Here’s my next post in my quest to read and review all six finalists for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novel, to be announced on August 30, 2026, in Anaheim, California, at LAcon:

Again, the list of the finalists:

• A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–reviewed in this post
• The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)
• The Raven Scholar, Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)
• Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)–reviewed HERE
• Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
• The Incandescent, Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK)–reviewed HERE

A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)

This novel is the second in the author’s Shadow of the Leviathan series, also billed as “An Ana and Din Mystery.” Never fear–you can read it standalone. Everything you really need to enjoy it is communicated neatly in the opening pages.

Best of all, I suppose, is to start with the first book in the series, The Tainted Cup. See my review HERE. That novel won last year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award as well. I read it and enjoyed it. But if I were a mystery fan AS WELL AS a fantasy fan, I would have devoured it. The Tainted Cup was also nominated for an Edgar Award–think Sherlock Holmes goes to Fantasyland.

Full disclosure: I’m not a mystery fan or reader, although there are certain mystery writers I do read (I’ll read any book Tana French writes), and as a fan of historical fiction, I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a novel more than Iain Pears’s An Instance of the Fingerpost, as well as some of the Matthew Shardlake mysteries by C. J. Sansom. But I’m neither a true mystery fan nor a devoted Baker Street fan-girl. If you are one or the other, and especially if you are both–AND a fantasy reader–Bennett’s books will be catnip for you.

Like Sherlock and Watson in the famous stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Bennett’s series features two detectives, one an eccentric genius (Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock, Bennett’s Ana Dolabra) and the other his/her faithful assistant (Conan Doyle’s Watson, Bennett’s Dinios Kol). Din narrates the story in both books. I see a Book 3 is in the works, so we will see if Din stays the narrator. I’m expecting he will.

In The Tainted Cup, Din is a troubled young man trying to find himself. He needs to come to terms with his comparatively low social status, his disability, and his hugely, unnaturally enhanced ability to remember every detail of what he sees. Now, in A Drop of Corruption, Din has come into his own as a person, although he is still troubled about his exact connection to his profession. He has chosen it mostly for financial reasons and now, as he is having second thoughts about it, he is too beholden to his creditors to back out of it. His current job as the assistant to someone as demanding as Ana threatens to consume his entire life. Does he really want that?

As Din sorts through his options, he embarks on one more job for Ana. He needs the money, so he takes it. But he decides it may be the last. Then, as he is reeled into a murky world of swamps and court politics and terrifyingly powerful magic and murder, the job presents a mystery so compelling and so dangerous to the world that he can’t abandon it even if he wanted to. As the mystery grips Din, it grips us, the readers, as well.

The world-building in A Drop of Corruption, continuing the world of The Tainted Cup, is flamboyant, although I wouldn’t go so far as to compare these novels with China Miéville’s, as one reviewer did. But Bennett’s fantasy world is fascinating and satisfyingly detailed. The characters are interesting. I found both Ana and Din more interesting than in the first book. We discover Ana is not merely eccentric, she is much creepier than we readers of Book 1 could imagine. Din is more mature. At the end of Book 1, we’ve left him wistfully in love. In this book, he cheerfully searches for sexual partners in all the right and wrong places.

The mystery, though. That’s where I have trouble. As in Book 1, Book 2’s mystery seems engineered and over-complicated, and the big reveal seems more explained than enacted. But what do I know? Combined fans of mystery and fantasy may feel otherwise. Certainly they did in the Hugo and World Fantasy choices of 2025.

One aspect of the book I really liked: the author’s afterword. Don’t overlook it. Wise words.

Next up: My review of Alix Harrow’s The Everlasting.