A Swamp King and A Very Small Admiral, Part I

Reading A Drop of Corruption and Memory together

Last year, during my ill-fated and soul-crushing encounter with the 2025 Hugo nominees, I accused Robert Jackson Bennett of writing a book redolent with fasco-libertarian dogwhistles: The Tainted Cup. Not an unentertaining book full of fasco-libertarian dogwhistles, so when the sequel, A Drop of Corruption, appeared at my library, I decided to read it, as I knew it would once again be an awards darling and I could stand to be amused for free.

The good news: I recant my aspersions about Robert Jackson Bennett’s political tendencies. I see now that he is not a weird right-winger, just a writer without a strong grasp of “theme” as one uses it in the composition of fiction. The bad news: A Drop of Corruption is a longer, weaker, and less engaging book than The Tainted Cup. We’ll get into it.

Around the same time I finished A Drop of Corruption (ADoC), I also finished reading Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold, a pivotal entry into Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. I would not self-identify as a Vorkosigan super-fan, merely a Vorkosigan appreciator, and finishing Memory took me an embarrassingly long time. Though it possesses a nearly identical page count to ADoC, Memory took me an entire year to read. But having arrived at the end of both ADoC and Memory on nearly the same day, I will state unequivocally Memory is the better book.

Pacing as a Concept

Both Memory and ADoC are long, slow books concerning mysterious crimes undermining government agencies and threatening the complex relations between colonial and colonized entities. Both suffer from some wonky pacing. However, at the end of Memory, I said “Ah, that paid off!” At the end of ADoC, I said “Okay.” Why?

Though the slow pacing of Memory stems from numerous frontloaded sequences of Miles moping around his estate while lamenting the loss of his command and his military career, none of that emo-time is wasted. Its plot relevance awaits you at the end of the book, gestating into meaning. Ana and Din, the protagonists of ADoC, do labor more actively throughout their book, discussing plot details and going places. Yet so much of that proves to be wasted time, because ADoC confuses plot development and character development all over the place.

The arc of Memory lands so well because its pivotal moment hinges on our understanding of Miles’ psychology and desires, and the expectations of him we developed from that understanding. This understanding and expectation arise from reading all those drawn-out sequences of Miles lost in miserable contemplation. We feel deeply when Miles makes a real strong moral choice at the end of Memory because we can imagine a world where he doesn’t. We are proud of him.

I don’t think Ana and Din make any real choices during ADoC. They solve the mystery on behalf of The Empire, like they’re supposed to, talking over and over about the book’s plot points, all which reveal very little new about their characters. We discover new facts about their jobs or their backstories, which do not speak to their selfhood. They give us very little meat to chew upon, except as memorizable lore. I’ve already forgotten the moment in which Din resolves to stay on as Ana’s assistant, a conflict which reiterated a lot of plot beats from the first book. I’m unable to forget the powerful moment at which Miles chooses to prioritize his friends and his duty to them over his military career and the prestige he desperately craves.

Clarity of World-Building and Writing Purpose

I keep the Vorkosigan Saga at arm’s length because of its immersion in the milieu of aristocracy. Miles is a noble with enormous hereditary privilege. Despite living in a space future and experiencing a great deal of oppression because of this same privilege-granting system, at heart he believes in it and I guess that’s fair as he grew up in it. He loves his emperor and in his defense Gregor is a great guy. Miles’ mom, originally from a more progressive Federation-type society, lightly ribs Miles and the other Barryarans about their behind-the-times patriarchy and monarchy, but she’s careful not to stir up too much trouble, which is again fair.

The monarchical nature of the Vorkosigan Saga’s setting intentionally evokes the settings of many classic historical novels, which I appreciate. But I also hold the ideological tendencies of those classic novels at arms’ length. It’s a testament to Bujold’s authorial skill that I understand the imaginary cultural context of Miles’ world and how it underlies his beliefs as well as I understand the contexts of these historical novels set in real times and places. No matter which entry in the series I’m reading, I understand the roles the characters play in their society and I understand the reasoning which Miles, Gregor, Lady Cordelia, and their friends have used to develop the strategies by which they try to improve their world with minimal upheaval. If the series’ attitude towards aristocracy tends towards an unsatisfying incrementalism, that incrementalism is at least textured and contextualized, a meaningful process if not one wholly satisfying to me.

I don’t really understand Ana and Din’s roles in the government of their empire, or the shape of The Empire as a whole. Ana and Din are a type of feds, Internal Affairs or FBI agents basically, who investigate crimes committed against agents of The Empire, I think? They both seem to love The Empire, or at least revere it as a critical structure for producing equality and upward economic mobility. But their work constantly reveals that there is corruption everywhere in the government. I would buy this if we were intended to see Ana and Din as deeply naive and now uncovering the truth about the vicious nature of their society. But it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. The unexpressed cognitive dissonance between the valorization of The Empire and the constant revelations of its corruption made the first book feel so fasc-coded.

For all Bennett’s cool terminology, I don’t feel his world as sharply as I feel Bujold’s because none of his characters occupy a subject position as strong and meaningful as Miles’. Din, a very neutral and detached character, serves as POV character, and he just doesn’t have a take on anything. He’s #Apolitical. I should know Din better since he’s the first-person POV narrator of this book. Everything that happens in ADoC happens to him personally. Because of Bujold’s skill, however, I know Miles better, despite his story being told in third-person. He’s more than a narrative tool or even a POV: he’s a guy to me.

Tune in next week for Part Two of this review, in which we discuss how managing theme is key to making a book good and characters meaningful. Somehow, after all these years, it still needs to be said.