The Tainted Cup wins the Hugo Award for best novel
Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup won the Hugo for best novel at Seattle Worldcon 2025.
The 2025 Hugo Awards were presented on 16 August at Seattle Worldcon 2025, the 83rd World Science Fiction Convention. Best novel went to The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, published by Del Rey in the US and Hodderscape in the UK. It is a fantasy novel built around a murder investigation, and the first book in a planned trilogy.
Ray Nayler won best novella for The Tusks of Extinction, Naomi Kritzer best novelette for "The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea", and Nghi Vo best short story for "Stitched to Skin Like Family Is". The best series award went to Rebecca Roanhorse's Between Earth and Sky. Darcie Little Badger's Sheine Lende won the Lodestar Award for a young adult book, and Moniquill Blackgoose received the Astounding Award for best new writer.
The Hugos are voted on by members of each year's Worldcon, and the administrators publish full voting statistics after the ceremony.
The win is a useful case study in genre blending. The Tainted Cup borrows the structure of the classic detective story, with an eccentric investigator and a more ordinary assistant, and places it inside an invented world. Later in the year it also won the World Fantasy Award. Readers who dismiss either crime or fantasy as formula may want to note how well the two combine when the plotting is careful.
Sources: Seattle Worldcon 2025: Hugo Award winners and statistics; The Hugo Awards: 2025 winners.