2025 Hugo Finalists: The Tainted Cup

This post is part of the series, Reading the 2025 Hugo Finalists for Best Novel, where I am reading through all the 2025 Hugo Award Finalists for best novel. These are not book reviews. Just some scant thoughts as I think through a voting order.

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett is just as massive as the leviathans it portrays, which are only a secondary aspect of the plot! The scope of the novel reminded me of the first time I read The Fifth Season and I suspect that the next book in Bennett's planned series will show up as a Hugo finalist next year as well (much like the Broken Earth series). One key difference that I like about The Tainted Cup is the the first person POV (as opposed to Broken Earth's third person POV). I assume this is more common for murder mysteries anyway (I don't read many), but it helped pull me deeply in to the mystery and share confusion and excitement with Din (who is an excellent storyteller).

The first few chapters were pretty heavy on the world-building and that paid off as the murders piled up and the plot thicken. The background of the leviathans and the forced deadline for Din and Ana's work was just as intriguing as the main storyline. I hope top read more in the series in the future.

Once the background was establish I settled in to Din's voice and perspective. The unveiling of his special abilities and his fears about his shortcomings is well paced to the events of the novel. His relationship with Strovi could have used more development and felt a bit "tacked on", but presumably (and hopefully?) that will built upon somehow in upcoming novels in the series (if not with Strovi specifically). Din's relationship with Miljin was much better addressed given it's important to the story and although it seems unlikely, I'd love to see more of Miljin in the future.

Ana's eccentricities are often silly and fun to read. Her Sherlockian attributes are clear even at the very end of the novel when Din gifts her a box of "moodies", making her happy as can be. Bennett does an excellent job providing the clues and pacing her revelations about each of the various murders. I recalled wondering at one moment about late in the novel what the title of has to do with anything only to have it revealed within a couple of pages. This felt random, but was actually well set up by the development of the plot and the big reveals in the final few chapters.