DRC Review: A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett
- Story Eater
- 17 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Release date: 4 August 2026
Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Del Rey/PRH (US) // Hodderscape/Hachette (UK)
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
For the third installment of the Shadow of the Leviathan series, I found I was simultaneously entertained and disappointed. The expected plot propulsion was there, sure, but something in the characters felt lacking, and the general muchness was missing.
Previous installments of Jackson Bennett's gender-flipped retelling of Sherlock Holmes drew me in because of the characters. Ana's mysterious origins were revealed in book 2, though superficially, and somehow that made A Trade of Blood less interesting. Scenes with Ana in them seemed an afterthought or a jamming of a square peg in a round hole. The interactions between the investigators weren't as frequent, and what was there felt watered down. Ana's quirks weren't as eyebrow-raising, either—when they featured, anyway—and what readers got this time amounted to an overabundance of crudeness and explication for the sake of shock value.
Din felt the focal point of the narrative here, and the amount of characters the mystery contended with grew exponentially as the story developed, cluttering any sense of focus. Much of the time I tried keeping up with who was who in the families Capulet and Montague to steep in the usual mystery and conundrum I'm used to. I liked picking up these mysteries because I could get lost in them and not exasperated because they were too easy to figure. Here, I really stopped caring what the mystery even was. By the time the big reveal came, I had to backtrack and reread for context.
I won't say the book was a total flop. The author is a master craftsman, and the writing is nothing to sneeze at. Despite the nitpicky failings I found with it, the worldbuilding still remains among some of the most impressive I've read, and the characters, no matter how (over)abundant, still have great development.
My thanks to Del Rey and Penguin Random House via NetGalley for the DRC, for which I willingly give my own, honest opinion.