Hugo Award nominee 2026.
The brilliant detective Ana Dolabra may have finally met her match in the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.
In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.
To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.
Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.
Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.
The series
In a land where monsters rise with the tide and truth is more dangerous than myth, Shadow of the Leviathan carves out a space unlike any other in the fantasy genre—a place where the grotesque is beautiful, the arcane is biological, and the greatest weapon is observation.
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Set in the Empire of Khanum, a society both fortified and fractured by the seasonal emergence of towering leviathans, the series follows Ana Dolabra, a brilliant, blindfolded investigator with an eccentric mind, and her meticulous assistant Dinios Kol, who forgets nothing. Together, they navigate a world reshaped by the alchemical power of leviathan blood—where plants invade flesh, and politics are no less tangled than the roots of a living, weaponized forest.
The narrative blends forensic mystery with dark fantasy, evoking the cerebral allure of a locked-room thriller amidst the chaos of a biologically enchanted empire. As Ana and Din peel back layers of bureaucratic secrecy, mutated ecosystems, and inherited power, the series draws readers into a setting where every detail matters, and every clue is alive with possibility.
While The Tainted Cup, the first installment, has already caught the attention of genre-bending fantasy fans—and earned a Hugo nomination along the way—it’s not the accolades that linger. It’s the atmosphere: dense with tension, rich in imagination, and charged with the quiet terror of knowing that some questions are too dangerous to answer.
Shadowy, smart, and steeped in the uncanny, Shadow of the Leviathan offers an investigation not just into crimes, but into the terrifying machinery of empire, science, and belief. For those drawn to strange ecosystems, flawed heroes, and a touch of the surreal, this is a world you won’t soon escape.
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