ARC Review: Shadow of the Leviathan #3

A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett

Publication Date: August 4, 2026

Summary from Netgalley:

The heir to one of the Empire’s most powerful families sits in jail, accused of murder. His hands are covered in the victim’s blood, and he can neither deny his guilt nor explain his actions.

But if the great detective Ana Dolabra cannot save him from the noose, the farming canton of Sapirdad will explode into war, threatening to plunge the whole Empire into starvation and chaos.

As Ana investigates—her assistant Dinios Kol, as ever, acting as her eyes and ears—she fears her task is even more daunting than it seemed. For this murder is just the latest in a deeper, subtler web of death, woven by a mastermind with an ancient weapon at his disposal.

With their customary skill, Ana and Din pursue their adversary through the canton’s wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses. Yet even they are not prepared to learn the horrifying secret behind their opponent’s powers.

ARC provided by Del Ray Publishing via Netgalley for an honest review.

Confession:

This is the third book in this series and I swear they just keep getting better. I just love the world building, the characters, the mysteries, the world building. These books just hook you from the start and you just can’t let them go till you are done. Even when I know who committed the crimes early on, I still want to read to see how Din and Ana figure it out. Plus they are usually multi layered and I enjoy seeing those layers peeled back till the final culprit is caught.

We learn so much more about both Ana and Din in this story. Din especially as we get to meet his sister and learn more about his life before he became Ana’s assistant. I hope we get to see more of his sister and the rest of his family in the future. Din is also struggling with his augmentations and some of the changes they are creating in him. I am a bit worried about his future to be honest. We also learn a bit more about Ana, or at least some of my suspicions about her are coming to light. She is still a bit of an enigma, and there are times I wish she was a bit kinder to Din, but I still really enjoy watching her work out the mysteries.

The world building is really the best thing about this series. I can’t quite decide if I want to call this a world with science that feels like magic, or magic that feels like science. This world’s augmentations of both humans and animals is very biologically based, which makes it seem like science, but the things they do with that science feel so magical. But it is very well explained and you just accept that this is the reality in this world. The ancient weapon used to kill in this story is rather an icky one and there is a lot of horror mixed into this story, I think maybe a bit more than the last two books.

I love how with each book we learn just a little bit more about the world our characters inhabit. This time we are in the food producing sector, and it sounds horrible. What a life these people live. The wealthy families have some weird dynamics and hereditary rules which are a little confusing, but make sense to them. The world here feels at times a bit like our own in many ways so definitely read the author’s note at the end where he talks about how our farming practices affect our world.

The mystery of this book was well crafted, even though I was able to guess who was the responsible party almost from the first time we are introduced to them. But there was a more complex part to the story that I wasn’t able to see until it was revealed so that kept me entertained until the end of the book. I enjoyed all of the secondary characters that we meet in this book, even the bad guys, and I am hoping that we see one or two of them again.

If you enjoyed the first two books in this series you will really like this one. If you haven’t yet read this series, you really should, even if you are not a mystery reader. The world building alone will keep you interested in the story. If you have issues with body horror though you might want to skip this one.