In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.
To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.
Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire’s greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.
Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.
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Blending murder mysteries with fantastical worldbuilding, high-concept speculative fiction often pairs deep procedural investigation with intricate fantasy systems. Author Robert Jackson Bennett has earned widespread acclaim in contemporary speculative fiction through works like the Hugo Award-winning novel The Tainted Cup and the acclaimed The Divine Cities trilogy, which began with City of Stairs.
Born on June 22, 1984, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Robert Jackson Bennett attended the University of Texas at Austin. He made his fiction debut with the 2010 supernatural novel Mr. Shivers, set during the Great Depression, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. He followed his debut with speculative novels including The Company Man and The Troupe before expanding into epic fantasy. His work has received the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Philip K. Dick Citation of Excellence, along with nominations for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Locus Awards. Bennett expanded his body of work with The Founders Trilogy and later launched The Shadow of the Leviathan series with The Tainted Cup, which won the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, followed by its sequel A Drop of Corruption. Bennett currently lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.
Bennett's writing frequently fuses genre conventions, combining traditional detective procedurals, horror elements, and industrial-era fantasy settings. His narratives routinely examine themes of empire, divine legacy, political corruption, power dynamics, and the consequences of technological or magical exploitation. Rather than relying on standard medieval fantasy tropes, Bennett crafts secondary worlds undergoing rapid political, economic, or physical transformation, balancing intricate mystery plots with grounded character relationships.
Shadow of the Leviathan
