The Tainted Cup

Book review for The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I rated it 4.5 stars. This fantasy/mystery novel was the 2025 winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and a rather fun romp of a book that I absolutely sped through. It’s from the perspective of Din, who works for an eccentric investigator named Ana, as they set out to solve a gruesome murder mystery. The world building for this book is great. The pair live in a world where humans augment their abilities (e.g. to have super strength, or perfect recall memory) so they can be better employable in their work for the Empire. There’s a darker side to this though, as the augmentations leads to shorter lifespans or mental health problems as the human body can’t tolerate the strain of their increased powers long-term. As a result, it’s the lower classes that tend to go undergo this sort of augmentation, while the rich elite only use it to look really pretty at no expense to their health. Then the other part of the world is this…