potential top read of the year