Land of Milk and Honey

A 3.5 on the verge of 4.

A captivating story that at times eerily - the author reminds us of the fragile earth we live in and the even more fragile human element to it. A social critique, a love story - all intertwined in a dystopian future which feels more real than not.

“We all die. We have only the choice, if we are privileged, of whether death comes with a whimper or a bang; of what worlds we taste before we go.”

I loved the eerie tension of the mountain aerie mixed with the absolutely stunning language. I had to stop at several points and determine for myself if it was too much, was it veering into purple and overwrought? Considered line by line it feels excessive, but reading at pace the language just gelled into glittering prose. The language felt right, perfect for this discombulated experience.

Our narrator is hired on as a chef for the billionaire elite who trade the grey smog that covers the world and the ubiquitous engineered mung bean flour for the sun bathed Italian Alps and lavish dinner parties. What could go wrong catering to the one percent of the world's one percent? Winning the hearts and minds of potential investors through gastronomical science and a veritable Noah's ark of heritage grains, abundant produce, and a vast deep freezer filled with protien. It feels like an easy set-up where there's a third act revelation of “it was people all along!” but Zhang avoids that easy trope. She does lean hard into the horrors of privileged consumption that left me queasy nonetheless.

Things get wild cooking for a widowed billionaire, his flamboyant geneticist daughter, and a scruffy cat — which now that I'm describing it makes it all seem like Rachel Ray stumbled into Dr. No's mountain lair. It's a lot of chaotic culinary energy here alongside the zeitgeist of anti-billionaire fiction.