As a lifelong booklover with a soft spot for science fiction and dystopia, I’m always chasing stories that burrow under the skin and whisper about the systems we live within. Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Drop of Corruption (published 2025) promises precisely that: a lean, unsettling meditation on how rot seeps into everyday life until it becomes the water we swim in.
The Book
Published: 2025. Short description: a taut, dystopian tale about the slow seep of moral decay through institutions and ordinary lives, rendered with Bennett’s characteristic bite and stark clarity. Rather than the bombast of apocalyptic collapse, this story deals in quieter devastations—the kind that arrive in increments, almost politely, until it’s too late to notice they’ve remade the world.
What gripped me most is how the theme of corruption is treated not as a single act but as an environment. Bennett excels at showing how rules, paperwork, and small concessions accumulate into a suffocating architecture of compromise. The focus isn’t on moustache-twirling villains; it’s on the cost of looking away, of accepting “how things are” for just one more day. The dystopia is recognisable precisely because it’s incremental, intimate, and disarmingly plausible.
Stylistically, the prose is tactile and unsentimental—sentences that feel measured, almost forensic, yet capable of sudden lyricism. Worldbuilding arrives in slivers: a policy snippet here, a rumour there, the stale tang of a break room where someone files the wrong form on purpose. The pacing is steady, tightening without fuss, until the final turn lands with the clarity of a moral accounting.
Favourite quote and my tea-cup rating overview
Favourite quote (note): I couldn’t locate an authoritative line to cite verbatim from my edition; if you have one, I’d love to see it. The thought that lingered for me, paraphrased, is: corruption rarely arrives as a flood—most days it’s just another drip you learn to ignore. It’s simple, but it captures the story’s steady, unnerving pulse.
My tea-cup rating: 🍵🍵🍵🍵 out of 5. I’m giving it four teacups for its disciplined storytelling, the way it threads ethical tension through the mundane, and that unmistakable Bennett knack for making systems feel as vivid as characters. I held one cup back only because the austerity of the piece keeps some emotional beats at arm’s length; it’s razor-sharp, but intentionally severe.
Recommended if you enjoy dystopias that operate at the level of procedure and conscience rather than spectacle—think moral pressure cookers, not chase scenes. Pair it with a strong black tea and a quiet afternoon; it’s the kind of story that echoes longer than it takes to read. If you prefer more overt world-explaining or a warmer emotional arc, you may find its restraint chilly—but for me, that chill is exactly the point.
A Drop of Corruption is the sort of dystopia that lingers like a taste you can’t quite name, asking what you’ll tolerate tomorrow that you swore off yesterday. If you’ve a favourite line from your own edition, do share it—and if I’ve missed a detail about publication or context, point me to it over a cuppa. Until then: keep reading, and mind the drips.