The Tainted Cup

The Tainted Cup opens the Shadow of the Leviathan series by Robert Jackson Bennett, a fantasy novel built around a classic detective partnership. The Empire of Khanum survives behind a great sea wall that holds back the leviathans rising from the ocean each wet season, and it relies on people physically altered with leviathan-derived arts to keep it running.

When an imperial engineer is found dead in the mansion of a wealthy local family, killed by a tree that has sprouted from inside his body, the case goes to Ana Dolabra, an eccentric and brilliant investigator, and her new assistant Dinios Kol, a young engraver whose altered memory lets him recall everything he sees. Din gathers the evidence and Ana reasons through it, and the investigation soon points toward threats to the empire's defenses. The novel won the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Novel.