Interstellar Megachef is the second American-published novel of Indian writer Lavanya Lakshminarayan. Lakshminarayan's The Ten Percent Thief, published in the US last year and in India a few years prior (under a different title), was one of my favorite books of last year: it was a brilliant combination of vignettes and short stories poking holes at and satirizing a future society supposedly organized entirely upon merit (among many other ideas). It was a piece of idea-based sci-fi, and while it didn't have a set of main characters who had much character development, the result was just an utterly brilliant take down of ideas of merit, equality, and where tech and other things are going. So I was super excited to see that this next book of hers would be out this year and would be a worldwide release.
And well, Interstellar Megachef succeeds again at setting up a supposedly better world - the planet Primus, settled in the future by Earth emigrants under a charter to reinvent human culture as a better more equal and sustainable culture - that it then pokes holes in as being not quite the utopia it claims to be. The story is less successful with its main characters and plotlines however - main characters Saraswati Kaveri and Serenity Ko are strong characters with understandable personalities, but their character growth winds up being abrupt near the end (and the romance between them seems almost shoehorned in). More annoyingly, the plot teases a whole bunch of potential conflicts and plot twists that never actually happen and are all saved for the sequel as this book is in fact the first book of a trilogy/series. There's still some really interesting themes and ideas here, but the result is kind of an unsatisfying package due to how it's all pulled together for a conclusion.
Plot Summary:
Two Millenia Ago, the Nakshatrans - a group devoted to reinventing human culture across the universe in a more equal and sustainable manner - left the Earth for the Stars. One of those Nakshatran ships landed on Primus, which it developed according to these ideals as the enter of human civilization across the universe. On Primus every human is welcome, there is no xenophobia, and everyone has their needs (food and shelter) provided for. A clear contrast from Earth, where wars still rage, people go hungry, and ruling families take lethal and controlling actions to anyone under their power.....The above plot description is kind of rough and I apologize, but you get the idea (although Serenity Ko is basically a co-protagonist and major POV character despite me barely mentioning her above). But I wanted to make clear the ideas of this setting - of the human collective, of Primus, and of Earth here - because it's honestly some of the most interesting parts of this book and thematically similar to Lakshminarayan's The Ten Percent Thief. Primus' culture ostensibly celebrates diversity and equality and showing that they are above infighting and hatred of others. Every citizen of Primus even takes a name upon majority based upon one of the nine virtues espoused in the Nakshatran charter: Courage, Good Cheer, Optimism, Grace, Curiosity, Serenity, Harmony, Honour, or Boundless (this does result in a lot of repeated names and almost satirizes itself as certain characters are in no ways the embodiments of the virtues in their names.). And it does, to be honest, contain free food and housing for everyone, refugee or natural born citizen, which is a strong achievement.
Saraswati Kaveri left Earth - and her horrible family - on a refugee ship headed to Primus, with nothing to her name and no allies other than her winger (AI flying robot) Kili. She's not truly a refugee (not that anyone can know her real background) but is truly a chef, with years of experience on Earth to her name. And when she arrives with an invite to appear on Interstellar Megachef, Primus' hit interplanetary cooking competition show, she is sure that she will prove herself as one of the best on that show, such that she can reveal her identity to mock her family and establish her chef bona-fides there on Primus.
Unfortunately, it doesn't go as planned and Primus is not anything like what Saraswati was told: it's a place dedicated to its own food culture of infusing flavors by injections into portions, dedicated to deliberately not using much of the wealth of food grown on the planet, and one that is extremely afraid of and intolerant of change: especially by "barbarians" who come from Earth and use fire as a cooking method. And despite the fact that a few strangers on planet are willing to help her, Saraswati still finds herself lost and wanting: wanting to prove that her skills are real and not the product of her family and wanting to show that she is in fact one of the best. To prove that, she'll have to team up with Serenity Ko, a primus-born workaholic who works for a company that creates sims (virtual reality experiences you can experience at any time with some nanopills) to create the best food borne experience ever. But Serenity Ko is herself a personal wreck - a mess of ego, insecurity, desperation, and more - and the combination of the two might not result in the next big food experience on Primus....and instead might create yet another flame out.....
But despite that, Primus' supposed culture against Xenophobia actually contains its own strong elements of Xenophobia and conservatism, even if many of those who feel these feelings would never actually admit it or take action in such ways directly. We see this in many ways: for example, through a third smaller point of view character, Optimism Mand'vi, the Primian Secretary for Culture and Heritage (and herself a secret refugee from Earth) who is dedicated to ensuring that no outside influences change the Primus way of life....even if that means banning products or stealthily promoting things so that the humans of Primus don't get too enamored with the ideas and goods of new non-human allies. We see this in a pair of chefs who came from Earth as kids and who find themselves desperately trying to fit in to the Primus manner in their cooking, which everyone acknowledges to be brilliant but which is unable to prevent Primus snobs from looking down upon them....no matter how much they put down their Earth origins. You have others who will in one hand condemn xenophobia and in another repeatedly refer to people from Earth as barbarians and crack jokes about them. And of course there are still the outright racists/xenophobes whose blatant xenophobia is often ignored by people around them, even as they hurt those who are innocent with their jibes and actions. Primus does have some better aspects to it, but it has clearly devolved past the point of the principles it claims to uphold.
And this helps shapes Saraswati's narrative, as she tells roughly 40% of our story. Saraswati is the very type of person the ideals of Primus should love: a person who fled the horrible ways of old Earth (even if she's lying about her being persecuted there) in hopes of showing her own worth in a land that treats everyone as equals. And what better place for that than to do so on Interstellar Megachef, which is supposed to be a competition solely about taste and one's ability to make good food. But what Saraswati soon finds out is that on Primus, form is valued even more than good taste: and so her use of flame in her cooking and her using of actual whole ingredients instead of small portions injected with flavor makes her "barbaric" and a terrible chef worth laughing at. This is so even when her food might be admittedly tasting good - as the chefs in the backroom of a kitchen all concede - but it doesn't matter as long as she isn't making that food in the form that Primus has prided itself on for two millenia...even if the reasons for that form (scarcity, an idea about sustainability, et.) no longer really means anything to their civilization. Saraswati has her own internal struggles even before she encounters all this on Primus - not to spoil too much, but her family's actions on Earth made her extremely insecure and questioning of her own self-worth about whether her own cooking skills are that good (they are) - so Primus' issues only make this worse, and her eventual self-realization, if not quite as smooth as I'd like (see below), is thus incredibly enjoyable as she realizes the truth about herself and about Primus' bullshit prejudices.
We also see this a bit with Serenity Ko, our second major protagoniost essentially, who is a Primus native and begins the story pretty much as an asshole: she's self centered, doesn't think, and obesseive over her work and her own individual value to the point she pushes away others. But thanks to having a really loving family and some struggles over her latest idea - a sim to simulate the experience one gets from eating food that brings ones own memories back in how it tastes, just like the best of dining - Serenity begins to realize that she needs assistance from others, even as she struggles to think about why she needs it and thus occasionally acts in ways to sabotage those who are helping her. She's honestly still quite a bit of an asshole by the end of this book (again, there's some abrupt realizations here) but she has learned to value the rest of those who work with her, to understand that there are things she doesn't know that she can't simply learn in a day and needs help from others to overcome, and more. And that requires her to honestly shed some of those Primus prejudices we see in the beginning: where she sees Saraswati as a barbaric Earthling, where she doesn't understand why people would prefer real experiences to sims, and she learns to actually listen to and care for others.
The book also has some other interesting ideas, like the values of sims that virtually simulate experiences in one's mind vs actual physical experiences (think far far worse being distracted by one's cell phone while talking to people). But honestly, this is part of my biggest problem with this book and what keeps it from being another big success: there are too many ideas and potential plot twists being set up in this book and the book saves actually dealing with them for the book's sequel in a way that is honestly more frustrating than anything....you keep waiting for some of these events to pan out, and they never actually do, resulting in a happy ending that just seems undeserved. Both main characters have realizations at the end about their own self-worth (and for Serenity, the worth of others) that seem incredibly abrupt and not earned: Saraswati goes from still struggling to suddenly having a Eureka moment and it feels way too abrupt for example. And perhaps most annoyingly, the book shoehorns in a romance between Saraswati and Serenity that absolutely does not work, with the two characters having almost no chemistry on page, and the book only occasionally remembering to put in the narrative that they have an attraction to the other before in the end it turns out to go full on kissing. It's a romance obviously meant to really take place in book 2, but it's supposedly borne out here by the interactions between the two characters as they work together...except we don't actually see that working together for the most part and it happens off page. Like it's possible that this romance could work with more pages and may work in book 2, but here it just feels like we have two characters randomly interacting with each other and not for any romantic ways, one doing something extremely dickish to the other out of stupidity, and then off page they work together and blossom into major attraction? It feels way too shoe-horned in and just frustrating more than anything.
The result here is a book I wanted to love a lot more than I actually did: with strong ideas and setups but not enough payoff to be satisfying - a problem made worse by my ARC's cover not mentioning this was book 1 of a trilogy. But even I did know, this would be a more frustrating than satisfying series starter, even as it portends possibly really interesting things in future books, so I'm not sure I'll be back.
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