Starting on the 2025 Hugo Shortlist

I've consumed two things from the 2025 Hugo Award shortlist recently. They're Quite Different. The first was The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett. I loved this; it's a crime thriller set in a fantasy world, where The Empire exists to keep its people safe from Leviathans. It has a lot of what you'd expect from the crime genre; whilst a couple of times that meant that I spotted the plot twist…