Robert Jackson Bennett takes the classic pairing of irritable genius detective and neophyte assistant and transplants it to a wild fantasy setting in The Tainted Cup. Sometimes when I read a book, I get the feeling that the author knocked their own socks off while writing it. The world Bennett has created here is a feat of worldbuilding. The scenes exude a sense of history and the descriptions bring everything to vibrant life in my mind’s eye. This book is a fun ride, even if some characters aren’t as fully realized as the settings.
Our narrator is Dinios Kol, a man whose mind has been altered so that he can remember everything. This makes him the perfect assistant for the wing of the empire’s government that handles policing and law but, like all other engravers, he has to finish his apprenticeship before he can officially join the Iudex. Once he’s done that, he can finally start earning enough money to relocate his family from the dangerous outskirts of the empire to the safer heartland. The woman he is currently assigned to—an irascible genius who rarely leaves her quarters and often wears a blindfold to block outside stimulation—might make that task difficult. Ana Dolabra has even fewer social graces than Dinios. Because Ana refuses to actually visit crime scenes, all of the legwork falls on Dinios.
Dinios’s first official crime scene is utterly bizarre. The victim has been poisoned with something that caused a tree to violently grow out of his chest, killing him nearly instantly. There are a few longshot suspects but it quickly becomes clear that something larger is afoot, to paraphrase another fictional detective who clearly inspired Ana. Much of the book shows Dinios investigating and then reporting his impressions and findings to Ana. I was thankful that Dinios was our narrator. Exploring the world through his eyes is much more interesting than staying with Ana while she ratiocinates—although I was entertained by her delightfully rude questioning of various witnesses and suspects. Ana’s ability to make stunning intuitive leaps allows the investigation to rapidly progress even though there are only the few clues Dinios’s eagle-eye found to really go on. Thankfully, Ana is trusted enough by the people running the show that no one tells her to stop investigating. She and Dinios have almost complete carte blanche to follow the trail wherever it goes, at least until they run up against a spectacularly wealthy and well-connected aristocratic family.
The Tainted Cup gallops along through crime scenes and interrogations and stunning revelations. Victims and accomplices pile up. The plot twists and turns all over the place, keeping me guessing even while I was inhaling the amazing descriptions of a world where chemistry and botany have been developed to the point where humans can be altered mentally or mentally for all kinds of purposes. I’m glad that this book is a series launch. I can’t wait to dive into Dinios’s next adventure because I just can’t get enough of the world Bennett has created here.