Synopsis:
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.
Review:
At this point, opening up the latest Ana and Din book is like snuggling up in a warm throw blanket on a rainy day, sipping on a mug of hot (but not too hot) chocolate. There is a comfort between the two of them at this point that leaps off the page, providing the reader with a familiar foundation as strange-ness and mysteries abound. Within the bizarre flora, fauna, and fungi of Robert Jackson Bennett’s world, there are blessings and curses which take out characters down plenty of delightful paths on their way to solving the latest murder assigned to them. Suffice it to say, Bennett has given us another absolute banger with A Trade of Blood, the third book in his Shadow of the Leviathan series.
As the book starts, it’s clear that Ana and Din are in a groove in their relationship — Ana oversharing her thoughts and opinions on all manners of facts and figures and Din rolling his eyes as they traveled down the road to investigate the latest murder. And even as Ana snaps and sometimes gets frustrated with humanity, Din takes it in stride and ends up defending her from those who don’t understand her. I actually really liked where they were in their relationship — not to say that Din didn’t still show signs of immaturity, but there seemed to be a lot more equity between them this go around.
But then — what I love — is that with that steady foundation of Ana and Din, Bennett lets the story get weird. In the first book, we stumble upon a person killed when a tree erupts through his torso. In the second, we’re treated to a locked room murder caused potentially by a ghost. Here, the murder is almost apparent on the first page of the book. As for who killed whom, there isn’t a ton of mystery, but the hows and the whys are what drives this one. I don’t want to drop too many hints or spoilers, but if you simply look at the cover of the book, there is a fun(gus) reason why the murders are happening.
But what I love about these books are the twists and turns and the way Bennett keeps his readers on their toes. American police procedurals tend to be very linear in how the detective finds the perp and arrests them (or pumps them full of bullets). British mysteries often are more of a circuitous route from the murder to the arrest, often with multiple red herrings in the course of the investigation. And, although Bennett’s books are very much set in a bizarre fantasy world, there is a British-ish element of their storytelling, tracing back to Sherlock and Watson, which is the typical comparison for Ana and Din.
In his Author’s Note after all the action is finished, Bennett touches on the underlying themes throughout A Trade of Blood — agriculture. On its face, agriculture doesn’t seem evil of course. It’s natural, right? We’ve all grown up seeing fields of wheat and corn in the Midwest with herds of cattle and other animals — all prepared to feed us whenever we go to the grocery store. But, inherently, farming isn’t the natural state of things — it’s hunting and gathering. But the advent of agriculture around the world transformed how we acquire food, but also how we structure society. The way that Bennett wove his weird fantasy mystery around a moral question about how we should grow and acquire food was just another testament to how skilled of a storyteller he is.
I absolutely recommend the third book in Robert Jackson Bennett’s Shadow of the Leviathan series, A Trade of Blood, and if you haven’t read either of the first two books in the series, I would implore you to read them first, although I think Bennett contained each story well enough inside their own covers to work on their own.
Thank you to Del Rey for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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