In an effort to break free from her abusive parents, Saraswati joins the galaxy wide show Interstellar Megachef. Things get complicated when she gets swept up in a programmer’s dream of simulated food.

I really wanted to like this lore, but it really shouldn’t have been marketed as Masterchef in space. The parts of the book that are actual cooking show related takes place over less than 10% of the whole story.

There are some interesting discussions of the ethics of simulation of something necessary to life & manipulating the brain. And there’s some discussion over what food means, through the process of making and sharing, food with community, food passed down that I was fascinated by. But this story also has a lot of intense political intrigue, a totally implausible romance (for me), and talk of cultural supremacy and the hypocrisy of a culture preaching acceptance and diversity while all the while making sure their culture is most prominent. This story just tried to do too much.

And with constant flipping between a variety of characters, switching between first and third person narration, and with the Primian culture having a naming convention where every character had a first name that was one of nine, I just kept getting confused and having to backtrack.

Thanks to both NetGalley and Rebellion for this arc.

There are so many interesting ideas in Interstellar MegaChef. Glance at the cover and read the blurb, and you may think this will be a cosy SF story about a woman in an intergalactic version of the Great British Bake Off. There's certainly a (small) element of that, but it's not the whole story, which I think may frustrate some readers.

Lakshminarayan has created a complex, living breathing world. Saras is our main character, a refugee from the looked-down-upon Earth, who wants to impress at the cookery competition. Another significant character is Serenity Ko, an overachiever virtual sim creator who is desperate to make her mark, and doesn't care much if she makes friends along the way. She ends up eager to create a food sim - but who can teach her to cook?

This book is as much about interplanetary politics as cooking - who has control over what, which culture is better, what rules do you need to navigate society, etc. It's interesting, but it's darker and more complex than the book's marketing suggests. The main characters (especially Ko) aren't always sympathetic. It is also part of a series and to my mind the most pressing questions are not fully answered within this title. Which is fine if you're on board and want to buy the next one. But less fine if you're not sure!

I did enjoy the ethical question (another one not answered in this book) of whether or not it's a good thing to promote a food experience that could put cooks out of business. It's a bit like whether we should use AI art (because it's easy) when it's putting artists out of business (ie probably not) - so it feels very relevant, even if it is set in a far off future. I'd read this author again, but must admit to enjoying her previous book more.

Ratatouille meets the Bear meets Masterchef in an Indian cuisine inspired futuristic cooking saga

The moment I chanced upon the blurb of this book on NetGalley, I wanted to read it and thanks to the author and the awesome folks at NetGalley, I got an ARC of this book. Interstellar Megachef is like a veritable wholesome serving of rasam rice but the slightly spicy kind – underneath the immediate warmth and coziness of the rasam, there are layers of spice and tanginess that make this book far more nuanced, thoughtful, and poignant than you would expect


On the surface, Interstellar Megachef is about an intergalactic cooking competition featuring an underdog, Saraswati Kaveri from Earth traveling to Uru, now the political, cultural, and gastronomical centre of the universe. Earth is now considered a backward planet that cooks with open flame whereas the prevailing gastronomical culture leans towards infusions and “flowmetal”. The other PoV is that of a Serenity Ko, a sim creator of experiences, leading a messy chaotic, and debauched existence, who hones in on food for her next sim venture following a rude shock at her workplace. Circumstances bring our leads together even as the titular Megachef contest unfolds

Anton Reaction - Ratatouille

There is this fabulous sequence in the movie Ratatouille (Spoilers for the movie obviously – duh), wherein the jaded food critic picks at his food with apparent disinterest only to be so moved by the taste of the food that he is transported to his childhood and the emotions that it evokes. To a great extent, that’s what this book is all about – the emotions and feelings connected with food. Food is a universal language and while everyone’s experiences and emotions are different, the underlying theme of food being a uniter fuels this book.

“Flavor. Texture. Visual. That’s all you need to make a meal an experience”

That said this is a layered book and the author uses food as an allegory to bring about some fascinating commentary. The author remarks on how food is often used as a soft power of conquest – a dominant civilization often finds ways to impose their food as part of the cultural domination to suppress and mark their superiority. The author also tries to draw attention to the pretentiousness related to food – the heart (and the stomach) wants what it wants. A person can enjoy a full Andhra meal (ala Nagarjuna) as much as they can savor a 9-course fine dine degustation. That shouldn’t be a forum to justify what is better and more civilized – the book put this point across rather well. Finally, there is the AI element that the book wants to really expand about but saves ammo for the next book. AI is entrenching its roots everywhere and food is no exception. But Food has a personal human element to it that AI cannot fully replace or explain. In this age where AI in writing specifically genre writing is a ticking time bomb, the author’s commentary on foods might as well extend to books and writing

“Human history teaches us that humans pick convenience over commitment every single time”

The central mystery and journey that drives Saraswati Kaveri is one of the key elements of the book and there is just enough in it that keeps you engaged even as the story proceeds. I do think some of the elements of her journey and the mechanics were kind of hand-wavy but she remains an entirely compelling character with enough of a mystery that you are invested in her journey. Serenity Ko on the other hand starts as a character that one wouldn’t like, almost deliberately so. She is rather unpleasant and self-centered to say the least but the author teases out elements of Ko’s personality and her family to make you accept her as the co-lead of this book

“All cooking came down to combining flavors in different proportions, to creating visually rich, stimulating, texturally complete edible experiences”

For a book titled Interstellar Megachef, the focus on the actual competition itself is rather muted and limited – which was a bit of a disappointment. Instead, we spend a fair amount of time in what is possibly a crash course in app development and product management. Also, I did feel some of the food-related impact kind of rushed and not delivering the full experience. There is also the third PoV that we see that comes across as a bit ominous but has a very limited role to play in this book – it however does expound a bit on how civilizations try to reign supreme. The more things change, the more some people want it to remain the same.

Finally, on a personal note, I loved the concept of Indian culture specifically the cuisine element in a SF setting. It’s pretty rare to come across these and I love how the author has woven it as a key theme of the story. It elevated my experience of reading this book making it wholesome. To make it even more special, the book is also kind of South Indian to an extent – the sprinkling of Tam words added a wonderful garnish to this dish of a book. KB Wager’s the Indranan War series featuring an Indian culture and gods-inspired matriarchical society in space was one of the books that I can recommend to get more of these kinds in the SFF genre – the book featured female warriors comfortably wielding weapons dressed in saris while invoking Ganesha for starters.

Fun, thoughtful, poignant, and questioning, Interstellar Megachef is an Indian-cuisine & culture-based space novel that revels in subverting your expectations of what the book is all about while serving a grand story that sets itself up for interesting things ahead. Come for the cooking contest, stay for the app development and the role of AI in our precious labor of love activities.

Rating – 4 Medu Vadais on 5

An absolute treat that melted in the mouth and left me hungry for more. A biting satire of the gulf between professed and lived values, with all the galaxy-sweeping politics you could want from a space opera, combined with a slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance. I loved my time with Saras and Serenity, and am looking forward to the next installment!

Listen, listen! I have perhaps read three sci-fi novels in all of my life (and I think it was all the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because of my boyfriend) and it has never been my genre. However, something propelled me hard and fast towards "Interstellar MegaChef" and I was ecstatic when I got accepted.
Was it the huge doughnut on the cover? Perhaps! Was it the intriguing female centricity of it, and how it was queer? Perhaps! No matter the reason, I got it and immersed myself in this strange and complex world.

The novel is told in different perspectives, which allows us readers to gather more information about the new planet our protagonist is on. While everybody's chapters are told through third person, we connect with our heroine Saraswati in first person. We get deeper into her impressions of the world, and her feelings about everything.
Saras is on Primus after fleeing her home country of Earth - which in this universe, it is the most primitive and war-ridden world - to prove herself as an interstellar chef on the most-watched program in the galaxy. She's expecting it to be tough, with all the changes and a new language, and not knowing anybody. However, she's also expecting friendliness and equal treatment, after all, Primus is too advanced to be xenophobic right?
Wrong. If you thought you were in for a simple sci-fi novel about intergalactic food, and some sapphic tension, think again!

"Interstellar Megachef" is a layered story that examines how food is and probably always will be political. It explores the politics of the planet Primus - I believe the political plot will be more relevant in the next installment - and its cultural imperialistic views, which are subtle.
This debut novel is a testament to friendship that knows no race, as Saras is lucky to attract beings from all planets that truly like her, support her and come to love her.
One of our other perspectives, a very valuable one, is that of Serenity Ko. She's the granddaughter of the most famous chef in the galaxy, a prodigy of the Primus world thanks to her talents as a "creator of experiences" (it's hard to explain out of context). Serenity goes through an enormous amount of change throughout this novel, and one thing that excites me about a sequel is to see where the auhtor brings this character.

In case it was not clear, I really enjoyed this novel. Sometimes it was a bit confusing for a little sci-fi newbie like myself, but it didn't really detract from the wonderfully engaging, and lovely written story. I am really looking forward to the sequel.

The premise of this book sounded so interesting. I love the Great British Bake Off and other cooking shows. And I love the idea of non-white characters being the main characters of the story. But I just struggled to get through it. The sci-fi aspect of it was jus too much. As someone who doesn't really read sci-fi, I just found the sci=fi aspects of it too intimidating to the point where I didn't enjoy reading it.
This could be a great read for someone who already is a big sci-fi fan.

I'm going to go straight in and say, I didn't love this book. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. It was sold to me as "Megachef in space" so I expect that to be the main setting, however I felt that the show aspect of the story was secondary, maybe even tertiary to the rest.

The writing style was tricky, sometimes I breezed through it with ease and others I was rereading entire paragraphs trying to work out exactly what had been said. I think that it mostly correlated to which character was in control of the chapter, this was often really jarring to me and took way from my enjoyment of the story.

The blurb told us this was a "fun and satirical, thought provoking novel" which for me, personally, was partially true. It was definitely satirical and political and I think would 100% be loved by people who enjoy the complex nuances in novels like this but when I see "fun and satirical" I expect easy, funny and sarcastic, poking fun and dry wit (which I love) this just left me often confused. The names of the characters didn't help this either, with 90% of the characters being named after one of the 9 principles, meaning they had very similar names. I had no idea who was who for half of the book. My favourite character from the whole book was Kili, both the angel and devil on Saraswatis shoulder, he provided the dry wit and lovable rogue I was expecting.

Having said all that I did enjoy elements of the novel and I'm definitely intrigued to see where the next book takes this plot. What I do love is that I can see that this story still has a long way to go, that there is still so many ways this story can be developed and directions it can take and I would definitely read the next book to see how it all plays out.

My thanks to Rebellion for the early access to this book.

This is a much more complex book than I expected going in which isn't bad but wasn't for me. I was overwhelmed with the world building and a lot had very little to do wih the story itself. The food stuff was inventive and interesting though.

Wow. I tried. This is why I don't read blurbs, bc if I hadn't, I might have actually enjoyed this one. But I did read the blurb, and that was the book I wanted to read.

Too many characters that all have very similar names (after one of the "nine virtues") made it very hard to follow who was doing what. And I'm not one to put something down bc I don't like the characters, but I didn't actually care about any of them OR what they were actually doing.

If you're going into this thinking it's going to be about a cooking competition in space, skip it.

I think that the marketing got this book to just the wrong people - I was expecting more of a cozy food eccentric cooking competition in space, and while yes that is happening isn't really the headline or main part of this book. It's more of a sci-fi political book which I think is a different set of readers with different preferences. The many POVs and info-dumping was also set up that made this difficult for me to get into, I felt lost or overwhelmed more often than I prefer. In the right hands I think that this book will have readers fall into it, but the set-up felt misleading.

DNF at 25%

The main characters were pleasant to read about... when they were present. There were just too many chapters that focussed on other parts of the galaxy. They were unnecessary side tangents that only added to the worldbuilding but didn't manage to properly support the plot or the characters. This made it hard to get a grasp of the world, as I became overloaded with information and became bored as I was waiting for the parts that I actually cared about.

And lastly, I was hoping to find Great British Bake Off vibes, but Interstellar Megachef is an American-style cooking show.

Thank you NetGalley and Solaris for giving me access to an e-arc for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Sci-fi lovers will perhaps enjoy this. I wasn't aware that this was going to be such a hardcore science fiction or wouldn't have requested it. Not being used to/not being the kind of reader who enjoys the genre that much, I had a hard time connecting to the characters and keeping track of the world. The cover and the blurb seen slightly misleading in the case of this book as it was because of them that I got the impression that this was going to use science only as a part of the story.

This is a hell of a great novel, and if there ends up being more from this series/world, I would love it. You get an examination of cultural hegemony and racism as seen through the food world and what it values, and how the idea of a naive desperate for positive attention fresh from college worker could potentially deeply fuck that. There's some threads here that seem to be waiting for another book to be picked up on, and hopefully this sells well enough that we get it. But Lakshminarayan's view of the things that happen in kitchens and behind shows, as well as the individual characters playing into these systems, and you have a hell of a great read. And it's queer to boot! Pick it up when it comes out.

I was extremely excited for this book and was psyched to receive an arc but I just couldn’t get on with it. The vibes weren’t what I expected from the cover and blurb and there was just a little too much going on for me. I found it hard to follow each characters arc and I think they might have been stronger in separate books. I really wanted to like this book so I’m hoping that if I come back to it later I might feel differently.

I've been waiting months to start reading this and maybe it was the heightened anticipation, or maybe it was my love for GBBO (mostly the earlier seasons) but this book was just, meh.

It is very busy, lots of world building, lots of new terminology, lots of characters, lots of secrets and maybe would have worked better as a second book, because I kept having to go back and re-read.

Saras wants to win the cooking competition Insterstellar Megachef - and also remain hidden as she navigates life in Primus and meets the badly misnamed Serenity Ko. Serenity has secrets of her own as she aims to become the queen of immersive reality. It's not going so well for her, though, but a chance meeting with Saras may give them both the lives they want.

The idea of GBBO in space was a great set up - but there is precious little of any food competition ambiance, and the interstellar part felt very surface-level, which making this setting that is thousands of years in the future feel very, very familiar.

I appreciated the diversity and representation - but that would be the one highlight. I didn't care for the characters, and when when that happens it's just downhill for me.

It was a ok read. I was expecting a food themed fun cozy sci-fi, but this just touched the bare minimum of all of those attributes. The setting is fine, but it felt very mundane and lacked the oomph of something sci-fi or special. The political elements took precedence over cooking, food and fun which though not bad wasn't what I expected. The focus on cultural expectations and difficulties around the same isn't really my cup of tea.

3.5 rounded up.
I really enjoyed this for the most part but, it’s definitely not what I was expecting from the cover. I was hoping for fun, cosy sci-fi with humour, instead I got a strange mix of politics, race relations and the development of cuisine and culture over the years. The food concepts were fun, and I liked the explanation for why things had developed that way, and I found the idea of simulated food fascinating. I enjoyed the side characters - especially Starlight Fantastic, mainly because they felt properly alien. I did like the alternating POV, it kept things fresh.
I didn’t like the naming system, it made character distinction really confusing, and the fact that most were human was annoying. I didn’t like that nearly all of the POV characters were so morally ambiguous. I also didn’t feel like the time scale for the future felt accurate, and there wasn’t enough of an explanation about Earth.
All in all, this was entertaining but definitely not as labelled.

The marketing is really misleading on this - the cover is fun and so is the description, both making you think that it'll be more focused on the cooking competition and even beyond that, looking at the far future of food in a satirical but lighthearted way.

It's not that at all. The cooking competition itself takes up maybe 10% of the book (both iterations of it), and the book is much more about food as a political vehicle, a tool for both empires and exclusion, while still being something primal and emotional, a way to connect with each other. The political state of humanity is a huge part of this, obviously, so anti-capitalist and anti-war in such a way that it's almost looped back on itself in the cyclical human desire to separate into "us" and "them", and food is such a vehicle for this.

So it's still very much a book about food, but it's not a /fun/ food book, certainly not the one the marketing might lead you to think it is. There's a cooking competition, there's queer women, and there's a lot of thoughts about the nature of food and culture and how tied we are to both. The one thing the marketing got right is that it's thought-provoking: the nature of technology and intent and who is using that technology and what for is forefront here. I think if you had less of an idea that it would be about the cooking competition itself and more about what it represents for humanity in the future, it would be better. I certainly had a hard time settling into it, but once I got a better handle on what was actually happening I really enjoyed it.

This is a very cool, fun and fresh satirical yet thought-provoking take on science fiction fantasy. I very much enjoyed and loved the LGBTQ+ representation. This is also a very fun cover! A donut?! Come on! I love it!

I struggled slightly with the vomit and retching descriptions, as I don't love when alcohol is introduced into a science fiction environment. I really enjoy when a new fun sort of drink is created, adding to the plot instead.

I also really struggled to keep track of the characters and the unusual punctuation was difficult for my brain to absorb in an ereader format, as it was not a typical experience. This may just be because it is the advanced reader copy.

Between the fun banter, humor, and important themes and gorgeous cover and wonderful queer representation, I just know this book is going to be successful and do well! I am rooting for the success of this wonderful read. Unfortunately, it simply was not for me? I think the humor being British likely contributed to this as I am located in Seattle, WA.

Thank you for allowing me to read this early and for free! This was an incredible privilege and I appreciate the opportunity to express my honest opinion.

A great premise and an author to watch, this unfortunately stumbled in the execution. Still a fun book and worth a read, especially for sci-fi readers looking for more stories in the vein of Becky Chambers, less space battles. I had very high hopes for an adult-level novel not far from Space Battle Lunchtime Vol. 1: Lights, Camera, Snacktion.

The narration is told party in first person, for the Earthling character, and partly in third person, for the computer programmer and everyone else. Third person throughout, or alternating first person accounts, would have made more sense.

This is not a space romance. There are some low-key mentions of both characters thinking the other is cute but a disaster; nothing like a romantic storyline develops until about 80-84% of the way through the book (according to my Kindle), so it was very rushed and felt unnecessary-- the story would have been a-ok to stick to a found-family story on a unique future planet.

The climax also feels a bit cheated. There's a lot of detail and day-to-day specificity as the character arrives from Earth and gets to know the planet. Once the characters really start to go full throttle on their joint project, though, the narration pulls back to a very vague descriptions, covering a span of a couple of weeks with a lot of handwaving. The head-to-head final battle also felt rather middle-school-ery with the main character standing up to a bully and proving her worth to herself. At the same time, several points about how the main character's parents engineered her prior success on earth and even at least 1 position on the new planet aren't in any way resolved.

The new planet's food culture is heavily documented, but it doesn't do a good job of making sense. A main point is that Earth-culture cooking is wasteful because it relies on whole ingredients, while alien-planet cooking sucks compounds out of fruits and vegetables, theoretically producing less waste. But the food still has to be grown and harvested first, the compounds aren't harvested while the plant is still alive to make more. And it's never clarified if, for example, one fruit that could feed one human could provide extracted products to feed multiple humans. This aspect had great potential but was poorly-realized.

This would still be a fun read, if expectations were managed better. Or, check out what this author does in 3-5 years. eARC from NetGalley.