Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Nero Wolfe but make it Japanese

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

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When a book’s premise is basically “freaky murders happen in a Japan-like country dealing with a Kaiju problem, and the murders need to be solved by an uber-intelligent shut-in and her magically altered assistant”, you’re going to pique my interest. And this book delivered its premise in all the best ways. In the world of Daretana, there are walls built to keep the Kaiju from invading, where there blood can work strange magical changes and contagions are rampant. In one of the elite mansions, a […]

Corruption and Colonization (And Kaiju)

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

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Yes, Robert Jackson Bennett is back! I am an unabashed fan of most of his writing, and was massively impressed when I first read The Tainted Cup, about a year ago. It was delightfully weird and just a little bit creepy; a Holmes and Watson style investigation in a Roman-style setting, topped off with some mycology-based body horror. In The Tainted Cup, the greatest threat the Empire of Khanum faced was not just the murders, but the Leviathans—kaiju-like creatures that emerge from the sea to wreak […]

And all the world a savage garden

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

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One of my favourite releases last year was Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. Released last week, A Drop of Corruption continues the story of Ana Dolabra, brilliant-but-eccentric investigator, and Dinios Kol, her bisexual-disaster-with-a-photographic-memory assistant. Picking up about a year after the ending of The Tainted Cup, Ana and Din are called to the edge of the Empire to investigate a murder where the victim seemingly vanished into thin air. Further complicating matters is […]

Murder, Mystery and Mycology

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

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Wow. Not only is today a public holiday, but we’re also facing temperatures in Houston that would melt us faster than the Wicked Witch of the West. So of course this makes it an excellent kind of day to try and catch up with my sorely neglected reviews. I love most of Robert Jackson Bennett’s writing, but I had no idea what he was going to get up to after finishing The Founders Trilogy. Or when he was going to release anything after The Founders […]

Kaiju Holmes

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

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A Holmes and Watson style mystery set in a high fantasy world reminiscent of Attack On Titan or Pacific Rim. Dinios Kol is an engraver. An engraver can permanently engrave memories in their mind and retrieve them at any time by inhaling different scents. He is the brand new assistant to Ana Dolabra, a brilliant but extremely eccentric Iudex investigator who is apparently in some sort of great disgrace, banished to a backwater town by the sea walls. In a nearby town a high ranking […]

If there’s flying, there’s plot going on

Locklands by Robert Jackson Bennett

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Bingo 23: Take the skies Telepathy is essentially brainwave communication, wireless and thus air-born communication. Telepathy or shared mental space is also a major factor in Locklands. Also, a good chunk of time is spent is what might be this world’s very first “airplane”. A key thing to know about Locklands is that it is the third of a trilogy, so a lot of the tech/magic references and some critical background plot will not make sense without the first two. There’s been s several year […]



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