I picked this up having enjoyed The Founders Trilogy previously. Plus a fantasy murder mystery sounded like it could be a fun time. 

Ana and Din gave me Sherlock/Watson vibes, but not quite as far, with Ana's conclusions being easier to follow. But as someone who doesn't commonly read mysteries I'm not comfortable saying if it's a "fair" mystery, as I'm just along for the ride and never trying to figure it out first.  

Bennett does fantastic worldbuilding, and this was no exception. I'm really excited to get more answers about the world in future books. I do wish we had gotten a little more information about the different races in this book. 

I received this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

This is a book that I went in knowing nothing about it but the title and the description, and I was wowed. This is an intricately designed murder mystery with political intrigue in a fantasy setting that didn’t require a massive info dump to piece together this new world and its rules and language. I throughly enjoyed it and with the ending implying a sequel I will definitely be seeking it out. 

As for the storyline, we follow Din, a detective’s assistant (Watson) who was changed and given the ability to remember everything he hears, sees and touches and is able to info dump that information to the detective who is a regular Sherlock. In this they investigate the murder of engineers, who maintain a wall from the leviathans (gross giants), and discover death, corruption, and conspiracies against the empire. 

In this book you will find: LGBTQA+ characters, graphic death scenes, gay romance that appears at the end of the book, sherlockian style observations, altered people, description of corpses, fantasy plants, poisons, political intrigue, corruption and a whole lot more.

tl;dr
Come for the cool worldbuilding, stay for the twisty mystery.

Thoughts
Is this book really 432 pages long? Because I raced through it in a day, and it felt like it moved so quickly! I've always been impressed with RJB's world building, but this one might be my favorite yet. What do we call a world where plants provide light, vines are cultivated to be deadly security systems, the rich can afford large mushrooms that regulate the air temperature, and the murder weapon is a tree? Ugh, I love it. There are also strong notes of the usual "big monsters threaten humanity" suspects - Pacific Rim, Kaiju No. 8, and most evidently Attack on Titan, but this story chooses to move the first responders into the background and spend more time on infrastructure folks and a detective/assistant pair.

And what a stunning pair they are. Fans of the eccentric detective+earnest put-upon assistant, get ready to enjoy yourselves. Ana is a genius in all rights, but never in too much of a magical way that it seems she arrived at her conclusions unfairly. The clues are always available, and I did manage to pick out a couple reveals before they were dropped. As our POV character, Din is easily my favorite - his dedication to justice makes him very easy to cheer for, and I appreciated that he wasn't portrayed as completely brainless.

Despite all the giant monsters attacking in the background, this is a mystery first and foremost, and I appreciate that the narrative commits to this. I suspect that the mystery and the background plot will eventually merge in future books, but for now, I was happy just to read a really solid mystery with some great twists, and a really cool detective.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for an advance copy. All thoughts in this review are my own