A Trade of Blood (Shadow of the Leviathan, #3) by Robert Jackson Bennett Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy mystery, urban fantasy
Series: Shadow of the Leviathan #3
Pages: 400
Published by Del Rey on August 4, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
An Ana and Din Mystery
Brilliant detective Ana Dolabra must prove a man's innocence to stop a civil war in the third book of the series that began with The Tainted Cup, named an Edgar, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award Finalist and one of the best books of the year (New York Times Book Review, NPR, Elle)—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.
In the canton of Sapirdad, two of the Empire’s most powerful families are moments away from going to war with each other, their hundreds of retainers gathered with swords drawn. If blood is spilt, the whole of the empire may be plunged into starvation and chaos.
To de-escalate matters, someone must do the impossible: prove that one family’s eldest son is innocent of a gruesome and unforgivable murder, despite the incontrovertible evidence against him.
It is with this undertaking that the great detective Ana Dolabra is tasked, her assistant Din at her side—and the two find themselves racing with great speed and little dignity to the scene.
As ever, the impossible proves little obstacle for the deadly combination of Ana’s intellect and Din’s keen eye, and mere hours after riding into the dusty town, Ana glimpses the greater pattern behind the crime. A deeper, subtler web of death is being woven in plain sight, by a mastermind with an ancient magical technology at his disposal.
But even Ana's uncanny insight is of little use when each new suspect she uncovers ends up dead--with each new killing calculated to bring tensions between the two rival clans past the boiling point. And as Din pursues their adversary through the canton's wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses, he finds his loyalties divided in unexpected ways.
My Review:
I’ve been waiting a year and a half for this book, and it absolutely was worth the wait. The first book in the Shadow of the Leviathan/Ana and Din Mystery series, The Tainted Cup, was such a fantastic combination of fantasy and mystery that it was nominated for Best Novel at both the Hugo Awards (SF and Fantasy) and the Edgar Awards (mystery). It won the Hugo – as it should have. (As I typed this in May 2026 the second book, A Drop of Corruption, was just nominated for this year’s Hugo Awards. The winners will be announced at WorldCon in Los Angeles later in August. I hope it wins. I hope so A LOT.)
This is a series that I’ve shoved at a lot of people over the past two-plus years, and this review is not going to be an exception. Expect some squeeing. Expect a LOT of squeeing.
Ana and Din are very much in the Holmes and Watson vein. I mean that in the broadest sense, that this detective duo ends up in the middle of the twistiest cases and doesn’t so much think outside of the box as think like there isn’t a box, has never been a box, won’t ever be a box, and that’s the way they want it.
Or that’s the way that Ana Dolabra wants it – and she generally gets what she wants. Because of her rank as an Immunis (a middle-ranking officer at least) of the Khanum military, because she’s an acknowledged genius when it comes to a whole lot of subjects, including solving potentially empire-shattering crimes before they actually do shatter the empire, because she’s been scientifically and alchemically enhanced to a degree that means she’s barely connected to the real world except when she wants to be, AND because she’s a stone cold bitch and isn’t afraid to let anyone and everyone know it as she runs roughshod over their petty concerns.
There may be other, darker reasons that most people are only instinctually aware of, but she already has more than enough going on to keep THOSE questions at bay. For the sake of whoever might ask, not her own.
Dinios Kol is her Watson, more or less. Mostly less (less like Watson, not less of an assistant). Ana may be less functional in a social and societal sense than Holmes – as well as frequently more drug-addled – but Din is her very able assistant, investigator, and more than occasional social smoother. He’s also young and learning and getting better at the job in every story. (Even in The Lion’s Tusk which is a brief but fascinating side story to the series)
The cases they get stuck with, or assigned to, or both, are usually either extremely convoluted or have potentially empire-shattering consequences or both. In this case, definitely both.
It all starts out looking extremely dull and exceedingly obvious. It looks like a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ story gone even wrong-er than the original – and that’s saying something to begin with. The two ‘big’ families in a prosperous, productive agricultural district have been feuding for decades. One breeds the cattle and the other grows the feed. They need each other. The town needs them both in order for the town to remain prosperous. But the families hate each other and always have even though both are rich as whatever this world’s equivalent of Croesus is.
Of course the daughter of one family and the son of the other fell in love. That’s the way the story goes. Of course they’ve been trysting in secret because that’s also the way the story goes. But the girl is dead, the boy obviously murdered her, and both families are baying for someone’s blood. It’s so damned obvious that SOMETHING ELSE must be going on.
And it’s that SOMETHING ELSE that Ana and Din have been tasked with figuring out. Because if this province drowns in blood, a whole lot of people around the empire are going to starve. That this little family feud has the potential to become the tip of the dangerous – and empire shattering – iceberg of civil war.
Unless the secrets that Ana and Din uncover beneath the surface of this crime, this feud, and this whole entire district turn out to be older and considerably more dangerous than that.
Escape Rating A++: Obviously, I loved this. I’ve loved the whole series so far and expect to love however many books it ultimately encompasses. I’ve loved fantasy mystery since way, way back with Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy (also and more obviously a play on Sherlock Holmes), and I’ve never regretted a single book – only that there aren’t nearly enough of them. Hopefully, the success and popularity of THIS series will kick the fantasy mystery trend into a higher gear.
First, and this is important, I think you do need to read the first book, The Tainted Cup, first. Not just because it’s good – although THAT’S certainly true – but because this world is vast and deep and complex and is being built on layer by layer in each successive book. We’ve just barely scratched the surface of why the official series title is Shadow of the Leviathan but we keep getting just a bit more as it goes. Also Ana and Din’s relationship is changing and growing as Din gets more experience both in the world and as Ana’s assistant.
(There is no romance between them, there is no possibility of such a thing, it is absolutely not necessary AND it would be an abuse of power. Their mentor/student relationship turning into something closer to a partnership is the relationship and that’s the way it should be. I love a good romance as much as the next reader but the will they/won’t they dynamic of a romance is not required in every story – or in half as many as one gets shoved into anyway. I’ll get down off my soapbox now because it’s teetering just a bit.)
Like most good mysteries – which this is – Ana and Din tend to be skeptical about obvious solutions. Which is probably the opposite of real life detection but works well in fiction. Particularly in this world as there is just so much hidden under the surface in so many ways that easy solutions usually aren’t merely wrong but are outright bad – and that’s true here.
That it goes in a direction that would be impossible anyplace but here is not a surprise – even though the particular way it does go actually is. But what makes the STORY work is that the motives are ultimately human even though the means are somewhere between supernatural, alchemical and scientific. The reason they’re happening is very human and it’s the investigation of the humans that drives the story and keeps the reader compulsively following.
Or at least this reader felt compelled to stay up and follow the story to its ultimately fantastic, fantastical AND terrifying ending. The motives may have been human, the means may have been scientific and alchemical and psychological (this is a gaslamp world, those things can go together) but the implications were horrifying and scarring (and yes, I do mean scar and not scare, although that’s true too) in ways that I hope we’ll get to explore further in future books in the series.
Hopefully sooner rather than later!
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