Even in a world where enormous magical creatures known as Leviathans threaten human civilization, but (early) technology and magic can help hold them back, there is a need for a police force to keep the peace, and investigate crimes; including murders. The main protagonist is Dinios Kol, an "Engraver", magically enhanced to be able to use scents to attain perfect memory, assigned to work with Ana Dolabra, the best investigator in the Empire, but also the strangest; among other things, she refuses to leave her home without a blindfold, and depends on Din's perfect recollections to analyze a crime scene. Yet she is still capable of dazzling leaps of deduction. The series is basically a Police Procedural starring a fantastical Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin set in a rather grim Magical Land.
This is a murder mystery—beware of unmarked spoilers on plot developments other than the identity of the killer.
Shadow of the Leviathan provides examples of:
- Abusive Precursors: The Daljin, the Khanum tribe worshipped as gods by the Tala, enslaved normal humans in their areas of influence using the guiding web, in order to amass enough manpower to cultivate their agriculture. The Daavir finally had had enough of this and exterminated them, sealing the evidence for their crimes in the altered forest.
- Aerith and Bob:
- Most characters have names closer to the Aerith end of the spectrum, but Anagosa's and Dinios’ names are shortened to the more normal Ana and Din.
- Also true for military ranks, where captains and commanders exist side-by-side with positions such as immunis or signum.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Sublimes usually have grayish skin, while some Apoths have olfactory alterations that make parts of their faces purple. Long time residents of Yarrowdale develop a greenish tint to their eyes and lips due to the presence of symbiotic algae.
- Ambiguously Bi: Din's only romantic liaison in the first book is with a man, but he's also very attracted to a female courtesan at one point. However she was specifically altered to release pheromones that make her extremely desirable, so it wasn't clear how this reflected on Din's actual preferences. Cleared up in the second book where he has a temporary arrangement with a woman, though he does say he tends to prefer men to women.
- Asshole Victim: Commander Taqtasa Blas allowed an entire canton to die due to his own greed, as well as being a regular and shameless whoremonger and sexual predator. His fate, horrid as it was, was richly deserved.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Dinios is an oddity among engravers in that he also has perfect muscle memory, making him a fearsome fighter as he can intuitively apply any combat lesson he's ever experienced with perfect form as soon as he notices the trigger condition.
- Badass Normal:
- Miljin, for a given value of “normal” —he does have some physical grafts, but these are pretty much standard issue. He is the only one of the investigation team who is not a Sublime, highly altered, or whatever the hell Ana is.
- Strovi is even more so, as his rich family forbade him from receiving drastic alterations so he will not lose the ability to father children. He's still a pretty great fighter and is chosen to lead the team firing the giant experimental bombard with the intent of sealing the breach.
- Beast with a Human Face: Leviathans are gigantic, twisted creatures with no Earthly analogue, except they inexplicably have human faces. When Din observes one, he gets the impression that it seems to be trying to speak.
- The Berserker: Kol tends to end up as this unintentionally. When in a battle, he lets his extraordinary muscle memory take over and tends to become a whirlwind of death, frequently horrifying his allies. Malo also notes that it makes it harder for her to shoot her bow at enemies around him because she might accidentally hit him in the process with how unpredictably he moves.
- Big Eater: Ana has a grotesque appetite, and from time to time indulges in over-the-top feasts of strange, exotic or outright disgusting foods (or things that she designates food, regardless of anyone else's opinion). It comes more from craving new experiences and sensory input rather than outright physical hunger.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Haza clan are one of the most rich and powerful families in the empire, and are also corrupt and self-serving to the core. They even send an assassin to keep an eye on a lesser family member and get rid of her if she slips up.
- Bio-Augmentation: Basically everyone in service of the Empire has been altered on some level via grafts created from the titans they kill. This ranges from basic grafts everyone gets, like those against infection, to specialized sets of modifications, like the ones that give Din his Photographic Memory.
- Bittersweet Ending: Each ending falls somewhere along these lines.
- "The Tainted Cup" ends with most of the murderers dead and the remaining one arrested. The attacking leviathan is slain, with its body being used to repair the damaged wall as planned. The Haza family is heavily punished for their corruption that led to the events of the story, and Kol finishes his probationary period and is made a full assistant investigator. However, it is tragic that the wall was breached at all through the unexpected spread of the dapplegrass spores, leading to many deaths. And while Kol and Strovi enjoy the little time they have together, they are forced to end their budding relationship due to their respective duties separating them.
- ''A Drop of Corruption" has the murderer caught and executed for his crimes. Kol finds peace in his role and his father's debts are cleared (with an investigation being opened into the debt collector for their predatory collection policies thanks to Ana's string-pulling). Speaking of string-pulling, Ana is able to get Malo a position in the Iudex in another canton. However, Yarrowdale is still set to be severed from the empire with its usefulness at an end, and what is left of the royalty is in turmoil. And while Malo was able to get out, the other officers who are natives of Yarrowdale are likely to be left in the lurch once the separation is complete.
- "A Trade of Blood" ends with one of the killers dead by suicide and the other arrested. The two monopolies held by the two biggest gentry families in the canton are broken due to one clan having been wiped out and the other's sole survivor vowing to sell the land to multiple buyers in hopes that no such power builds up again. Speaking of the sole survivor, he and Kol's sister are set to be happily wed. Kol and his sister also appear to have made amends. Finally, the practice of using the guiding web spores on creatures to harvest food will likely be banned with the revelation of the strain that affects humans. On the bitter side, Kol learns a dark truth about one of the Khanum clans; they deliberately created the guiding web strain that works on humans in order to create mindless workers who can continue working long past death (indeed, Kol finds a cave filled with dead humans forced by the mind web fungi sprouting form them to continue mindlessly working centuries after the Khanum had all died out). And while said clan was wiped out by the other Khanum, Ana states that it was out of pragmatism, not morality that they did so. Finally, Kol's relationship with Tauri, an officer he worked beside on the case and started an intimate relationship with, ends on a very sour note as Tauri, who also witnessed the cave full of dead infected humans and was horrified by it, realized that Ana was completely unaffected by the spores despite being infected, thus meaning she is somehow genetically connected to the Khanum. Upon realizing this and that Kol knew about it, he severs ties with Kol, cursing the day that they met.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: The one Leviathan we get to see up and close certainly qualifies, with an insect-like carapace, tentacles, and a face where one doesn't belong. Their blood also causes anything that comes into contact with it to mutate, not just in shape but in chemical composition.
- Body Horror: The setting of the series is heavily based on biological technology and various mutations, so body horror abounds.
- Dappleglass enters the human body as spores, and then grows into a massive tree… very quickly. We are treated to descriptions of both the process and the aftermath.
- The second book has a mass murder via a tiny amount of reverse-engineered "titan's blood". It starts with a body half-transformed into spiraling bone and tubers, which seem to have exploded out of its face, and it does not get any prettier from there.
- The third book has the guiding web, a fungus which infests the brain of its hosts and conditions them to perform specific actions. Eventually, it erupts out of their heads in a great mass of black tentacles. Important note: even dead hosts in this condition are still compelled to perform these specific actions, given the right stimulus.
- Boy of the Week: Each installment has Kol getting physically involved with someone (usually a man), though none of them have really lasted. In book 2 at least, it is understood by both parties that it is purely a physical thing however. In book 3 Din hopes at least for a few more fun days with the fellow in question, although this hope is dashed after Tauri finds some unpleasant truths.
- The Brute: Cracklers are massive, enhanced supersoldiers designed for brute strength. The nickname comes from the extra bones they have to grow to support all the extra muscle, which make crackling noises.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Summation of the Transfer of Landed Properties, Qabirga Canton, 1100-1120.
- Early on in book 2, Ana mentions a proposal for the extraction and use of leviathan bone marrow to safely produce (well, relatively safely, as opposed to physically climbing inside a corpse) more blood, which was raised and supposedly dropped.
- Also in book 2, the blotley fly larvae: they're so genetically engineered for a single purpose, to run blood tests for contagion by drinking from a potentially infected subject and dying immediately if anything is wrong, that they can't even digest the blood, they'll start spitting it back into the vein they're attached to if they fill up. They also leave nasty, healing-graft-resistant sores. The villain cracks blood locks by filling up larvae on people with authorization and then attaching them to himself. The proliferation of sores is also the only way to reliably identify him other than his scent—though he's fully aware of that and makes sure to leave a bunch on his fake corpse.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Each Iyalet, or Imperial administration, has its own color: black for Legionnaires, purple for Engineers, red for Apothetikals, blue for Iudex and white/grey for Treasury.
- Color coded flares are also used at the seawalls to communicate various things like when a titan is spotted, finally killed, and so on.
- Contrasting Replacement Character: Each book has a local officer who assists Kol with his investigations.
- The first book has Tazi Miljin, a fellow ludex officer serving as assistant to another Immunis. He is a rather calm and down to earth guy who acts as a mentor of sorts to Kol. He has very few grafts beyond basic ones that increase his physical abilities to an extent. At the end of the story, he leaves the ludex to rejoin the front line against the Leviathans as part of the Legion.
- The second book has Tira Malo. She is a rather brash and irritable woman who serves as an equal to Kol. She is a Sublime like Kol, but as an Apoth, increasing her ability to hear and smell things to an extreme level. At the end of the story, due to the Empire's imminent withdrawal from Yarrow and Malo's uncertain legal status within the empire as a Yarrow native, Kol gets Ana to pull some strings to get her reassigned to a ludex immunis within the Empire's territory.
- Book 3 has Commander Tauri. He is a rather odd and disconnected man due to his enhancements, which allow him to feel the land around him and the condition it is in. He has similar powers to Kol that allow him to, among other things, create perfect maps in his mind. He takes his case much more personally than the other two on moral grounds and has such strong and specific opinions that at one point Ana even considers him a potential suspect. He and Kol also connect much more on an emotional level to the point that they enter a brief romantic relationship. At the end of the story however, due to learning a dark secret about one of the revered old clans and that Ana is somehow just like the Khanum and Kol knew about it, Tauri angrily curses Kol out and abandons him.
- Cool Sword: Miljin has a sword made out of Leviathan bone, with a special extra-complicated combination lock on the scabbard so only he can draw it. He gifts it to Din when the latter completes his apprenticeship and before going back to the Legion.
- Corrupt Cop: Early in the investigation Ana suspects the others working with them might be this, so she has Din replace some evidence without telling anyone it was found to see if Uhad and Miljin are honest about it when they redisover it. They're honest about this initial evidence, though Ana remains suspicious and it's not until later that it comes out that Uhad was not corrupt at all, but rather a Well-Intentioned Extremist who was trying to root out the corruption of the gentry and punish the crimes of the Hazas in particular.
- The Corrupter: The whole half-official institution of patronage often ends up playing out this way. Technically it doesn't have to lead to corruption, but obviously a large part of the point of having high ranking Imperial Officers who owe you favors is getting them to bend the rules for you as needed. Kaygi Haza and his clan's patronage of numerous Iyalet officers in particular ends up being a key plot point.
- Crafted from Animals: The Old Soldier Miljin has an extremely valuable custom sword made from titan bone that's tougher, lighter, and sharper than steel.
- Crippling Overspecialization: "Twitches" are rare Sublimes who can activate bursts of Super-Speed and Super-Reflexes. They're unbeatable in a fight... for about one minute per day, after which they need to rest and recover from the strain. It comes with an extra side of Blessed with Suck as the suffusions leave them extremely vulnerable to contagions.
- Determinator: Ana will do pretty much anything to solve a case, and Din isn't far behind. At the end of the first book, she explains that she chose him as her assistant not despite but because she figured that he cheated on his entry exam to the Iudex: this proved that he was willing to break rules to get things done.
- Disability Superpower:
- Din's muscle memory knack, which among other things makes him an amazing fighter with very little training, is a rare side effect which appears in engravers with some handicap, his being the inability to properly read or memorize textnote .
- Ana has a unique enhancement which she explains could only be applied to her because her brain was already different, and her various sensory problems are actually something she was born with (strongly implying what might be called autism in the real world).
- Double Standard: The Empire pulls out all the stops to support people who become disabled, whether from their alterations or injuries, but people born disabled, such as Din, get zilch.
- Driven to Suicide: Jalin Burav sets fire to his family home with everyone inside and fully intends to go out with them, but loses his nerve and jumps out at the last moment. However, later he escapes the infirmary into the Old Forest, where he is found with his wrists cut. Being unstable to begin with, the guilt of all the murders he was involved in (including this of his sister, the only family member he seemed to actually like) finally became too much for him.
- Dysfunctional Family: Kol's family is a bit of a mess. His mother died when he was very young, his father made repeatedly poor decisions that wracked up a lot of debt before dying, and his grandmother is rather abusive and domineering. Kol himself is very distant from his surviving family, not writing a single letter to them in the three years that he has been in the Iudex. When he runs into his sister (who coincidentally happens to be marrying the cousin of the case's murder suspect), she is rather chilly towards him for his silence (particularly since the money he was sending back wasn't enough alone to cover the family's costs, which forced her to get a job as a rancher, which was how she met her fiance).
- Eldritch Location:
- The Shroud in A Drop of Corruption is a living, growing artificial organism used as a base of operations for processing titan carcasses. From outside, it seems like a giant, shimmering green canopy of massive size; the experience of being inside it is so strange that most people need to take mood adjustment medications of various sorts before entering, as to not suffer from negative mental consequences.
- The Old Forest in A Trade of Blood was engineered by the Khanum to keep people away from... something... inside, commonly assumed to be the ruins of the disappeared Daljin tribe. it is comprised of purple trees that grow into incredibly dense fractal shapes, making it almost impenetrable. Those who do enter are overcome by a sense of dread emitting from the trees themselves, and encounter unsettling, alien-looking statues that it is best not to look at too closely. And the thing the forest was created to protect is still way, way worse.
- Everybody Knew Already: When Din finally gets up the courage to admit to Ana that he cheated on his Iudex exam and can't read, she's only upset at him for being so stupid as to think she hadn't known that all along. Given the incredible deductive abilities she's displayed numerous times by that point, plus the fact that she had all but said she knew he couldn't read already, she has a point.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: How titan-touched ecology often works, especially on the Path. This includes plants, various parasites, and worms. Lots and lots of worms.
- Façade Drop: When the second book's villain is exposed and stops pretending to be the milquetoast Nice Guy Prince Camak, whom he'd killed and replaced months prior, he abruptly goes Limp and Livid with a stare that shocks some of the witnesses.
- Fantastic Science: Magical grafts and enhancements are just a science to the people of the Empire.
- Femme Fatale: Miljin warns Din off Fayazi Haza in these terms, although most of her attempts to play one fail rather miserably due to Din's Determinator tendencies and her own stress (Din being a bisexual who is more strongly attracted to men than women probably helps as well).
- Festering Fungus: The guiding web, a fungus whose life cycle involves infesting organisms' brains and forcing them to behave in certain ways beneficial to the fungus. The cultivated variant is used to condition the victims into performing repetitive tasks, but only works on the non-sentient drokha-cats... supposedly.
- Feuding Families: The Buravs and the Armentas have been fighting for years for supremacy over the meat industry if the Canton of Sapirdad. When A Trade of Blood opens, one murder is threatening to plunge the canton into an all-out clan war.
- Glass Cannon: Twitches are deadly, lightning-fast assassins. However, they can only maintain their strength and speed for a few minutes and are exceedingly susceptible to contagion.
- Gone Horribly Wrong:
- Dappleglass, a type of parasitic fast-growing weed, was created by an Apoth officer trying to perfect a quicker method for producing large amounts of paper. The result devastated the entire Oypat Canton, which had to be burned to the ground and sealed to stop the contagion from spreading any further.
- The murderers in the first book were targeting only Kaygi Haza and Blas, in an attempt to gain a measure of poetic justice for the Oypat tragedy. However, Haza ended up unwittingly infecting a bunch of officers with dappleglass spores via the titular tainted cup. Some of them then proceeded to sprout on the Sea Walls during a Leviathan attack, which caused a potentially fatal breach in the Empire's first line of defense.
- Haughty Help: Madam Gennadios, the Hazas’ housekeeper in Daretana, is very aware of her masters' station and would be very happy to make you aware, too. Ana pulls a Break the Haughty on her rather quickly.
- Hegemonic Empire: The Empire has no shortage of Voluntary Vassals because it's the only country with the resources to build guns big enough to kill the Kaiju that emerge from the sea every year.
- Hidden Backup Prince: Pyktis was raised to believe he was one of those. Finding out he was only a tool in his not-so-wise-and-noble father's machinations breaks him and sets him on the path to murder and destruction.
- Homage: Ana is a deliberate homage to Nero Wolfe, although in the acknowledgements the author states half-jokingly that she came out more akin to Hannibal Lecter.
- Humanoid Abomination: The more extreme your alterations are, the closer you are to becoming this. The most potent example are the conzulates, the high commanders of the Iyalets, who are immortal and grow to inhuman sizes and shapes before finally retiring and being allowed to die. The second book reveals that Ana is one as well, the product of an attempt to clone the Khanum species back into existence.
- Immortality Hurts: The conzulates who sit one rank below the Emperor receive a Longevity Treatment that completely stops their aging. However, it also causes them to grow indefinitely, so they generally last a few centuries before their bulk becomes so debilitating that they choose euthanasia.
- It's Personal: Ana bears a grudge against the Haza family, who were responsible for the death of her previous assistant and for her own exile to Daretana. Ends up being subverted: Ana was in fact covertly assigned by Imperial higher-ups to investigate the Hazas’ corruption, and the whole personal vendetta thing was just a part of her cover story.
- Kaiju: The Leviathans are of the more Eldritch Abomination-y variety: colossal, grotesque monsters, sometimes with twisted human-like faces, who periodically attack from the sea for no apparent reason and whose blood triggers bizarre mutations in any living thing it comes into contact with. They get slightly bigger every year.
- Living Aphrodisiac: Plaizaiers, dancers in the imperial court, have grafts that produce these sorts of pheromones. The first book's conspirators have been exploiting this to compel people to work for them — the effect is both alluring and addictive. When Fayazi tries to use a plaizaier to seduce Din, he recognizes the scent from other places he's investigated, leading to a "Eureka!" Moment.
- Loophole Abuse: The kingdom of Yarrow contains the Empire's most important scientific installations, is chock-full of Imperial personnel, and is partially under the control of Imperial peacekeeping forces...but, until the ancient treaty handing over rulership comes due, it's not actually in the Empire. Hence, it's possible to get away with things there that one couldn't in the Empire proper, such as refusing to give Ana information or using highly dangerous experimental augmentations on researchers. Or at least, this is how Thelenai justifies it to herself. Din laments that she'll wriggle out of any consequences for her part in the tragedy. In the end he does get to arrest her, but only because Ana talks her into turning herself in.
- Love Cannot Overcome: Poor Kol cannot catch a break. Though his romances happen over a short period of time, they seldom end well. After "The Tainted Cup", his relationship with Strovi ends amicably as both are committed to their respective duties. However, in "A Trade of Blood", his relationship with Tauri ends on a much darker note upon their shared revelation about the origin of the mind web strain that affects humans and Tauri realizing Ana is related to the Khanum. We last seem him storming off saying he wish he had never met Kol.
- Magitek: Biomagitek, or something like that. Based on quasi-magical manipulations of various organisms to produce all kinds of effects, from luminous worms to people with superpowers.
- Meat Moss: Pure titan blood causes rampant growth and mutation in any living or once-living matter it touches. The second book shows a place where it was weaponized, fusing people, plants, clothes, stomach contents, insects, and worse into a massive cancerous growth that leaves even seasoned investigators reeling.
- Mistress and Servant Boy: Ana and Din's dynamic. Apart from being her eyes and ears, Din also brews her tea, runs her errands, and indulges her whims.
- Never Suicide:
- Din discovers a brilliant researcher at the Shroud, the top-secret leviathan research facility, died in what should have been an easily preventable accident. The man's former protegees say his mental health was seriously degraded, even beyond what's normal for work at the Shroud, and are split on whether he genuinely failed to notice the lethal error because of his poor state of mind, or whether he noticed it and deliberately failed to fix it because he wanted to die. Din, meanwhile, suspects it was just a setup to fake the guy's death. They're all half-wrong and half-right. Pyktis was indeed originally intending to die and did set up the accident, because his father had in essence ordered him to suicide-bomb the Shroud. However, he came to love the people he mentored too much to go through with his original plan, so he sabotaged his sabotage at the last minute and took advantage of the chaos to pretend he was dead.
- The deaths of the two elder Armenta children are ascribed to suicide, one by drowning and one by hanging. As it happens, both were murdered using the guiding web.
- The Nose Knows: Malo and the other Apoth wardens have olfactory augmentations impressive enough to track people through dense jungles by scent alone and tell when someone had spoiled fish for breakfast.
- No-Sell: Din is partially resistant to the conditioning of the guiding web thanks to his augmentations interfering with its mechanism of action, but Ana isn't affected by it at all, apparently due to her Khanum-like nature making her so different from a normal human that she is practically a different species.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: A cure for dappleglass was invented before the fall of Oypat, but it got stuck in regulatory boards and various committees for so long that the canton was lost anyway. Although this is actually a case of Corrupt Bureaucracy, since interested parties actively orchestrated this outcome as part of a land valuation scheme.
- Old Soldier: Miljin is an old-soldier-turned-cop, a war hero who went to serve his twilight years in the Iudex. By the end of the book, he decides Iudex business is too complicated for him and goes back to the Legion.
- The Odd-pliment: Agent Malo comes across as a cheerfully no-nonsense type with very few social filters in her first meeting with Dinios. When Dinios' stomach gets unsettled inside her morgue and he has to sprint for the drain, Malo compliments him on vomiting with the most precise aim she's ever seen.
- Perpetual Frowner: Din's stiff and awkward demeanor makes people constantly comment that he should try to smile sometimes and be a little more personable. It's mostly due to insecurity rather than inherent grumpiness.
- Photographic Memory: Engravers such as Din are modified to never forget anything. The effects this can have on the human brain as it ages are a minor plot point.
- Precursors: The Khanum were an ancient race that founded the Empire and laid the foundations to its civilization before dying out.
- Prefers Raw Meat: One of Ana Dolabra's many quirks is to take her meals raw, the better to taste the history of the plant or animal. During a juicy investigation in the second book, she asks the town Apothetikal Division for their most exotic edible specimens, then digs into a meal that nauseates all the witnesses.
- Pretty Boy: Din disparagingly describes himself as pretty rather than handsome, which he feels makes people take him less seriously.
- Really Gets Around: By the second book, Din's preferred method of dealing with his angst regarding his career path, financial problems and his separation from Strovi is a string of one-night stands with various men and women he picks up. Ana finds it annoying, as it often leaves him excessively tired the day after.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Vashta is doing her best both in aiding the investigation and preparing the city for the imminent Leviathan attack, and is willing to listen to Ana even when the latter goes in some pretty wild directions.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Ana got stuck in the distant and backwards Daretana Canton after offending the wrong well-connected noble family. That's the cover story, anyway; in fact, she was placed there as part of a long game to expose that family's crimes.
- Red Herring: Initially, it appears that someone is deliberately murdering Engineers, potentially as part of a plan to weaken the Empire. The fact that their poisoning lead to a breach in the walls and cryptic hints such as “the Engineers make the world, everyone else just lives in it” support the idea. However it's eventually discovered there is no such plot and that the dead engineers were poisoned by the actual target completely by accident.
- Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Three Imperial agencies are working at complete cross-purposes in Yarrow. Ana and Din, of course, are here to solve the murder of the Treasury official. Thelenai is only concerned with keeping her secret research secret, even though the murder (later murders, plural) directly pertains to said research and Thelenai herself, slowing the investigation down considerably. And lastly, the Treasury officials who are supposed to be negotiating Yarrow's upcoming absorption into the Empire are actually trying to negotiate the Empire's exit from Yarrow, something which considerably changes the political context of the various crimes in a way that would have really helped to know earlier.
- Sea Monster: Leviathans always emerge from under the sea, announcing themselves via a series of Bad Vibrations, the intensity of which makes it possible to estimate the time of their landfall.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: At the end of The Tainted Cup, Dinios confesses to Ana that he cheated on his qualifying examination to hide his dyslexia. She exasperatedly reminds him that she's a famous investigator and says that not only did she know all along, his outside-the-box tactics were part of the reason she hired him.
- Sex for Solace: By the second book, Din copes with his angst regarding his career path, financial problems, and separation from his lover through a string of one-night stands with various men and women.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: In the backstory. Pyktis spent his entire life raised in secret and trained for a highly important covert mission at his father's behest. Then he failed at the last moment because of Becoming the Mask. Then he discovered that due to his father's advanced dementia and the total secrecy of his very existence, not only did his father not remember him, nobody in the entire country he ostensibly worked for knew a thing about him and his mission. He, understandably, snapped a little bit.
- Short-Term Love Interest: Dinios becomes lovers with his new colleague Kepheus at the end of the first book, knowing that their respective duties to the Empire will soon take them to different places. By the time of the second book two years later, they've long since separated, though Dinios still regrets the end of their brief relationship.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: While plenty of other characters swear, Ana does it basically constantly, even when it's REALLY not appropriate.
- Spotting the Thread: Sublimes become inherently obsessed with the thing they’ve been Sublimated to be enhanced at and will always ramble about their area given the slightest chance. A woman with an enhanced sense of smell, despite her horrific injury and the still-more-horrific murder of her girlfriend, still tells Din about the scents of the medicine being used to treat her first. So Ana is naturally suspicious when an enhanced mathematician has nothing to say about a question of numbers. She’s right. Fayazi’s “axiom” secretary is no such thing. The woman is actually the Hazas’ master assassin hiding in plain sight.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Castus Armenta and Zansay Burav manage to fare even worse than Romeo and Juliet.
- STD Immunity: Sublimes' grafts apparently include disease resistance, which Ana lampshades when scolding Din over his promiscuity in the second book: "...otherwise your wick would've surely rotted off ages ago!"
- Supernatural Elite: The people of Khanum who founded the Empire pushed grafting science to the limit, enhancing their bodies and minds far beyond even the lesser Sublimes. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way they lost the ability to interbreed with humans; the resulting fertility crisis has left the 450-year-old emperor the Last of His Kind.
- Superpower Disability: Many alterations have side effects that eventually render people severely disabled—every conzulate will become completely immobile and require massive assistance in every aspect of daily life. Augurs, with their super-enhanced pattern recognition abilities and intelligence, are only allowed to stay on the drug that makes them augurs for three years; otherwise apophenia and paranoia consume them (and even before they hit the time limit, they're prone to information overload, damaging hyperfocus, and sensory meltdowns).
- Superpower-Negating Disability: Dinios Kol is a downplayed example in that his disability, dyslexia, weakens rather than nullifies his powers. Unlike other engravers who can memorize entire documents just by reading them, Din has to sound out each word of a text aloud and then memorize the sounds, a process that takes significantly longer and that he is compelled to do in secret to hide his disability.
- Title Drop: Ana mentions a "drop of corruption" twice during the eponymous book. The first time is literal, referring to the tiny amount of Leviathan's blood required to cause massive carnage; the second is figurative, saying how even a little corruption in the Imperial system can cause ripples that will endanger the stability of the entire Khanum Empire.
- Tragic Villain: Jolgalgan and Uhad have caused thousands of deaths and put the very existence of the Empire at risk while attempting to avenge a grave wrong that was seemingly swept under the rug by Imperial authorities. Jolgalgan's motive was grief over her lost home, while Uhad is an aging engraver buckling down under the weight of years of dark memories and his helplessness in battling corruption in his city.
- Twin Switch: Multiples are extremely common in Yarrow, especially in the royal family, something that comes up more than once. "Prince Camak" isn't Camak and hasn't been for two months. The slightly dim, weak, well-meaning man is just an act put on by his genius twin brother, and the murderer, Pyktis.
- Uptown Boy: Din is from a modest background and joined the Iyalets mainly to provide for his family. His love interest, Captain Strovi, comes from a rich and powerful gentry family, although he seems uncomfortable every time this is brought up.
- As we learn in A Trade of Blood, this runs in the family. Din's sister is engaged to marry into a gentry family that she was initially working for as a rancher. To say that Din was shocked to learn about this is an understatement. Unlike Din and Strovi however, Din's sister and her fiance end up happily together.
- Vomiting Cop: Din throws up after going over his first murder scene, which is admittedly quite nasty. Lampshaded in the second book where he throws up again on viewing the remains of the murdered Treasury official, and Malo, his local contact, compliments him on how precisely he's managing to puke into the drain. He has extenuating circumstances on both occasions, though: in the first book he is extremely nervous about being found out as a cheat and kicked out of the Iudex, while in the second book he just had some spoiled fish for breakfast.
- Wardrobe Flaw of Characterization: Ana usually pays as little attention to her wardrobe as to other social mores. Nonetheless, when she needs to appear in full dress uniform, she looks perfect but for the whimsically rearranged rank insignia.
- Warmed by Faint Praise: Given Ana's general lack of social graces and effusively salty complaints about anything that displeases her, Din very much takes it to heart when her assessment of him is a simple "He is good."
- The Watson: Din is the narrator of the story and the assistant to the detective, who sees all the clues but does not have the skill to solve the mystery himself.
- White Sheep: Oddly enough, Fayazi might be this to the Haza family. She's not a very good person, but she's also not an absolute monster, and most of her more dubious actions are motivated by fear and coercion by her evil cousins.
- You Can't Go Home Again: The fate of the Oypatis after their canton was destroyed. In his final moments, poor Ditelus wistfully describes the place and claims to be going home.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
- Book 1: Uhad poisons his erstwhile accomplices Jolgalgan and Ditelus before Ana can find them, although Ditelus manages at least to give her a hint before dying.
- Book 2: Pyktis horrifically poisons his smuggling troops to erase any evidence of his collaboration with them, and later takes out his Treasury mole Signum Gorthaus in similar fashion as well.