★★★★☆ A Trade of Blood, by Robert Jackson Bennett
The ideas are getting bigger...
A Trade of Blood
Robert Jackson Bennett
The ideas are getting bigger...
Robert Jackson Bennett is not afraid to Go Big. His Divine Cities trilogy took on the problem of religions: how people create gods, and how the gods create peoples. His Founders Trilogy is about a scriptable world ordered by its people.
The first novel of his Shadow of the Leviathan therefore took me by surprise. The Tainted Cup was just a fun little fantasy buddy-cop mystery, introducing protagonists Ana Dolabra and Dinios Kol. I was not impressed by the world-building. In fact, I described it a “perfunctory.” (Only fair to admit that this was a minority opinion.) The Tainted Cup was a delight and left me eager for more.
It was on the cards that the stories would get bigger and weightier. In fact, in his Author’s Note, Bennett writes
When I first dreamed up this series, one intent I held was that Din and Ana’s investigations would put our two detectives in positions where they could examine all the internal organs of the Empire. How do these strange people make these biological miracles of theirs? How do they arm themselves, make their laws, treat their brains— and, perhaps, feed themselves?1
Bennett‘s genius, I think, is seeing how the apparently mundane determines the sublime.
Book 2, A Drop of Corruption, took on the question of how the Khanum Empire rules itself -- particularly the matter of autarchy.
This one, book 3, is the novel about how the Empire feeds its people. You should certainly read Bennett‘s Author’s Note, which is mostly concerned with the historical importance for any people (us included) of that question.
Sadly, as the stories wax bigger, the delight of The Tainted Cup wanes. Din and Ana treat each other more as equals. (Indeed, the novel ends with a discussion of their relationship centered on that question.) Din is more serious than he was, and Ana is more serious with him. I enjoyed this a lot and will certainly continue to read any more books in the series. But A Trade of Blood was more of a Big Think Piece and less of a Delight than The Tainted Cup.
Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey for an advance reader copy of A Trade of Blood. Release date 11-Aug-2026.
This quote is from an advance reader copy. It will be corrected if necessary on release of the book.