Second paragraph of third chapter:
The rambling sprawl mostly fell into three distinct pieces, moving from southeast to northwest along the side of the bay. At the southeast end was New Town, built by and for the many Iyalets of the Empire, for there they refined and shipped out countless priceless precursors and reagents through the canals. Northwest of that was Old Town, the original home of the Yarrow kings and their folk, though they had left that place long ago. And finally there was the High City, built in the ranges far northwest of that, where the current Yarrow king resided with all of his royal retinue, removed from the bustle of industry that now consumed the land of his ancestors.
I greatly enjoyed The Tainted Cup, the first of this fantasy thriller series, and I greatly enjoyed this as well. Our hero Din and his super abrasive boss Ana are sent to a distant fiefdom which is not yet part of the true empire, and find that deceit and treachery, not to mention magical chemistry on an industrial scale, are all around them. There are some brilliant twists, and it’s all done entirely fairly. You can get A Drop of Corruption here.
That all said, the Hugo deadline is coming up and this is my ranking of the books.
- The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh
- Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor
- A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett
- The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow
- The Raven Scholar, by Antonia Hodgson
- Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I think it’s a good year.
2026 Hugos: Novella | Novelette | Short Story | Dramatic Presentation, Short Form | Professional Artist | Poem | Astounding Award
Best Novel: The Incandescent | Shroud | The Raven Scholar | The Everlasting | Death of the Author | A Drop of Corruption, and my votes
Best Graphic Story or Comic: The Invisible Parade | three more finalists | A Wizard of Earthsea, and my votes
Best Related Work: Colourfields | The Cuddled Little Vice | Inventing the Renaissance | Positive Obsession, and my votes
Lodestar: Holy Terrors | Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe | Among Ghosts | They Bloom at Night | Oathbound | Sunrise on the Reaping, and my votes
Where to get them | Goodreads/Librarything/StoryGraph stats
