Other Voices

Yesterday, with hours to go until my library hold expired, with another hold not on the horizon before 3 weeks, I finished A Drop of Corruption, the second book in the In the Shadow of the Leviathan series by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Ana and Din are back with another grody and baffling murder. I think the consistency between the first book and the second is very good; if you liked one, you’ll like the other. Bennett maintains the same quality mystery narrative here, dropping believable misleads while feeding out enough information that when Ana makes her breakthrough realizations you can look back and see the path she took.

Bennett’s fantasy world is coming into its own as well. We pick up many months after the end of the last book, so Ana and Din have developed a stronger rapport and working relationship. We are fed more information about the world itself—with some outside perspective, as this book takes place entirely in the nation of Yarrow, which is essentially a satellite state of Khanum, pending full annexation once negotiations with Yarrow’s king complete.

I enjoy how the women are written in these books. Ana and our new, local connection, Malo, are wholly unmoored from concerns about what others think of them. Ana is brash, loud, demanding, and arrogant—except that she’s almost always right. She has a masterful understanding of her own capabilities and weaknesses and she’s not afraid to openly discuss either. She’s also crass, gluttonous, and does not have great personal hygiene habits. And yet, everyone simple handles it, because she’s so good at what she does. I feel it’s rare to see a female character like this.

When it comes to the other women in service to the empire, like Thelenai and the female members of Uhad’s crew from the last book, there is little distinction between them and their male colleagues. A number of fantasy stories have posited that their worlds are gender-equal, but many fall utterly short of showing that beyond having women around. In Bennett’s world, in Khanum, I believe it, in part because the women lack the self-consciousness that comes of being raised in a sexist society.

However, this book is politically confused. It is obvious, even before the author’s note, that Bennett thinks very little of monarchy, and its destructive power is hammered over and over throughout the book. In that closing author’s note, Bennett is highly critical both of real-world leaders behaving like kings, and the glorification of monarchy in fantasy literature. However, the glaring hole in this, to me, is that no commentary is made on the empire. Ana and Din hail from what is nothing more than an elevated monarchy—one where their centuries-old emperor has chosen to extend his power well beyond his initial borders. Now, it makes perfect sense that Ana and Din believe in the good of Khanum. They serve it, they are members of its government. However, Khanum’s pending annexation of Yarrow is posited as almost universally a good thing for Yarrow—indeed, the only character we see strongly opposed to it is easily the most loathsome character in the book. There is criticism also of Yarrow’s practice of slavery, but when Din protests that a potential Khanum retreat from the annexation would leave the slaves of Yarrow to their fate, Ana warns him it is not Khanum’s place to legislate the morality of other places. And yet, over and over and over again for all of human history, empires have believed it was their place to do just that—and violently (Hello, White Man’s Burden).

Perhaps these inconsistencies would be less sharp if we understood more about Khanum and its role in the world. In A Drop of Corruption, we are told the empire no longer conquers with strength of arms—ergo the protracted negotiations with Yarrow. However, that means it did, and even in the last book we saw how the empire treats its cantons, with the utter destruction of Oypat accepted as a reasonable price to maintain the wealth of various noble families. Even if the emperor is only a figurehead, we know that Khanum is tightly bound by the whims and desires of its nobility. It was baffling to me why this is never raised in the political discussions of Yarrow and the annexation.

Moving on, we get new backstory on both Ana and Din here, which bulks their characters out (although Din’s apparent lifelong yearning to join the Legion feels a bit out of left field) and leaves us in a very interesting place for the third book. Ana continues to be a vicious delight and without spoilers, we are finally learning what makes her so unique.

I also had to appreciate the importance the narrative places on civil servants. One of Din’s gripes about life in the Iudex is, essentially, that it is unglamorous and frequently bureaucratic. Yet the narrative champions those who do the day-to-day drudgery of running a country, frequently for no thanks. It takes the garbage men and the post office workers and the teachers and the Social Security Administration clerks to run things, and A Drop of Corruption says these people are important, and the work they do is important, even if it is rarely recognized.

Bennett has hit his stride with this series and I’m curious to see where it goes next.