Author: Lavanya Lakshminarayan
Publisher: HarperCollins India
I was provided a media copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Do you believe that just food can help you relive your best memories?
Stepping off a long-haul star freighter from Earth, Saras Kaveri has one
bag of clothes, her little flying robot Kili ... and an invitation to compete
in the galaxy's most watched, most prestigious cooking show. Interstellar
MegaChef is the showcase of the planet Primus's austere, carefully synthesized
cuisine. No one from Earth---where they're so incredibly primitive they still
cook with fire---has ever graced its flowmetal cookstations before, or smiled
awkwardly for its buzzing drone-cams. Until now. Corporate prodigy Serenity Ko,
inventor of the smash-hit sim SoundSpace, has just got messily drunk at a
floating bar, narrowly escaped an angry mob and been put on two weeks'
mandatory leave to rest and get her work-life balance back. Perfect time to start
a new project! And she's got just the idea: a sim for food. Now she just needs
someone to teach her how to cook. A chance meeting in the back of a flying cab
has Saras and Serenity Ko working together on a new technology that could
change the future of food-and both their lives-forever...
As a concept, the author has picked up an interesting concept of meshing together food and technology in this book. The author also presents a vision for the future where interstellar travel is a reality, and how that could possibly fare for us as Humans. The book is a good start to a possible series where the characters experiment with the idea of food, and how it interacts with our mind, body and spirit, and the possibilities of integrating it with technology. The writing is decent enough and the idea that the author wants to put across manages to come across. However, the good things about the book primarily stop at the concept stage and do not necessarily transform during the writing part of the book. As a first book of a series that presents a different style of names being used and a completely different lifestyle, and a different world, a bit of a setup is something that is required. Being a book that is a science fiction book with a completely different world, terminologies and concepts should be explained to the reader, either as an appendix, or through conversations in the book, which sadly hasn’t been done in the book. Secondly, the storytelling is very slow and the plot has too many unnecessary elements which could have been edited out, or the book could have been split into parts to enhance the reading experience. With a promising concept, the storytelling could have been an experience, however the flavour in the book was a bit shallow for me. The climax is nicely written, and leaves a bit of mystery for the upcoming books.
The book has a lot of characters in it, considering it explores
interstellar travel. Lavanya has described the characters in detail and taken
time for the character to mature. The inter-planetary politics is explained
nicely through the characters and how they cope with it. I liked the character
of Saraswati and how her entire arc is shown, leaving a bit more to be explored
in the upcoming books. I also liked Serenity Ko’s character and how it develops
over the story.
Overall, a book with an inspiring concept that could have been written
better. The book scores a 3.75/5 for me.
Grab a copy of the book on Amazon India or your nearest bookstore!
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