The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson BennettMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Robert Jackson Bennett returns with the start of a brand new series, although this book is pretty standalone in its unique new world. Imagine if Rian Johnson in the midst of his Knives Out era collaborated with Jasper Fforde in the midst of his Shades of Grey era, and you'd have something approximating this book - biopunk fantasy murder mystery with creeping vines and spores out to kill everyone (so a bit of Tress of the Emerald Sea), rampaging leviathans out to sea (so a bit of Attack on Titan, and infrastructure is a constant imperial investment), quirky investigators with various sensory improvements leading to neurodivergence that makes them almost impossible to live normally among their peers, and a unique imperial setting mashing up aspects of other historical places and times that you wouldn't normally expect to work (kind of Greco-Roman, kind of Japanese, and kind of Ottoman - the latter especially since Turkish appears to be the basis of the imperial language.) Bennett's done it again with another home run of a book, and now that I've learned he wrote a few others before he really started making a name for himself with City of Stairs and sequels, I'll have to go back and read some of his earlier works at long last. But I'd be pleasantly surprised if any of them hold up as much as this under the radar masterpiece does.
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