Spoiler-free book guide
The Tainted Cup
Book 1 of 2 in Shadow of the Leviathan · by Robert Jackson Bennett
How it opens
Signum Dinios Kol, the twenty-year-old assistant to an Iudex investigator, goes alone to a Haza clan estate in the Daretana canton to view a body that the Apoths believe is Commander Taqtasa Blas of the Engineers, torn apart by trees that grew from inside him. Din, an engraver altered to remember everything, records the scene and questions the staff, but he cannot tell whether the death was murder or contagion. He reports to his master, Immunis Ana Dolabra, the Iudex Investigator of the canton, who has not left her house once since moving in and spends much of each day blindfolded. Ana, restless in what she calls a dull little canton, lights up when Din describes the body.
Who you meet early
- Dinios KolAn engraver of the Iudex, altered to hold everything he sees in exact detail, assistant to Immunis Ana Dolabra.
- Ana DolabraA brilliant and eccentric Immunis of the Iudex who is handed the Empire's impossible crimes, and who reasons them out from her own rooms behind a red or yellow blindfold while her engraver does the looking.
Where it sits
The Tainted Cup is the first of 2 books in Shadow of the Leviathan. Start here.
Next · Book 2
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