The Tainted Cup

"This sounded to me like it might be a classic epic quest from the title, but don’t be fooled. There’s something far more original going on here. It’s a murder mystery, set in a rich secondary world – beset by leviathans, defended by a sea-wall, building itself from lightweight fern-paper because of the frequent leviathan-quakes, and battling contagion – a terrifying affliction where plants take root within living humans and kill their host. This world features its own complex power structures, within which our protagonist Dinios Kol is apprenticed to something like a detective inspector. This inspector, Ana Dolabra, is a particular delight. She’s caustic and brilliant, and her dialogue sparkles. Dinios is her sublime, an enhanced human – in his case, enhanced to have a perfect memory. Multiple murders, enmeshed in layers of secrecy. It’s more thriller than cosy – whatever’s afoot is clearly a calculated and weighty plot, and more folks die as the novel moves along at a thoroughly entertaining pace. Grimdark Magazine describe it as a “whirlwind of a mystery novel”, and that’s absolutely true. But somehow, that’s not at the expense of the world-building – this world feels fully realised and lived-inside, accomplished without shaving a moment off the pace."

"Detective fiction is given a magical twist in Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup. The Edgar-winning author combines intricate world-building with a Sherlockian murder investigation to create a fantastical, richly imagined story, the first in a planned trilogy. The Washington Post called it “utterly addictive.” Ali Hazelwood—author of popular STEM romances including Love Theoretically and The Love Hypothesis —has made her first foray into fantasy with Bride , a paranormal romance featuring a “dangerous alliance” between a vampire and a werewolf. Plus Danielle L. Jensen offers up A Fate Inked in Blood , the first in a new Norse-inspired fantasy series, which should delight her hordes of fans on both sides of the Atlantic. The best fantasy on Five Books I hope one or more of these reading suggestions has caught your eye. We always love to hear what you’re looking forward to—let us know on social media if we’ve missed off your most anticipated new releases of the season."

"Yes! This book also won the World Fantasy Award, and has been very well received – the New York Times describes it as “a thoroughly satisfying delight from start to finish.” There is already a sequel and a third planned, so this is well worth getting stuck into. It’s a murder mystery – the tense kind, where people keep on dying. It’s got the charm of a classic mystery, and in some ways a very conventional set up – our protagonist Din is a form of detective’s assistant, solid and reliable, while the detective herself is preternaturally brilliant, socially irreverent and thoroughly maddening. But that’s where the familiar territory ends. These are fantastical murders in a fantastical realm, all highly original. It’s damp and it’s dangerous. We’re in an outer canton of a world defined by the monsters at sea, the obliquely terrifying “leviathans”; and by the fearsome sickness “contagion”. The further you are from the seawall, the safer you are from both. This canton is not safe. It’s contagion that has kicked off the murder investigation. Spores took root in the victim, erupted into plant-life and sliced him open; and there is reason to believe that his infection was deliberate, an assassination. Din has been sent to investigate. He is an engraver, a person with an augmented memory, and will relay everything he sees to his superior Ana – who is something like a chief inspector. The world has its own (utterly convincing) political structure, so her actual title is Iudex. That’s the remarkable feat of this book – it creates a totally convincing secondary world without ever slowing the pace of the mystery to do so. Meanwhile, the mystery itself is pleasingly twisty, and the characters sparkle, especially Ana. I’m not surprised to see this taking two awards this year."