I really enjoyed the last book in this series, so as soon as I had the time to sit down with this one, I was on it!
Thanks to the author, as well as Del Rey for the review copy!
In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.
To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.
Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire’s greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.
Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.
I once again love Ana Dolabra, but I really liked Din in this story as well!
A Drop of Corruption is the continuing story of Dinios Kol, the assistant to the brilliant but very eccentric Ana Dolabra – an expert in solving mysteries. Din uses his augmented memory to bring exact details of people and places to Ana to help her solve the most unsolvable mysteries the empire can throw at them. This time, the empire has sent them out to Yarrowdale, where there has been what appears to be a… bank robbery? But one that cannot have happened. An impossible bank robbery. It’s up to Ana – and so therefore Din, to figure out how, and most importantly why, this could have happened.
Y’all, this one was even better than the first one in my opinion. As I said, Ana has always been my favorite character, because she’s just so…. her. But Din definitely grew on me in this one as well. I was glued to my seat the whole way through this one and the story went from a simple (okay, not simple at all) bank robbery into… something much more than that. By the end of the story, the mystery was so much more than a bank robbery – and I didn’t see any of it coming at all.
We learned more about Din, and more about Ana in this one, and I was absolutely on board for it. A Drop of Corruption introduced another character, Malo, who is a warden in Yarrowdale. She has been augmented as well, and her skills include upgrades to her senses. I really hope that she remains a character in the next book as well, because she definitely has the sort of attitude and sense of humor that i enjoy.
All told, I really enjoyed this book a lot. I am excited to see what else happens to Ana and Din (and hopefully Malo) in the next volume. 5/5 stars!~
superstardrifter 
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