
The Tainted Cup
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Andrew Fallaize
About this listen
A Holmes and Watson–style detective duo take the stage in this fantasy with a mystery twist, from the Edgar-winning, multiple Hugo-nominated Robert Jackson Bennett
“Great fantasy detective stories are too rare, but Bennett—[a] rising star of fantasy—more than delivers.”—Charlie Jane Anders, The Washington Post
“A thoroughly satisfying delight from start to finish.”—Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times Book Review
NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Elle, BookPage
In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.
Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.
At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior—but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.
As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.
By an “endlessly inventive” (Vulture) author with a “wicked sense of humor” (NPR), The Tainted Cup mixes the charms of detective fiction with brilliant world-building to deliver a fiendishly clever mystery that’s at once instantly recognizable and thrillingly new.
©2024 Robert Jackson Bennett (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“I loved this. A twisty detective story, a weird fantasy, a thrilling adventure—The Tainted Cup is a masterstroke. I want Bennett to write a dozen of these, and send them to me yesterday.”—Max Gladstone, New York Times bestselling co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time War
“The Tainted Cup is a true fantasy mystery, with a leading duo who stand with Holmes and Watson among the greats. And Bennett sets it all in a squishy, fascinating, biopunk world I’m dying to find out more about. Bring on the next one!”—Django Wexler, author of the Shadow Campaigns series
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Pretty good
- By Anne on 03-18-25
By: Ben H. Winters
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Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
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Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
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The Signal
- By: Eric Buchman, Gabriel Urbina, Sarah Shachat
- Narrated by: Paget Brewster, full cast
- Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
- Original Recording
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Two astronomers have detected a strange, pulsing signal from deep space. Within hours, the US government goes into lockdown, restricting airspace and scrubbing scientific data. Was the signal an intercepted communication revealing alarming plans for an enemy’s military strike? Or has humanity at long last found proof of extraterrestrial life?
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Great listen.
- By Vanessa on 12-07-24
By: Eric Buchman, and others
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In the ice, east of the Black Rock, there is a hole into which broken children are thrown. Yaz's people call it the Pit of the Missing, and now it is drawing her in as she has always known it would. To resist the cold, to endure the months of night when even the air itself begins to freeze, requires a special breed. Variation is dangerous, difference is fatal. And Yaz is not the same.
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Couldn't Do it, Gave it my ALL
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A trolley car pulls into the station. Four minutes before, the inhabitants were seen boarding at the previous station. All are dead. And all of them are union. The year is 1919. The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built airships that cross the seas. Guns that won the Great War. And above all, the city of Evesden. But something is rotten at the heart of Evesden. Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, Hayes must find the truth behind the city before it kills him.
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Steampunk Noir - Puts the Punk Back in Steampunk
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Back alleys & backstabbing = bollicking good times
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The Catenan Republic—the Hierarchy—may rule the world now, but they do not know everything. I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilized society in allowing my strength, my drive, and my focus—what they call Will—to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.
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I don’t know what the other reviews are on about
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Fifteen-year-old Ámbar has never known any parent other than her father, Víctor Mondragón, nor any life other than his. When a tattooed mercenary kills Víctor’s best friend and vows that Víctor is next, father and daughter set off on a joyride across Argentina in search of bloody retribution....
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A trolley car pulls into the station. Four minutes before, the inhabitants were seen boarding at the previous station. All are dead. And all of them are union. The year is 1919. The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built airships that cross the seas. Guns that won the Great War. And above all, the city of Evesden. But something is rotten at the heart of Evesden. Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, Hayes must find the truth behind the city before it kills him.
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Steampunk Noir - Puts the Punk Back in Steampunk
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Among Thieves
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In just over a year’s time, Ryia Cautella has already earned herself a reputation as the quickest, deadliest blade in the dockside city of Carrowwick - not to mention the sharpest tongue. But Ryia Cautella is not her real name. For the past six years, a deadly secret has kept her in hiding, running from town to town, doing whatever it takes to stay one step ahead of the formidable Guildmaster - the sovereign ruler of the five kingdoms of Thamorr. No matter how far or fast she travels, his servants never fail to track her down...but even the most powerful men can be defeated.
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Back alleys & backstabbing = bollicking good times
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I don’t know what the other reviews are on about
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First Sister has no name and no voice. As a priestess of the Sisterhood, she travels the stars alongside the soldiers of Earth and Mars - the same ones who own the rights to her body and soul. When her former captain abandons her, First Sister’s hopes for freedom are dashed when she is forced to stay on her ship with no friends, no power, and a new captain - Saito Ren - whom she knows nothing about. She is commanded to spy on Captain Ren by the Sisterhood, but soon discovers that working for the war effort is much harder when you’re falling in love.
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Fresh bold story with a jaw dropping twist
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At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls—Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle—took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC.
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This is the Queer Fantasy you've been looking for
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Best-selling author Robert Jackson Bennett has won widespread critical acclaim for his unique brand of darkly inventive fiction. In The Troupe, 16-year-old George Carole joins vaudeville in search of Heironomo Silenus, the man he believes to be his father. But what he discovers casts a dark pall over his world: Silenus' troupe hides a dangerous secret - one that invites death to all in its vicinity.
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Not worth the effort!
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American Elsewhere
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Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....
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You are entering the twighlight zone
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I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life. Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans. I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts; I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, making myself the dark queen of the world.
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Intersting concept, way too much self pity
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Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
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Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party—or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people. So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk.
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Enjoyable Fantasy Read
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It has been 20 years since the end of the war. The dictatorial Augurs, once thought of almost as gods, were overthrown and wiped out during the conflict, their much-feared powers mysteriously failing them. Those who had ruled under them, men and women with a lesser ability known as the Gift, avoided the Augurs' fate only by submitting themselves to the rebellion's Four Tenets.
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Atrocious. Almost abusive.
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Rupert's 30th birthday party is a black-tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald's—catered with cocaine and Veuve Clicquot. The morning after, his girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, a single stiletto heel jutting from under a bush. All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about aristocrats and Classics degrees, Instagram influencers and whose father knows who.
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you won't be able to understand the make narrator
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Washington Territory, 1888. With contacts on the docks and in the railroad, and with a buyers' market funneling product their way, Alma Rosales and her opium-smuggling crew are making a fortune. They spend their days moving product and their nights at the Monte Carlo, the center of Tacoma's queer scene, where skirts and trousers don't signify and everyone's free to suit themselves.
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The Melancholy of Untold History
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A beautifully crafted, enriching saga inspired by East Asian mythology, The Melancholy of Untold History is Minsoo Kang’s debut novel, steeped in history like R.F. Kuang’s Babel, epic in scope like Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land, and lyrically exciting like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, interweaving four complex yet entertaining stories as they shape and create a nation’s literary narrative through the themes of love and grief.
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Threads That Bind
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Story
Descendants of the Fates are always born in threes: one to weave, one to draw, and one to cut the threads that connect people to the things they love and to life itself. The Ora sisters are no exception. Io, the youngest, uses her Fate-born abilities as a private investigator in the half-sunken city of Alante. But her latest job leads her to a horrific discovery: somebody is abducting women, maiming their life-threads, and setting the resulting wraiths loose in the city to kill.
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Amazing Story, the Narration!!
- By Thatchels on 08-13-23
By: Kika Hatzopoulou
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Six Crimson Cranes
- Six Crimson Cranes, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth Lim
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
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Shiori'anma, the only princess of Kiata, has a secret. Forbidden magic runs through her veins. Normally she conceals it well, but on the morning of her betrothal ceremony, Shiori loses control. At first, her mistake seems like a stroke of luck, forestalling the wedding she never wanted. But it also catches the attention of Raikama, her stepmother.
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If you loved Daughter of the Forest/Fairytales
- By Elizabeth on 07-10-21
By: Elizabeth Lim
What listeners say about The Tainted Cup
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- Justin Bowers
- 03-28-24
A great mystery and story
This story reminded me of so many murder mysteries, but what stood out to me were a few things; that the murders were taking place during, in effect, a state of emergency, making things difficult. Anna is an incredibly fun character, like Sherlock Holmes or Poirot with a dash of Benoit Blanc, albeit more eccentric and foul mouthed. I also like that the Empire is not portrayed as a hopelessly corrupt, that it shows that while there are troubles, justice can still be done. Overall I would definitely look into this again one day.
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- Franz
- 02-27-24
Very fun fantasy mystery
Some nice twists and absolutely Superb Narration. I’ll read/listen to more Robert Jackson Bennett
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- unco
- 02-26-24
I did not want this book to end.
This book surprised me at every turn. I kept imagining different outcomes and I was inevitably wrong. It took me a bit to fully immerse myself in the Empire and its people. The world building was very well done and detailed. By the time I was well enough into the book I could smell the sea breeze and feel the squelch of mud beneath my feet.
This was my first book by Robert Jackson Bennett but it will not be my last. Also, kudos to Andrew Fallaize as narrator.
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- CC
- 05-09-24
I’d like this book to shoot to the top of your 🎧TBR like dappleglass.
Grab your wooden sword and vials of your favorite smells because we’re solving crimes here. 😅
My goodness. From sea walls shaking to insane items in nature, this book is equal parts intriguing and fun.
If you haven’t read RJB yet, don’t sleep on them for too long. (Both Foundryside & The Divine Cities, both completed series, were solid 4 ⭐️ IMHO).
If you have read RJB- is it just me, or does this feel like his strongest book 1 yet?
Incredible voice work by Andrew Fallaize – impressive range for an extremely full cast of characters. TBH, his performance makes it an easy 5 ⭐️.
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- E. Huth
- 05-21-24
Outstanding narrator
Very good fantasy/mystery with an excellent narrator who really brought the two main characters to life. The hope is that Mr. Fallaize will be back for any sequels.
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- Brian Knight
- 05-26-24
Fantastic blending of unique fantasy world with a detective novel
Fantastic blend of unique fantasy world with a detective novel. Loved the narrator as well. Nothing I didn’t like, one of the most well done novels I’ve ever listened to. In my top 3 favorites.
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- Rhyse Curtis
- 05-30-24
A delightful mystery in a stunningly detailed new world
I am enamored with the world Bennett created and with the vibrant cast of characters provided for us. If you are a fan of mystery in a unique fantasy setting, you will not go amiss with this title. I would give it more stars if I could.
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- Shacara Ledbetter
- 07-22-24
Beautifully crafted mystery
Absolutely enjoyed the twists, turns, and drama this novel offered! The narrator was incredible and clearly enjoyed the story as much as I'm sure you will!
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- litgal89
- 08-02-24
Captivating Storytelling
I was booked on this book after just a few chapters, listening to it whenever I had a few minutes of downtime. The world building, character development, and mystery are all compelling. Hoping this becomes a series of adventures!
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- colleen lawson
- 11-03-24
Lovely mystery, funny and very timely. Lots of metaphors for this moment in history.
Loved everything, writer and reader were the hosts that graciously entertained me with a wonderful tale.
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