Tag Archives: writer: robert jackson bennett

A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett

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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.

  1. The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh
  2. Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor
  3. A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett
  4. The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow
  5. The Raven Scholar, by Antonia Hodgson
  6. 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

The Founders Trilogy, by Robert Jackson Bennett

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Second paragraph of third chapter of Foundryside:

She cringed as she did so— she hated changing clothes. She stood in the alley and shut her eyes, wincing as the sensations of mud and smoke and soil and dark wool bled out of her thoughts, and bright, crunchy, crispy hemp fabric surged in to replace them. It was like stepping out of a nice warm bath and jumping into an icy lake, and it took some time for her mind to recalibrate.

Second paragraph of third chapter of Shorefall:

“Sign there,” said Moretti. He winced as he touched the side of his face. “And there. And there…”

Second paragraph of third chapter of Locklands:

There was what Berenice and her compatriots thought of as conventional scriving, wherein one convinced everyday objects or materials to disobey reality by writing elaborate arguments upon them, arguments that called upon other arguments and definitions to make their case, all stored nearby in a lexicon. This was the art of scriving that Berenice had grown up with, the industry that had formed the empire of Old Tevanne, ran fortresses like Grattiara, and had once allowed the merchant houses to capture the whole of the world.

This trilogy was on the Hugo ballot for Best Series this year, and I finished two of the three before the deadline and put it third (well, fourth behind No Award at the top). I very much enjoyed Bennett’s previous Divine Cities trilogy; this is a different fantasy world, but one where magic and machinery intersect according to a series of complex rules. So often in books like this, worldbuilding stops at the point where the writer needs it to in order to drive the plot; I really don’t get that sense here, I feel that the writer is playing fair with us all the way through, and the barriers that the characters face because of how the world has been created don’t seem artificial. There’s also a good spectrum of emotional engagement, romance, parent-child dynamics, deep and committed friendships; and Bennett’s not afraid to kill off important characters as he goes. And the sense of place is very well realised, whether it’s a cityscape, a blasted heath or a vast natural fortress.

I felt that the middle book was not quite as strong as the first and last; the baddy seemed a bit too powerful and that constrains the plot a bit. But otherwise this is a good series of novels set in an unusually thoughtfully constructed world. You can get them here, here and here.