Reviews with content warning for Classism - The Tainted Cup

When I was a kid, my grandparents bought me an anthology of all the Sherlock Holmes stories. When I got into Edgar Allen Poe, they pointed out to me that he's considered to have written the first detective story, and I read The Murders in the Rue Morgue with relish. This seed of detective/murder mystery fiction love has laid dormant all these years, but I think this is the water it needed to sprout.

This is a richly alien fantasy world with fun characters and a well-realized mystery. I am so proud I figured a piece out before our Sherlock expy laid it out for us! This book also made me realize how little the characters in the books I read swear, and once I got used to it... it was kind of nice to have a smart lady running around who says the word fuck. I also loved that the author understood that Sherlock is not a cold or mean person, which shines through in the way he writes his expy, Ana. Her and our PoV character Din have such great rapport while being their own characters. I also loved the disability representation, when it clicked that the protagonist actually had dyslexia and it wasn't some magical side effect I teared up.

Can't wait for the next book in the series!

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bookwyrmknits's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I think my favorite part about this book was the worldbuilding. I also enjoyed the characters and I got caught up in the mystery, but the world itself was so unique and dense that it's what stuck with me the most. Between the giant, bio-engineered air conditioning fungus and the quakes caused not by plate tectonics but by giant leviathans approaching the sea walls, this is a fantasy world where it's easy to remember that it's not OUR world, no matter how human the people seem.

And even though the people are also bio-engineered to a degree, they do feel very real, with human desires and fears. Most (if not all) of the characters we meet have changed themselves to at least a small degree, and it often seems like they felt they had to in order to get ahead in their world. The modifications they make to themselves made me wonder if I would want any of the modifications. Some people change their physical strength, others enhance their memory, and still others increase their mental aptitude for things like math or science. But the downside is that everything comes with a cost, and many of the modifications will shorten lifespans or cause mental breakdowns in later life.

If there's a downside to this book, it's that the people felt too normal compared to the setting. Yes, they are modified and super-strong or super-smart or have perfect memory. But during the scenes when they were all sitting around talking, it was easy to see them as just people. The setting, in contrast, was so much more alien.

All told, though, this was a really enjoyable murder mystery, and I'm already looking forward to the sequel. There's so much more to explore in this world, and I am really interested to see where Bennett takes his characters next. This was my first book by Robert Jackson Bennett, but it certainly won't be my last.

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iaraya's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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heather667's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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eviethebookworm's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

A solid science fiction murder mystery! Attack on Titan meets Sherlock Holmes meets Star Trek.

I do however have a major gripe with Rob’s use of the adjective ‘queer’ throughout the book. Especially considering there’s LGBTQIA+ representation, there’s certainly an awareness as to the connotations of using it as a way to describe strangeness. I would have rated this novel higher had there been more care during editing to whittle it out of the manuscript more (because I KNOW that there would have been so many more instances of it).
But alas, it cropped up seven times in the span of 170 pages or so. And that’s only after I got annoyed enough to start marking them!

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fatimaelf's review

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adventurous challenging funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Incredible beginning to what’s sure to be an incredible series!

I read Robert Jackson Bennett’s Founders trilogy last year, and honestly, it’s stuck with me ever since. That series is in my top five read series of all time, because of the world building, and the social commentary, and the characters, and the stakes.

If the rest of this series is anything like the book I just read, then it’ll join my top five, unequivocally. The POV was first person (a sad realization for me, but ultimately my disdain for it is merely a personal preference) and it worked really well here. Din is a seemingly stolid, uncompromising character, devoted to rules and laws — but he grows so much over the course of the book that he grew on me too, and I liked him as our narrator and a character in and of himself. His boss, Ana, is a sassy demon of a woman, and I loved her instantly. She’s the brilliant Sherlock of this Sherlock and Holmes type fantasy mystery, but much more lively, funny, and sarcastic. These two were our main characters, but every supporting character felt real and grounded too, and none were wasted in the least. Bennett has always had a firm grasp on his characters and their quirks, how what happens to them changes them, and why they make the choices they make, and in this it is no different.

Where the book really shone, though, was the plot, against the backdrop of a fully realized, firmly established fantasy world. The way the story unraveled was nothing short of intoxicating, each new revelation earned and leading to the next. Bennett has a clever skill in revealing a new problem or question just as you might tire of the specific answer the characters are searching for, and for providing just enough information to keep you satisfied but still guessing. When we got to the climax, just before the reveal, I genuinely found myself aching to read even faster than I already was, just to know what was happening.

Fantasy has always had a well regarded place in our culture as a vehicle to shine light on problems in our world, and Bennett does this beautifully as well. We begin with a murder, which leads to more murder, and ultimately a race to uncover what might be a plot to unravel an entire empire via its defense of its shores from giant monsters referred to as leviathan. In the course of the investigation, we discover how the Empire functions, with class issues (as with the Founders trilogy) at the forefront: the way those with money derive their power, and what those with power do to keep and grow it. And then there are those affected by those actions, those impacted personally or professionally, and what they do or don’t do in response. The mystery was worth every bit of its name. It was so well crafted, and perfectly understandable.

Was the book perfect? Probably not. But I was so engaged and enthralled by the story unfolding that I didn’t much care to note the faults — beyond one small little irritant during the reveal, whereby Ana says that the presence of a certain something would definitely prove the guilt of someone, and I’m not sure it does — and that’s why I’ve given it five stars.

Knowing Bennett, we haven’t seen the last of the leviathans, and what they truly are is likely far less insidious than the Empire’s populace believes. We also haven’t ventured beyond the Outer Rim of the Empire, and though they’ve said that’s where corruption lies thickest, somehow once we go inward I think we’ll find that to be untrue.

I genuinely cannot wait for the next book. I don’t normally read unfinished series, but now that I have, I will be given the pleasure of having to reread this book before consuming the new one. Here’s hoping I don’t have to wait long.

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nightstitch96's review

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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saltycoffee's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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