Sometimes my habit of reading multiple books at once backfires and I don’t make enough progress to finish books. This was also a month of a lot of other things going on, including travel, so I didn’t have as much time for reading. 

I also spent more time watching shows with my husband in the evenings in November, which cut into reading time as well. So I only finished one book in November! 

The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett 

Published 2024

This is a mystery novel. It’s dressed up in fantasy trappings, which are fun, but this is primarily a mystery just set in a fantasy world. 

Din is an engraver who possesses a perfect memory, and he is assistant to an eccentric investigator, Ana. They are called in to investigate when an official is killed by a plant erupting from his body (gross). 

Ana and Din must determine if it is a contagion or a murder (it’s the latter, obviously), and proposed next steps. Their investigation leads them to a border town were they discover more murders of the same type. They must catch the killer before even more deaths occur of the city is destroyed by a leviathan (giant mysterious creatures that attack border towns by the sea). 

Ana and Din have a very Holmes-and-Watson dynamic, and it is clear that there is more to the mystery than first appears. 

If you enjoy fantasy and mysteries, you will probably enjoy this book. The world building is interesting: this is a world of human body-hacking where people can be modified organically to be really good at their jobs. The danger is that this can burn them out, and there is a further danger that plants can be deadly as modifications can get out of hand (or be used as murder weapons). The leviathans too are mysterious and clearly connected in some way to the modifications, a larger mystery that I assume will be unspooled over the course of this series of books. 

Some of the body modifications and descriptions of the murders are kind of gross, so if you have a low tolerance for that, be warned. If you like mysteries but want them set in our world, this will also not be for you. But if you, like me, enjoy both mystery novels and fantasy novels, this is a nice blending of both genres.

The mystery at hand is nicely wrapped up by the end of the book, but Ana and Din are clearly set up for further investigations in future books, so if you enjoyed this one, there is a second installment already out, and I’m not sure how many the author has planned, but our detectives might have many more adventures ahead of them!