DNFing this book because it isn’t really as advertised. It’s not very much about queerness or a cooking show, which is what it really seemed like it was supposed to be about. That said, I do think this book could be interesting enough as an audiobook so I’ll try it in that format!

Admittedly, this is not the fairest review - I am putting this book down at 37% and will not be finishing it.

The pitch and premise of this book really drew me in. Sci-fi is my favorite genre, I love cooking shows, and sapphic romance is great. However, the actual story barely touches on these selling points. It’s also described as “fun” and “satirical,” but those aspects are both missing for me.

Instead, what you find here is a story full of political and cultural commentary, focusing on xenophobia, cultural conformity, and supremacy. I found the world-building to be unnecessarily complicated, and at times, it reads like a textbook. I also found one of the main POV characters to be extremely unlikable. With all of this combined, I have no interest in finishing the story.

Overall, the marketing just feels misleading. This doesn’t make it a bad book - it’s just not what I signed up for.

Thank you to Net Galley and Solaris for the ARC. This was an absolutely amazing read! I am mind blown! The world building was amazing, and I love how well integrated it was with the themes of the story and the plot. I loved how food was explored in this novel, as something that brings people together, but also something that can be used to enforce cultural hegemony. I also loved the exploration of the soft power of culture in spreading and enforcing political ideals. Also, the exploration of technology in terms of replacing artists was really well done. I loved the characters in this book - they all had so much depth and the different POVs were all so interesting. I loved Saraswati, her journey of trying to prove that even people from Earth can cook. I also loved Serentiy Ko's character and her journey with her career and her invention. Optimism Mahd'vi's chapters were so interesting, I loved the scheming. Kili was so cute. I also loved the POV from the twins Pavi and Amol who are immigrants originally from Earth that are trying to fit in Primian food culture. The food descriptions in this book were stellar, if you read this make sure you have a snack because this book makes you so hungry. Also I desperately need the next book, this was so good.

Before I go further, 3 stars but by the time I got to the end I realised I really do want to see where this series goes. I liked the idea of this story. The premise from the description is there, in this somewhat futuristic fantasy. In some ways it lived up to that maybe less, more and bigger. I know that’s clumsy I’ll try to explain.
Less: this has the behind the scenes cook show contest bitchy, one up manship, self conceited Diva, balanced with camaraderie and cooking skill. Yet as I’ve said this is only a small part.
More: the story is so much bigger than a cook show contest, and that surprised me as this isn’t suggested in anyway in the book cover description. Politics and political correctness, feuds and universal conquest play a big part. Some of the story line didn’t make sense until I was well into the book, and some parts suggest explanations and expansion coming, I think, in later books.
Bigger: the story includes many issues that should be debated. Read the book and open some conversations to the betterment of chefs and everyone.
Likes: by the end I liked the whole. Humour, it’s there; revenge, it’s there; sapphic,it’s there but in the background, not the major focus nor thrown in your face. I liked the feel of ‘It’s just a natural thing, so let’s not make a whole big thing about it’.
Dislike: the author seemed to try to hard to be futuristic in the naming of characters. The names are interesting (the why of them is not explained, which might have been nice), yet for a while they got in my way as my brain kept pausing to understand their meaning and context in a sentence each time I read a name when there was none.
One confusion for me still to be worked out - how can you have memories of food to relive, if you’ve never eaten the food in the first place?
Thank you to Rebellion and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

I think there is a little bit of false advertising that's happening with the pitch of the book. I imagined I was picking something like Space Opera, which was pitched as Eurovision in space and was, essentally an extremely overrought and verbose but execution of an intergalactic ESC. That was the whole set up and structure of the book. It's not the case with Interstellar MegaChef: it won't follow the beats of a cooking show, because it's more interested in painting the society at large, and interplay of the cultures (with especial interest in metropoly-colony and general immigration themes). The choice to have a focus on that didn't bother me, but the execution was uneven: too on the nose sometimes. On the plus side: pet robot companions! queers! and some cooking.

3.5 rounded up to 4

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Interstellar MegaChef by Lavanya Lakshminarayan is a mixed first and third person multi-POV Queer sci-fi set in a potential future where some humans have created a new culture several millenia ago called Primus and others still come from Earth. Saras is a chef from Earth who has been struggling to pick her career back up after leaving the sphere of her parents’ political influence. Serenity Ko is determined to make something of herself in the food world but has little respect for the culinary arts. When the two collide, KO's ambitions and the prejudices of Primus against Earthlings only make Saras’ journey that much harder.

I'm a huge fan of Hell’s Kitchen and Cutthroat Kitchen, so when I heard that was a sci-fi book about a cooking competition in space, I immediately knew I had to read it. The actual competition is mostly a small part of the first fourth of the book and the rest is a lot more about the ramifications of Saras’ journey on the show and the lives of multiple people connected to it, including Serenity Ko who works for the studio and Amol and Piva, two Earthling judges desperately trying to fit in on Primus. While the book wasn't exactly what I was expecting, I didn't feel cheated because we got to see a lot of layers of how what happened in that competition came about that draws attention to discrimination, oppression, and the price of blind ambition and cultural assimilation. I can see the threads of how the framing of a cooking competition is a great vehicle to start exploring these topics because food is a huge part of culture for so many of us and is even the only connection some of us have.

The real star of the show for me was how the worldbuilding connects to everything else. The Primians have removed fire and as many whole foods as possible from their cuisine. A lot of the food is extracted and has philosophical symbolism that does connect back to how chefs in competition shows talk about their food. But, here, it's presented as kind of pretentious and scripted, rigid, rather than stemming from passion and creativity even if food memories are still a big part of the landscape. Earthling cuisine is looked down on and called primative and wasteful. The Primians view themselves so wholly above Earthlings and think of them and their cooking techniques as barbaric and yet will say that xenophobia is wrong and will actively report hate crimes. To many Primians, it's perfectly fine to deride an Earth chef for Earth techniques and presenting from their culture, but it's not OK to use discriminatory language. It reminds me a lot of the hypocrisy that I often see in the modern social landscape: the surface level allyship where someone can repeat all the right talking points, but has never actually taken the time to examine their own biases and prejudices and done the work to dismantle them.

The most interesting characters were Amol and Piva, twins from Earth who are trying desperately to be seen as Primian and their assimilation has come at a cost. Of the two, Amol is perhaps the one who feels the most connected to his Earthling past, but he still keeps some of it at a distance, such as poking at Piva’s accent. He offered Saras a job at his restaurant for her Earth cooking skills but disparaged her food on TV not moments before. Piva is the one most desperate to be seen as Primian but there are insecurities there relating to being an outsider and never being good enough because of her background. Juxtaposed to Saras who embraces being from Earth and Serenity Ko who’s family has been on Primus for a long time, the twins add a dimension of the price first and second generation immigrants are willing to pay to fit in.

Content warning for depictions of discrimination and mentions of genocide

I would recommend this to fans of narratives that use food in their worldbuilding and sci-fi fans that want something set in space but doesn't have epic stakes

2 stars / DNF at 10%

From the cover and blurb I expected this book would be a fun comedic read about a cooking competition in space, I was wrong and vastly disappointed.

The world building doesn’t make much sense from what I read. I also did not want to sit through this book with so much xenophobia. Or have to read more about Serenity Ko, one of the POV characters, she’s very dislikable and did not see myself being able to warm to her.

This book does something I hate in duo POV, one POV in 1st person while the other is in 3rd.

(Rounded from 2.5)

This is definitely a journey. It’s a twee sci-fi romp that tries to explore some really heavy themes about identity, imperialism, ambition, and the human condition. Unfortunately, it felt a little overwrought, for me. But let me start with what I enjoyed. I thought the narrative pacing was good. Almost every chapter swapped POVs, and that kept the story from ever feeling heavy or dragged down. The writing was clean and fit the story well, and the dialogue felt naturalistic (given the world of the story). The ancillary characters actually felt rounded and interesting, which I appreciated. The main characters were compelling, but also kind of expected. They were each defined by very specific character traits and everything else about them felt like it was mapped around those, so their journeys felt a little expected. Still, they were competent and strong, and I enjoyed spending time with them.

But the story and the plot, as well as the social commentary… it all just felt somehow both muddled and like a sledgehammer, without any finesse. I appreciate and agree with the types of social (and political) injustices that the author is calling out, and I really enjoyed them being explored in art. But it felt undirected. It felt like it was trying to be a satire, but of who? Everyone, whether they be the humans still on Earth or those living on Primus, were duplicitous hypocrites. So, who is the satire directed at, if everyone is just kind of awful, whether you are giving the pretense of being inclusive but actually xenophobic and exclusionary or whether you are a planet that largely is still overrun with violence, political instability, and greed? The only characters that seemed free of the hypocrisy are those who are basically the back-to-nature, luddite hippies of this world, and even they are introduced in a riot. It just felt like a lot of heavy ideas but just sprayed out in all directions. I don’t need to root for anyone, especially not a government, but none of the critique felt pointed, it just felt broad and lost some of its emotional resonance. By trying to do too much everything felt less significant. Similarly, the world-building just felt, well, manufactured. It is hard to create a world that has connections to Earth but set 2,600-ish years in the future, I will grant that, but it just didn’t feel convincing, it felt like all the seams were visible. The way some advancements are so beyond what we have now, and some other areas seem not to have progressed at all… it didn’t feel convincing. The story is similar, I appreciated all the individual parts but when they came together it just felt too convenient. I especially didn’t think the romantic sub-plot added anything, it felt superfluous, and while obviously there are a handful of things left open for the sequel it just felt both like the plot I expected while still not being believable. Really, it was hard to find any confidence that Saraswati would make the decisions to do what she did, given her commitment to being a chef and the clear and obvious potential ramifications of her actions, ramifications that every other chef commented on. Nothing in the story convinced me she would be dumb enough to not realize the consequences or self-serving enough to ignore them. Ambition, that’s it? It just didn’t feel like it lined up with everything the story had built up about her to that point.

Look, the novel is quite ambitious. It is unafraid at tackling issues of identity and acceptance and how we struggle with making the best decisions in less-than-ideal circumstances. Nothing about it is bad, it just feels a little heavy-handed, not in its messaging style, necessarily, but in the way there are multiple messages that are overlapping and intersecting each other, along with its character and story decisions… it all just felt quite labored, and while the twee/playful tone went some ways in mediating this, giving a fertile ground for making social commentary, I just didn’t think the pieces all fit together to be the whole I had hoped. I do think the narrative pacing and the ideas are quite strong, and I really appreciate the importance of food and its relationship to identity, to home, to knowing/ignoring oneself. You might love this story, there are certainly fun bits to catch on to and some ideas that will really resonate with a lot of people. For me everything felt too clunky and over-worked, but I would rather a lot of ambition and even more interesting ideas be handled a little clumsily than not have them at all.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Solaris, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

When I saw the blurb of this book, I was immediately interested. I love sci-fi, I love food, and I love cooking competitions. I was expecting, and hoping, that this book would feel like ‘Love and Other Disasters’ but in space. I was wrong, and maybe that is on me.

The titular MegaChef appears right at the beginning, and right at the end, and isn’t anywhere as central to the plot as the title would suggest – it feels like a very convenient plot point that is just cast aside when it doesn’t suit the scene.

The amount of casual, and not so casual racism that the main character faces was not at all what I was expecting, and made parts of the book challenging to read.

I love the idea of the food tech that they build, and the sections going in to working on designing that are some of the highlights of the book for me.

The entire subplot of her family and Jog Tunga felt distracting and didn’t really add anything to the story. It all ended very abruptly, and makes me wonder whether they are hoping for a sequel, to tie up the few loose ends.

I desperately wanted to enjoy this book, and maybe someone else will. But don’t go in expecting an easy read.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free book!*

I absolutely LOVED this book. Interstellar MegaChef is The Great British Bake Off in space. But make it queer! And make Earth unpopular! And add a girl fleeing from her abusive family! Cooking! Intrigue!

Honestly, I wish I could continue reading right now. I love this universe, it's fascinating world building wise, I love our main character, the book made me hungry!

There's so much in this one to unpack but I'm too tired to do this now. But an amazing book...go pre-order it right now!

5 stars because I was looking forward to continuing reading it on my phone (which I usually loathe)

Once more, I'm astounded by the sheer imagination of Lakshminarayan. There's really nobody who imagines future worlds quite like they do - especially worlds in which you can see the problems of the current world as being the root of the imagined future so very clearly. I will never forget this world, that's for sure.

The character work is great in this story, giving great voice and great character dynamics that feel real. These are flawed characters with shady and uncomfortable backgrounds and we love them all the more for it, giving them room to develop as people, both together and apart.

Oh, and the "robot buddy" trope is strong here, which I loved!

There's technically a slow-burn romance at play, but I'm not sure that it's necessarily so much slow as it enters the story a bit too late for me to grow fully invested. This was possibly done to stretch it into a second book (because there will be a second book to tie up the plot). At the same time, there is indeed a culinary/baking show in the vein of TGBBO at play... but most of the plot doesn't actually take place in that atmosphere and setting, so if you want to read purely for the setting, you should know that this particular setting only makes up about 10-15% of the book. Characters from that setting will span the entire book, yes, but the majority of the plot itself will not be centered on that setting.

All in all, I wasn't let down by this book. I got what I expected (although, I had expected a bit more of the actual baking show setting, but this is mostly a marketing "problem", I think).

This book is a worthy contender to the first book that I ever read from this author (TTPT)!

I was sooo ready for this book to be a new favourite, with the whole "Great British Bake Off in SPACE" marketed to me. I was hoping for something along the lines of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, but with much more cooking, but alas.

Interstellar Megachef just ultimately fell flat for me. The worldbuilding is superficially intriguing, featuring a socialist society with a diverse cast, yet it feels inconsistent and fails to reflect genuine progress after two thousand years. The characters, particularly Serenity Ko, lack depth and relatability, making it difficult to engage with their stories. The chemistry was also just not there, and felt very forced. The cooking competition is rushed, lacking rich descriptions that would appeal to food enthusiasts (i.e. me). Additionally, the prose is bland, and while the anti-colonial themes are evident, they often come across as heavy-handed. Overall, the book misled me with its marketing, and despite its potential, it didn't deliver an enjoyable experience. It might resonate with some readers, but it’s a pass for me.

Pretty sure this is a me issue, but I couldn't wrap my head around the worldbuilding. While I was a little interested in what Saras was up to, Serenity Ko was just awful and out of touch immediately. I hope she got some kind of redemptive arc, but I was not interested in reading it.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

DNF at 5%

I got 5% into this story before coming to the conclusion it was not for me.
The dialogue is awkward and clunky, and the writing feels amateurish. The technobabble is contextless enough that it draws you out of the story, forcing you to try and decipher what is happening. The food-based prose is too prominent to be charming, and instead comes off as gimmicky.

I will not be leaving a Goodreads review as I feel I did not get far enough into the story for it to be a fair review.

Interstellar MegaChef is the first book in the Flavour Hacker series. The cover was the first thing that caught my eye. A cooking show in space who wouldn't want to read it? But oh boy, that book is so much more than just a cute little show. One of the things that I love about it is the worldbuilding. It was so detailed and complex. The story is well written and funny at the same time. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it. I can't wait to read more of this story. Thanks to Netgalley and Rebellion | Solaris for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Interstellar MegaChef" serves up an intriguing blend of sci-fi and culinary drama that's more complex than its playful cover suggests. Lakshminarayan crafts a vivid, immersive universe where Earth refugee Saras Kaveri navigates xenophobia and cutthroat competition in an intergalactic cooking show. While the promised MasterChef-in-space concept takes a backseat to weightier themes of cultural imperialism and identity, the author's lively prose and diverse cast of characters keep the pages turning. The budding romance between Saras and the initially unlikable Serenity Ko feels underdeveloped, but their partnership exploring the intersection of food and technology is fascinating. Though some plot threads are left simmering for future installments, this first course in the series offers plenty of food for thought and leaves readers hungry for more.

I enjoyed the various POV and absolutely love the cooking competition vibes! It was the cover that also really drew me in. Overall: a good time!

🛸🍩 Interstellar MegaChef 🍩🛸
Flavour Hacker #1
By Lavanya Lakshminarayan
✨ Thank you NetGalley and Solaris for a copy of this eARC - Available November 5th!

🍩 Cooking competition
🛸 Solcialism
🍩 Xenophobia
🛸 Sapphic romance
🍩 Multiple POV

🛸 Characters 🛸
Starlight Fantastic was one of the high points - their character was something interesting and intriguing from the very first time you meet them.
However, most of the characters have multiple names or names similar to others and it makes it very hard to keep track of, and generally were a little hard to like.
There’s a touch of romance but it felt a little weird to me, the love interest isn’t loveable, morally grey works well if done well.

🍩 Plot 🍩
I went into this thinking I was getting a cooking competition … which I did … but not really? Idk, I guess I’m confused by the way this was marketed.
Politics and inclusion are big themes in this books, which is great. But it didn’t feel well done enough to make it impactful.

🛸 Overall 🛸
This world is incredibly immersive but also didn’t make sense completely. With so many different species of beings plus plants and animals, cities, etc you would think it would feel a bit more alien. Especially considering how distant in the future it took place I expected an otherworldly feel which wasn’t the case here. BUT there were moments when I really enjoyed the world building and atmosphere that this provided.
This is not a feel good story, despite what the cover may convey.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The cover connotes a much more irreverent feeling than what's in this book. This is a true intergalactic space opera. If you're not on board for high tech sci-fi, skip it.

2.5 / 5

Saraswati has escaped a precarious family situation on her home planet of Earth to take part in Interstellar Megachef, the most prestigious cooking show on Primus (which, if you ask a Primian, is the centre of the universe). Unfortunately, Saras has underestimated the levels of xenophobia that are targeted at Earthlings on Primus, and has an uphill battle to even be considered a chef on this planet - despite running her own very successful restaurant on Earth. Meanwhile, Serenity Ko is a Primian intent on finding the next big thing. Her boss has some criticisms of her working style, sure, but that’s just because he doesn’t understand how great she is at her job… right?

The premise of Interstellar Megachef is fantastic - a cosy sci-fi story about a chef travelling across the universe for a reality TV show to prove something to herself and her family, with a hint of a sapphic romance. Unfortunately most of those ingredients didn’t come through in the final dish (if you’ll forgive my terrible cooking metaphor). Saraswati and her little robot AI friend Kili are very likeable, as are the few friends she somehow picks up along the way - side note, can I have a book about Starlight Fantastic & Moonage Daydream instead, please? I’m not sure how Saras picks up said friends, who seem to be willing to do absolutely anything for her within 2 minutes of meeting, but it’s a good thing she does because she could not have progressed anywhere in the story without the entire wider cast.

The diversity of races (human and alien), genders, and sexualities were all great to see, although it did feel a bit jarring that neo-pronouns only seemed to be used for very specific aliens, with no human using them. Regardless, pronoun use and gender expression were never commented on, which felt like a lovely baked-in part of the world. However, for a book that is supposed to be set millennia after our present day, it did not feel like there was any other progression or development of the human race, or of most technology. The majority of the humans and other species have access to “the loop” - a sort of internet within your own brain - and space ships, but that’s really the only technology that is mentioned.

Saraswati's family mystery and wider politics are slowly revealed throughout the book, but aren't interesting or developed enough for me as a reader to care. It felt like this, along with a few other plot points, were setups for a sequel that just felt lacklustre in their introduction. The beginnings of the romance between Saraswati and Serenity Ko is another of those lacklustre plot points. It felt jarring that at one point they were suddenly describing their overwhelming sexual attraction within their POV chapters, when before there had been no hint or suggestion of that blossoming between the two of them.

Serenity Ko herself is a very interesting character to have written in this book. She is entirely unlikable with zero redeeming qualities at the beginning of the story… and in the middle… and at the end… I had no interest in reading any of her chapters because I would only hurt myself rolling my eyes at her inflated ego. She was well-written, yes, in the sense that it was very easy to hate her for being a horrible person. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough as a reader to be interested in her story, and I resented having to read her chapters.

Overall this book was a miss for me. It didn’t feel sci-fi enough to be sci-fi, it didn’t feel wholesome enough to be cosy, and with the inclusion of Serenity Ko, the characters certainly weren’t likeable or relatable enough for it to be a compelling romance. There’s definite potential to it, and I could see myself picking up Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s other novel, but Interstellar Megachef won’t be one I’m recommending to friends, and I won’t be holding my breath to read the sequel.