Review: The Tainted Cup

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

We are led to believe that this book is going to be a fantasy novel with magical elements. I don't see where magic played any part in this novel-at least not magic the way I understand it. I did find it interesting that the people of this world have augmentations/grafts added to their bodies and/or brains. These augmentations allow the user to do many amazing things.

This book kept me somewhat engaged if only to find out the why's of the mystery. I did not like the main characters, Din and Ana, one tiny bit, and I felt nothing for them. Some of the secondary characters hit the mark better than the main characters. They kept me going.

The swearing and usage of modern colloquialisms were atrocious, considering (the world? the time period?) the rest of the odd language used in this novel.

It is a very twisty mystery that many fans of this author and of this type of fantasy will enjoy.

*ARC supplied by Del Rey | Random House Group, the author, and NetGalley.

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SYNOPSIS: "In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.

Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of 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.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale."