A Drop of Corruption

[psocoptera]

A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett, 2025 fantasy, sequel to The Tainted Cup. Perfect for a tedious transatlantic flight, a nice mix of mystery, world-details, and character stuff about the central detective pair. I hadn't particularly been reading it as commentary on anything and then got to the author's note, in which RJB made it clear that he was writing against certain trends in real life and also recent trends in fantasy ( he didn't name Game of Thrones, but I thought it was pretty clear that was what he meant) and I thought it was interesting the way Incandescent was also an answering back to a work with undue cultural dominance. I mean, I suppose in one sense everything is always responding to something else, but it was an interesting coincidence to read two back-to-back that were more starkly so.