A Holmes and Watson style mystery set in a high fantasy world reminiscent of Attack On Titan or Pacific Rim.
Dinios Kol is an engraver. An engraver can permanently engrave memories in their mind and retrieve them at any time by inhaling different scents. He is the brand new assistant to Ana Dolabra, a brilliant but extremely eccentric Iudex investigator who is apparently in some sort of great disgrace, banished to a backwater town by the sea walls. In a nearby town a high ranking Imperial official is killed when a tree explodes through his body while visiting the mansion of a wealthy, high ranking family.
Din is sent to investigate this murder and bring his memories back to Ana. At the same time a toxic and deadly leviathan breaches the sea wall, the first murder is then connected to several other murdered Engineers, aaaaaand then all hell really breaks loose.
I’m usually a mad guesser when reading a mystery but with this I had to just relax and enjoy the ride. Having read Bennett’s Founders trilogy I had faith that all would become clear at the end and it certainly did. His world building is again amazing, there’s a strong botanical theme running through with fernpaper walls and mushroom air purifiers. The Empire is laid out in walled rings with the story happening in the outermost dangerous ring because of proximity to their version of kaiju coming from the sea. People’s minds and bodies have been enhanced in different ways using kaiju blood. There is a strong fear of contagions amongst the people from previous leviathans breaching the walls and then warping the land around where they fall with their toxic bodies.
I very much hope that Robert Jackson Bennett revisits these characters and this world. I’d love another Knives Out with Godzilla featuring Ana and Din!