blog: The Tained Cup book review

src/content/blog/2026-03-28-the-tainted-cup.md

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+title: '📖 Book Review: ''The Tainted Cup'' by Robert Jackson Bennett'
+date: 2026-03-28T21:48:33.769Z
+slug: 2026-03-28-the-tainted-cup
+author: Thomas Wilson-Cook
+
+---
+This review contains minor character spoilers.  They're things you learn about individuals in the first fifty-ish pages and they're not mysteries.  Here is my spoiler-free verdict: if you like fantasy and always wished you could make a bit more time for crime fiction (or even vice versa), read this book.  It's good.  Alright, well, farewell to those who wish to remain pristine.
+
+Robert Jackson Bennett's book reminds me a little of James Alistair Henry's *Pagans* - both were written by men whose names are actually three separate mens' names[^1].  If I was three men would I also be able to write genre fiction where you're 90% certain it's detective-forward crime thriller, but 10% it's lore-rich fantasy world building?  
+
+Jackson Bennett sets their book in a semi-industrialised, plant-punk (imagine cyber punk but with plants; or solar punk... with plants) version of South-East Asia.  We follow Dinios Kol, a dyslexic-coded (but un-diagnosed, it appears non-codified in the society) assistant investigator as he ... assists in the investigation of his brilliant, and autistic-coded, boss Ana Dolabra.
+
+The book opens with Kol investigating the gruesome death scene of a dignitary at the house of a local wealthy family.  We spend the rest of the book learning that it's absolutely just that: a simple murder.  Actually, it's a natural death, he died peacefully and although every death is a tragedy, everyone agreed it was his time.
+
+The barely-a-murder is unattached to a wider conspiracy.  Don't worry about the 430 page count.  It's a simple not-even-a-murder.  There's at least 420 pages detailing the mundane inner workings of a functional empire's justice and healthcare systems.  After they solve the death really quickly, there's a 100 page appendix of detailed governmental paperwork, some of it not even story relevant.  You get the impression that Robert Jackson Bennett really loves multi-part forms.
+
+I'm obviously joking, it's 400-some pages of investigation that takes a look at the way that private wealth and public service can conflict with each other.  We get more than one satisfying "gather the suspects in the parlour" moments, where the detective eliminates them one-by-one until we're left with the guilty party.
+
+Though Jackson Bennett downplays the influence directly ([Fantasy Book Critic Interview](https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2024/02/author-interview-robert-jackson-bennett.html#:~:text=The%20pairing%20was%20actually%20inspired%20less%20by%20Sherlock%20Holmes%20and%20more%20by%20the%20Nero%20Wolfe%20books%2C%20by%20Rex%20Stout%3A)), you can't help but notice a Holmes-Watson dynamic in the book: our brilliant but eccentric investigator parses the world at an unfathomable speed, coming to initially absurd but evidently correct conclusions - told from the perspective of their ordinary side-kick.  
+
+Don't forget, the original Sherlock Holmes stories were serialised fiction for the Victorian audience, an easy narrative framing and familiar plot device that were logistically helpful.  I didn't mention the dyslexia and autism bit because people are their diagnosable conditions, but because it adds a sense of symbiosis and dependency that I think helps this book stand out.  
+
+The BBC's *Sherlock* is probably the most culturally relevant (to me) version of Holmes, and underneath that series' (truly very great) visual production is a main character who we're never really certain that we like[^4].  If being very clever is enough to make you like someone, then look no further than this.  But for the rest of us, he's portrayed as both unlikeable and also evidently unliked - and he doesn't get the "he says it like it is" carve out that we grant to the Gordon Ramseys of the world[^2].
+
+Don't get me wrong, Jackson Bennett doesn't flip our expectations, or use the device as a way to reflect some larger point, he just quietly refines it.  And that's probably at least a little due to the fact he wasn't directly trying to riff off the Holmes-Watson dynamic.
+
+The brilliant detective in this book is played as someone overwhelmed by the world.  Someone who has to wear a blindfold most of the time, and who had to learn to read through their fingertips by the impression of ink on the page because, we assume, they are so easily overwhelmed by visuals.  Dolabra isn't  *beloved* by those around her but she's respected and when she is obnoxious, we get the sense it's because she's frustrated at a situation, not a person.  
+
+As an aside, I was surprisingly refreshed by the fact that the lead detective appears to be motivated by simply doing a good job.  By solving problems and putting bad people away.  There's no need to dominate a workplace, no dead spouse or parents to avenge, no divorce to drink away.  For all way know, she's a divorced orphan, but if she is it never really comes up.  We hear more about how she likes her meat cooked (spoiler: quite literally zero cooked if possible) than we do any background revenge seeking.
+
+She's played much more similarly to the actually intelligent people I know - simply confident.  And as someone committed to, but not zealous about, her culture and society.  In an interview with *Fantasy Book Critic* the author said ([link](https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2024/02/author-interview-robert-jackson-bennett.html#:~:text=era%2E-,My,aright), interview contains spoilers):
+
+> My suspicion is that murder mysteries sort of encapsulate the idea of a functional civil, legal, and bureaucratic state: something has gone horribly wrong, the appropriate authorities have been dispatched, and everyone is trying to put things aright.
+
+This belief from the author really comes through.  At times I was left thinking "well why is evil accomplice character not busting out a sword and go down swinging?" - a lot of the characters have a literally paralysing respect for authority.
+
+Likewise, our Holmes, isn't played for some bumbling schmuck.  They're a member of the empire's military who has a job to do and some family to support back from (not that we're told a single one of their names, or even really how to feel about them).  Dutiful son (or nephew?  brother?), they're lucky to have him.
+
+The dynamic reminds me a little bit of M W Craven's Washington Poe series ([link](https://mwcraven.com/series/washington-poe/)), especially the first handful where the author trends closer to reality[^3].
+
+It's unusual for me to get this far through my thoughts on a fantasy book and not really mention the world.  Often the wider world building or lore  *is* a character or plot point.  The intricate, barely explained worlds of James Islington's books come to mind, or the puzzle box that is Susanna Clarke's *Piranesi*.
+
+To some extent, I get the sense that Jackson Bennett thought the fantasy setting itself wasn't a consideration.  He's created a really interesting world, one dominated by strange and frankly hostile nature.  In a YouTube / podcast interview[^5] he said ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfKVJ2xZIS0), start at around 06:00):
+
+> As well as to sort of hammer home the idea that like, nature doesn't really care about anything that's in it.  It can be beautiful and... it can be stunning and it can be amazing, but at the same time to nature itself, nothing is something that can't be lost and forgotten.... so I wanted to sort of reground our perception of nature as something that is immensely powerful but also frequently immensely hostile.
+
+*Nothing is something that can't be lost and forgotten* is an absolute banger to drop in an interview about your fantasy detective fiction, Robert.  
+
+There's an interesting tension here: the characters are placed in a world where non-human animals (?) actively want to kill them.  Their entire society, and the time frame of the book, is oriented around the fact that every wet season huge big Eldritch horrors emerge from the oceans and stomp around to crush us.  But also we've gotta figure out who killed this guy.
+
+It's this bit of nuance that makes me think this is a book for book people.  Specifically, I think, fantasy book people.  People who have to reinforce their IKEA book shelves because their heavy hard backs are overloading them.
+
+I don't think I'd recommend this book for someone who wasn't across both fantasy *and* crime.  Maybe, maybe, if they were a generous reader and they were crime loving but fantasy curious; or fantasy adoring and crime agnostic.  I think without a strong foot in one door, this *is* a hard sell.
+
+I would worry that because this is a book about solving a crime, the protagonist never really engages with or explains anything beyond what is strictly necessary for the crime.  I think, if someone wasn't especially interested in speculative fiction, they could ask why the book couldn't just be set it modern day Sweden or even in any of the actual empires in South East Asia in the last couple of centuries.
+
+Other than "all books have to be set somewhere, so why not big scary sea monsters?" (which *is* a compelling argument to me) - I don't have a good answer to that question.
+
+Words like "grafted" and "altered" are thrown about and you just have to interpret them from context.  Somehow something can be done to a person and something about them changes?  And that's because of something in nature that we harvested?  Altered?  Synthesised or refined?
+
+If you can accept that level of vagueness, and realise that actually any more detail *would* detract from the story we're being told, I think this is a great book.  
+
+I can see exactly how this book won the 2025 Hugo award for Best Novel.  If you're the kind of person who cares to vote on science fiction / fantasy awards, this is precisely a book you'd enjoy.
+
+Heck, no one even asked me to vote, and I adored it.
+
+4.5/5⭐
+
+---
+
+[^1]: Both authors' bios refer to themselves as he/him.  It would be a real shame if I had to let this *excellent* opening bit go because of someone's preferred pronouns.  It was strange to find myself hoping that some modern fantasy was indeed written by men.
+
+[^2]: See how mr. Ramsey interacts with children, and you'll also see how much his attitude is at least partially a persona for someone who loves food and hates idiots ([in bread](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR7KLmVThLk)) playing pretend at his passion.  
+
+[^3]: The first book, *The Puppet Show*, won the Crime Writers' Award Gold Dagger, it is legitimately a very good book.  They just get a bit more... lose as the series goes on.
+
+[^4]: I recommend hbomberguy's YouTube video on the topic ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkoGBOs5ecM))
+
+[^5]: Just as a side note, isn't it terrifying that media has become flattened to the point where I *truly* don't know if this interview was conducted as a video then put to podcast or vice versa.  It's all just content for the content mill, and that's sad.
+