It’s another Shadow of the Leviathan book! And this means there’s a new mystery for Ana and Din to solve. Like the previous two books, The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption, A Trade in Blood takes us to a new canton in Khanum and with that comes a new murder to solve—and a new aspect of Empire for Robert Jackson Bennett to pick apart.
This time, it’s meat. Or to be more specific, how does an Empire with an increasingly expensive tastes and a dwindling population feed itself?
The new canton we’re visiting this time is Sapirdad which, in contrast to the locations of our previous mysteries, exists far from the coasts and the Leviathans. Sapirdad is more famous for its cattle ranching than its Kaiju. The investigation here initially seems rather straightforward; we’ve previously had a man found with a tree sprouting out of him, and a murder in a locked room that looks like it could only have been committed by a phantom. But this time around, it looks like a simple case of a young woman murdered by her lover. Of course, Ana is very unimpressed and immediately starts moaning about how dreary and dull this all seems, and how annoying it is that other people give a disproportionate amount of interest to dead, rich girls—but that’s because Ana has the compassion capacity of a damned rock.
Thank Christ Din has a better read of the situation
It quickly becomes evident to him that there has to more to this murder than meets the eye; Din just needed to take one look at the crime scene to conclude that it made no damned sense. Young Zanzay suffered through some truly grievous injuries, but there is no sign whatsoever that she put up any kind of resistance to her killer butchering her to death. No scratches, no bruises—and most importantly, no screams. And the young man who killed her—Castus— has no memory of the incident.
To make things worse though, Castus Armenta and Zansay Burav are both scions of two of the biggest and most prominent cattle ranchers in the Empire—meaning there is very much a Romeo and Juliet angle to all of this. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the murder, there seems to be very little left to stop the two families from launching into a full scale clan-war that would disrupt the empire’s food supply. Fantasy farming in Khanum is very high stakes, and everything is on a hair trigger. So not only do Din and Ana have to solve the case, they have to do it in a way that doesn’t involve Ana igniting the whole situation with her blunt and insensitive nature. Here, more than ever, it’s clear that the lady has a defective empathy chip:
“Ohh? Might this tawdry shit have a faint whiff of something fascinating?” Yes, Ana, it might. But please keep thoughts like that to yourself in front of families who have lost their loved ones.
As I mentioned above, for every new murder Ana and Din are asked to solve, there’s a new aspect of the empire to explore. This time we’re dealing with inner ring politics. While I missed the overreaching presence of the Kaiju-like Leviathans and the Dirty Big Wall of protection we got from the coastal cantons, I appreciate the added insight we get here into the older Khanum tribes. It’s becoming clearer that the empire is an ugly, disconnected mess, and that it’s probably heading toward a Rome-style crisis point sooner rather than later. As the map shows, the action here is still quite far from the Imperial Sanctum behind the first wall, but we get more hints than ever that there’s something creepy and seriously dysfunctional lying at the centre of Khanum.
This is also the first of the three books where I felt the balance between the immediate mystery Ana and Din have been tasked with solving and the greater mysteries of the empire has shifted. Previously, it’s been the former that’s been the most interesting and prominent, with the world-building—while fantastic—pushed more into the background. But in A Trade in Blood, I felt it started to drift toward the opposite; there is murder here, but it’s almost used as a device to push the rest of the plot involving the politics and history of the empire forward. I don’t exactly mind—I like the development we get here regarding the institutional rot plaguing the empire. But this murder mystery, without giving too much away, was certainly less twisty than the previous two. I get the feeling now that he’s confessed to writing more books, Bennett might be allowing himself to build up to something greater with regards to an overreaching story.
But the high mycology-induced body horror quotient? I can say that’s remained intact!
As for Din and Ana themselves, Din especially gets a lot of character development; he’s starting to grapple more and more with what it means to be a biochemically modified engraver and the cost that will have on his future. It’s now just sinking in that he can’t have kids and he’s likely to succumb to madness as he ages. This seems mostly triggered by his modifications changing and maturing, but also an unexpected run in with his sister! It turns out Din has not been very good at touching base with the folks at home, and while he supposedly joined the service and became an engraver to support his family financially, he now finds himself examining that choice and asking himself whether or not that was his true motivation.
Din also continues with his habit of being a bit of a fuckboy when off the clock; once again, he has gone and dragged his morose, Jacob Elordi shaped-arse into some poorly thought out sexual relations. While I don’t approve of his lack of wisdom here, I do approve of his taste; the guy he connects with during the investigation is certainly the most interesting of his hook ups so far. Unfortunately, this also happens to the most upsetting one to Ana: “You smell like a brothel’s cheapest rooms, you feckless little bastard!”
I can’t help myself, I still find it hilarious that the sullen, serious Din is such a disaster bisexual when you pull back the curtain.
As for Ana, we don’t really get much character development on her end; she is very solidly set in her (bizzaro, rude, callous) ways with no sign whatsoever of changing. But what we get instead is more hints to her background and how many of the Empire’s secrets she’s withholding. I do wonder how much she’ll start to spill in the future, especially if their work takes both her and Din closer to the Inner Sanctum.
I’m really loving this series so far, and am delighted that Robert Jackson Bennett will be writing more of them. While I enjoy the murder mysteries, I’m really hoping to learn more of what happens in the Inner Sanctum, and how that ties back to the Leviathans. I also wonder whether Ana will ever get a dose of her own medicine one day if she is ever given her own Moriarty… I can hope!
For cbr18bingo, this one is Map Why? For the following:
