> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.andrewliptak.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Imperial degradation - URL: https://www.andrewliptak.com/robert-jackson-bennett-ana-din-tainted-corruption-trade-blood-fantasy-book-review/ - Published: 2026-09-29T20:00:18.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-29T20:00:17.000Z - Description: Robert Jackson Bennett's Shadow of the Leviathan series is a modern masterpiece - Author: Andrew Liptak - Tags: Reviews, Fantasy, Books A number of years ago, Robert Jackson Bennett released [*Foundryside*](https://bookshop.org/a/6134/9780525573845?ref=andrewliptak.com), a novel that [I described at the time](https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/23/18148907/foundryside-robert-jackson-bennett-fantasy-cyberpunk-book-review?ref=andrewliptak.com) as "a cyberpunk adventure wrapped in an epic fantasy novel." It's set in a fantastical world that runs on a type of industrialized magic, scriving, where objects and items can be imbued with a sort of programming language that alters the state of their existence in the world. Scrive an arrow that convinces it that it's lighter than it really is, it'll fly faster and further through the air to its target. The novel and its sequels, [*Locklands*](https://bookshop.org/a/6134/9781984820686?ref=andrewliptak.com) and [*Shorefall*](https://bookshop.org/a/6134/9781984822772?ref=andrewliptak.com) ([my review](https://www.andrewliptak.com/shorefall-robert-bennett-jackson-book-review/)), followed a thief named Sancia who comes across a strange, enchanted key called Clef, something that a powerful and long absent entity has been trying to acquire to carry out their plans to remake the world. What I appreciated the most about the *Founders* trilogy wasn't just the characters and stakes that Bennett introduced, but the sophistication of the world he constructed. ## Sign up for Transfer Orbit A newsletter about science fiction, reading, and the future Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. As a broad marketing category, epic fantasy often invokes images of the fat, medieval-styled worlds imagined by the likes of Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and while other practitioners have drawn inspiration from other historical eras, it's rare to find an author that not only builds a novel setting, but also tackles and imagines the underlying societal and cultural in fine detail. Throughout the trilogy, Bennett feels like he's weaving a story that addresses the anxieties and sensibilities of the world we live in today. He's now done it again with his latest series, *Shadow of the Leviathan*. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2c/d7/2cd7d323-e6ed-4666-8092-07e380dbdf2a/content/images/2026/08/IMG_2284.jpeg) Image: Andrew Liptak In 2024, Bennett introduced readers to a vivid new world with [*The Tainted Cup*](https://bookshop.org/a/6134/9781984820716?ref=andrewliptak.com). It's an ambitious book that's underpinned by a high concept: two investigators in a fantastical empire take crimes that on their face seem impossible, but which turn out to have earthshattering ramifications for the entire world. Those two investigators are Dinios "Din" Kol, who's been assigned as an assistant to investigator Anagosa "Ana" Dolabra. They're each officers in the Empire of Khanum, which rules over a continent of smaller states and a land that had once hosted a far more advanced – almost alien – civilization. The Empire faces a major threat: massive leviathans that emerge from the Eastern seas and which work their way inland, leaving behind a trail of destruction in their wake, before they perish and leave behind mountainous bodies full of substances and chemicals with strange, transformative properties. But the as important as those giant monsters are in shaping the fabric of the world, it's clear that they're not the only thing that challenges the stability of an empire. This is a world with many strange and transformative properties, including Din. He's an engraver, someone who's brain has been altered to perfectly retain everything he sees and hears, useful traits for an investigator. His superior is no less strange – although in very different ways. Ana is irascible, impatient, and a brilliant mind: someone who absorbs information like a sponge, but who gets bored and frustrated with something as trivial as your baseline murder. Think Dr. Gregory House, with a few additional quirks. For their first outing, Din has been dispatched to a seaside canton where an Imperial engineer, Taqtasa Blas, has met a gristly end: he's been killed in a bath by a fast-growing plant called dappleglass has erupted from his lungs. Ana and Din quickly surmise was a deliberate act, and they begin working out how it could have happened and who was behind it. They quickly find a handful of other engineers who've been killed in the same fashion, and piece together an elaborate plot of revenge that centered on an incident that occurred in another canton, Oypat, which had been taken over by the fast-moving dappleglass and sealed off, but not before the plant and Imperial officials left behind quite a bit of human wreckage in its wake. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2c/d7/2cd7d323-e6ed-4666-8092-07e380dbdf2a/content/images/2026/08/IMG_2286.jpeg) Image: Andrew Liptak In his follow-up, [*A Drop of Corruption*](https://bookshop.org/a/6134/9780593723845?ref=andrewliptak.com), Bennett brings out another implausible and gruesome murder. Where the first novel was something of an introduction to the world through the logistics and engineering that underpins this world, this one is something of a biotech and geopolitical thriller. An Imperial Treasury official named Sujedo has gone missing from a locked room in an independent kingdom called Yarrowdale, located at the edge of the Khanum Empire. It's become something of a hub of bio-research, thanks to the presence of a floating laboratory called The Shroud, off its coast, where teams of scientists have been experimenting with the properties of the Leviathan's blood to unlock all sorts of technologies and substances that enhance and inform life throughout the Empire. As they search, the hunt for the killer and their motives expands dramatically: the body they discovered was someone else, replaced to look like Sujedo. As they follow a series of clues, their trail leads them to outlaws and smugglers and even more horribly-deformed bodies that leads them to The Shroud and to the royal court, where they begin to untangle a complicated plot involving the royal family, succession, and the nature of independence for the kingdom itself. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2c/d7/2cd7d323-e6ed-4666-8092-07e380dbdf2a/content/images/2026/08/IMG_2287.jpeg) Image: Andrew Liptak The third and most recent installment is *A Trade of Blood,* in which Ana and Din have been summoned to another corner of the Empire to another grim crime scene. Zansay Burav, a young woman from a prominent family has been brutally murdered by her lover, Castus Armenta, a boy from a rival clan. Despite being covered in blood, being present at the scene, and holding the weapon, he's unable to account for his crimes or even a motive. As has been the case, the two investigators find that there's more than meets the eye. The murder has the Buravs up in arms, and it's a potentially catastrophic situation for the Empire: both clans are responsible for the nation's agricultural output, aided by the advances in leviathan biotechnology. There's something off about the killing, and the pair soon discover that there's some sort of mind control at play, thanks to a quirk of the region's farming practices: they employ a type of fungus to control a cat-like creature to handle a bulk of their harvesting. It's a different strange of this fungus that's been deployed here, and as the investigation mounts, they're plagued by the activation of additional sleeper agents as someone works to eliminate their other targets. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2c/d7/2cd7d323-e6ed-4666-8092-07e380dbdf2a/content/images/2026/08/IMG_2295.jpeg) Image: Andrew Liptak I've always liked crime procedurals: there's something comforting in the slow unraveling of clues and evidence and circumstance through a series of deductive steps that eventually lead the clever detectives to their culprit. But beyond the day-in-day-out appeal of each installment, these long-running or open-ended projects give creators more latitude to explore their worlds and characters in a great amount of depth. Bennett has wasted little time in that department: planting seeds for the bigger things at play in the world, from a ticking clock over Din's engraved head as his augmentations begin play a toll on his psyche to Ana's frequent hints and clues about the degrading nature of the Empire's inner workings. Those developments hint at a much larger story that's unfolding. Bennett's noted that he's got plans for a number of additional books in the series (he published a shorter story, "[The Lion’s Tusk](https://www.amazon.com/Lions-Tusk-Magic-Mystery-collection-ebook/dp/B0GTMT2FCS/?%5Fencoding=UTF8&pd%5Frd%5Fw=5iM3p&content-id=amzn1.sym.171c1bd3-e559-4de5-8b1c-2e86c02e2e84&pf%5Frd%5Fp=171c1bd3-e559-4de5-8b1c-2e86c02e2e84&pf%5Frd%5Fr=144-8884685-1168658&pd%5Frd%5Fwg=qJzpI&pd%5Frd%5Fr=2916c17a-6c51-4101-b063-ab535cd527dd&ref=andrewliptak.com)" as part of the *Magic & Mystery* collection edited by John Joseph Adams this summer and recently finished the fourth installment) and it feels as though we've only begun to scratch the surface of this world. While this is a series that's brought a trio of genuinely intriguing mysteries, shocking body horror, and outstanding character beats, it's really an engrossing story about how an Empire begins to degrade and collapse under its own weight. There's corruption that comes on every level: institutional (the Empire is barely hanging on while the Emperor has been locked away, unseen, for centuries), infrastructure level (sound judgement has given way to system-wide venality), class (there's no shortage of commentary about the gulf between the ultra wealthy and the regular workers), and biological (as its citizens have the means to further augment themselves). These are themes that feel all too relevant in 2026 and as the United States crosses the 250 year mark. The events of the last quarter century sometimes lend the feeling that we're speed-running through the phases of a nation's twilight years, and they're events that are echoed in Bennett's novels. His Imperial investigators are the ones tracking down some of the strangest of crimes, which often seem to turn out to be the most consequential towards the stability of the Empire. These crimes are like a worker tapping out the few remaining bricks on a massive tower: the first couple might not lead to results, but it's that last one that takes the entire structure down. In lesser hands, these acts might be something more on the nose: the theft of vital plans for troop movements, a terrorist attack against the government, plots to assassinate a prominent politician. These sorts of incidents do tend to crop up during times of instability and cultural chaos, but Bennett understands that civilizations are complex, and accordingly, his protagonists are combatting crimes that have an impact on the underlying fabric of society. At its core, *The Tainted Cup*'s originating murder has much to do with discontent that spirals into revenge. *A Drop of Corruption*? The complex politics of annexation and succession. *A Trade of Blood*? A bloody family rivalry that reveals some ancient technologies and practices that were weaponized in some very nasty ways. Taken individually, Ana and Din are like workers fixing leaks in a dam. It's only when they step back and take in the bigger picture do they find that it isn't a coordinated, arch-villain plot taking it down, but the weight and shoddy workmanship that's undermining the entire experiment. In each novel, we see plenty of examples of how the Empire's been struggling to take care of its subjects. Its population is experiencing a plunging birthrate as its citizens continually alter themselves for their jobs or in more superficial ways, while the reliance on the leviathan-derived technologies and automations are slowly carving out pieces of work and life for everything and everyone in unsustainable ways. Most authors will say that they're just there to entertain their readers, but I often think that the stories that last are the ones that move with purpose, that have a viewpoint, and *something* to say about the state of the world. He might have shrouded his series in the trappings of weird, bio-tech fantasy, but Bennett's novels are chock-full of observations about the state of the world around us. It's one thing to see or use fiction as a way to relate to the real world, but that only works so long as people recognize and heed the warnings that these artists calling out. This is why I find Bennett's novels so compelling: they're amazing character studies that delve into their character's motivations and aspirations and decisions – and not just those of his protagonists, but his villains as well. As he lays bare the basic human impulses that drives both crime and investigation, we're treated to a series of recognizable, dramatic spectacles. As the series progresses – and we'll see if this holds true for the installments to come – it's clear that it's these human flaws rather than the weird technologies and monsters that are carrying out this ongoing destruction. And as Din finds himself in investigation after investigation, it's clear that he's beginning to recognize something of a pattern: if their troubled civilization is made up of the actions of a multitude of brilliant, corrupt, flawed, incompetent, noble, and well-intentioned people, is it worth salvaging or breaking it down and starting over? Time will tell, but if the rest of the series is anything like these first three installments, it'll be a complicated, nuanced, and thought-provoking exploration of the state of the world, accompanied by several more rounds of twisted, body horror-involved crimes that'll keep me at the edge of my seat. Thanks for reading. If you've read these, let me know what you thought of them in the comments: I'd love to hear and chat a bit more about these books, because they've been on my mind ever since I've finished each of them! I'll have a bit more to say when I send out the next roundup, but I see this newsletter as a form of curation that's badly needed at a time when the internet is awash in AI slop and clickbait "articles". My goal, as always, is to steer you to what's interesting and worth reading. This is a reader-supported newsletter, and that if you enjoyed this, were moved to read these, or if you'd like to see more of these types of reviews and commentaries, consider signing up as a supporting subscriber. [Support Transfer Orbit ](#/portal/signup)