64 pages • 2-hour read
A Drop of Corruption
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Themes
The Dangerous Allure of Autocracy
In the author’s note to A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett writes, “I feel there is perhaps no other genre of fiction more enamored of autocracies than fantasy” (459). He admits to being among the genre’s readers who, in the 2010s, “eagerly gobbled up tales of cruel, primitive worlds where petty resentment, sexual sadism, and sheer stupidity regularly led to the torture, deprivation, and deaths of thousands” (460), a possible reference to George R.R. Martin’s graphically violent and massively popular A Game of Thrones (1996) and its sequels. The real world, by contrast, Bennett opines, presently “seems replete with examples as to why autocracies are, to put it mildly, very stupid” (459). Bennett’s post-textual note positions A Drop of Corruption within a genre that—despite taking place in worlds not our own—is highly reflective of the real world. The novel illustrates a human view of autocracies, both the impulses that lead a people to willingly cede power to autocrats and the inevitable corruption that follows.
When Din arrives in Yarrow, he has no reason to trust in the rulership of kings. Din and serves an Empire with a largely vestigial Emperor and an egalitarian political ethos—a place where the role of every individual in nation-building is enshrined in the imperial motto. Announcing that the Empire no longer wishes to acquire Yarrow, Kardas observes that the Empire no longer behaves in an imperial manner. The Empire is satiated, Kardas notes, and no longer seeks to acquire more land.
Din’s early experiences in the kingdom of Yarrow do not inspire much faith in the beneficence of kings. He sees people struggling with physical ailments easily treated in the Empire, stands in buildings that list sideways in their disrepair, and is horrified to learn that Yarrow uses a legal loophole to justify enslaving its poor. Even so, when Din sees the grandeur of the king’s hall in the High City, he is momentarily seduced into believing in the potential of kings.
Despite the opulence and beauty that Yarrow produces for its ruling class, the novel repeatedly illustrates that autocracies always prove disappointing. Autocrats are just men, it argues, and men are corruptible. Autocrats merely have more power than most to make that corruption affect many others for their own self-aggrandizement. The text is not hopeless about the malicious power of such autocrats, however; Ana, who possesses enough skill and power to make herself an autocrat, does not choose to do so. Instead, she works tirelessly to prevent autocrats from abusing their power to harm others. The text thus presents resistance to autocracy as a powerful tool against corruption.
The Importance of Stopping the Spread of Corruption
Throughout much of A Drop of Corruption, Din longs to transfer to the Legion, another Iyalet in Khanum’s military, as he sees the Iudex as an ineffectual body tasked with solving crimes only after they have happened. This professional dissatisfaction melds into his personal life, pushing him to pursue short-term and shallow relationships in search of meaning. Ana, a fervent believer in the importance of justice, offers him a bargain: If he still wishes to transfer when eligible, she will recommend him to the Legion. She contends, however, that he will come to see the value of the Iudex in maintaining the moral standards of the Empire so that it merits the Legion’s defense. Indeed, by the end of the novel, Din agrees that he will continue to work alongside Ana, as he has recognized that stopping the spread of corruption is his most effective way to serve the Empire.
As Din pursues justice for the dead, he encounters those who suffer for other people’s corrupt pursuit of power. He is horrified by Yarrow’s enslavement of the naukari and by the smugglers whose violent deaths are collateral damage in Pyktis’s elaborate scheme. Though his official task is to solve Sujedo’s murder, Din learns that every investigation is about more than the crime itself. A crime is a starting point from which greater evil can be uncovered. In this case, Pyktis’s murder spree reveals the violence and greed that underpin every autocracy. Like other would-be autocrats, Pyktis initially sees himself as working for the greater good. He believes that he is simply doing what is necessary to protect his people and right the injustices of the past. As he becomes convinced that he alone can right these wrongs, he becomes more and more morally compromised, echoing the book’s title, implying that a single drop of corruption becomes a spreading stain that corrupts everything it touches.
In the novel’s final scene, in which Ana and Din covertly discuss Ana’s status as a remade member of the ancient race of Khanum, Ana offers a sketch of her long-term view of the benefits of seeking justice. Solving crimes, per her definition, is a matter of stopping corruption from spreading. Kings and criminals will always continue to rise, she contends, and they will always continue to seek their own benefit at the expense of others. This necessitates people like herself and Din, who work to stem these crimes before they can increase and continue. She offers this view as the marrow sails out of Yarrowdale—something that will benefit countless people and which would never have occurred if she and Din had not come to investigate Sujedo’s death. The closing image of the ship sailing out of the harbor offers a bold example of the difference their investigations have made.
The Price of Progress
In Khanum, to fight the leviathans that menace the shores every year, Imperial citizens undergo “augmentations” that improve their physical or mental capabilities. Din, for example, serves as an engraver, a Sublime (or mentally augmented person) who has perfect recall of every detail he witnesses for the remainder of his life. As magnificent as these augmentations are, and as essential as they are to fighting the titans, each comes with a cost. Engravers like Din, who remember in precise detail everything they experience, become overwhelmed by the many, often terrible things they have seen. People with physical augmentations are similarly faced with physical burdens; Malo, in A Drop of Corruption, has the heightened senses of an Apoth, but these have also given her discolorations and bulbous growths on her nose. These augmentations do not merely represent the limits of the human body. Instead, the text presents all progress at coming at a price—though whether this progress is worth such costs is less clear.
The work upon the Shroud that led to the successful system for transporting living titan’s marrow was enormously costly, as Ghrelin tells Din while they observe the marrow. The financial cost is astronomical, but the human cost is greater still, as numerous Apoths died while undertaking the dangerous experimentation. For Ghrelin, the benefits of his work are distinctly worth the cost; he speaks joyously about how grafts and augmentations, paid for in Apoths’ labor, have improved the maternal mortality rate in Yarrow and reduced starvation and treatable disease. Ghrelin speaks about progress with the fervor of a true believer and, indeed, his passion for the marrow borders on the religious. The downside of this techno-utopianism is that it justifies any degree of suffering in the present to bring about its imagined, perfect future.
Thelenai’s arrest at the end of the novel pushes against the limit of Ghrelin’s faith that the ends justify the means, however. Though Thelenai is proud of the good work that the marrow will enable, she recognizes that she was motivated foremost by pride, not altruism, despite what she has previously insisted. Thelenai ends up in a middle space: She regrets her method of making the marrow project work, but she does not regret the project itself. Instead, she seems to believe that her motivations were the source of the problem. She knows that all progress comes at a price, but she believes that the harms can be mitigated by choosing the right sacrifices.
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