Celestial Banquet by Roselle Lim
Roselle Lim’s YA fantasy debut, Celestial Banquet, is a veritable feast for the senses. Centering around a hot-headed teen protagonist who aims to change her life and home through her cooking skills, it’s a thrilling exploration of family, love and home through a colorful culinary lens.
Cooking for the Gods
Celestial Banquet follows Cai, a young noodle chef set on honoring her father and bringing change to her home and people by competing in the Celestial Banquet: a cooking competition to the death in hopes of pleasing the gods and earning the precious peaches of immortality. Held once every generation, the competition draws the best chefs from all over the Continent, backed by the powerful minor gods of their regions. Cai, on the other hand, is from the Peninsula, where the usually-drunken minor god Kama has begun to lose his power due to his lack of participation in recent Celestial Banquets.
With Kama in tow, at her side are also the powerful female warrior Tala and two boys who each hold a special place in her heart: Bo, her oldest and dearest friend, and Seon, the handsome noble who speaks both to her heart and mind. When you compete in the Celestial Banquet, you put everything on the line, from life to limb to memories, but the prize is so great that Cai is determined to defy all odds to bring those peaches home.
With a single peach she could open her own restaurant and even have the funds to support the growing movement against the Empress who seeks to claim the Peninsula for her expanding empire. With her life, and those of her closest friends at risk, Cai must cook as she never has before. The gods are always hungry, and this young chef from the Peninsula is about to show them the best meals of their long immortal lives.
A Spicy Heroine and a Flavorful Cast
I loved Cai from the very first page. Lim has crafted a character that is sweet yet spicy, a young woman so in love with cooking and yet filled to the brim with a temper that insists she defend her position and make herself heard. She is fiery and strong, while still allowing herself soft moments as she wrestles with whether to choose Bo or Seon. Lim’s graceful blending of power and weakness, wisdom and fear, skill and uncertainty, results in a dynamic character that leaps off the page.
Each of Cai’s companions are likewise layered, and each are endearing in their own way. I enjoyed Kama’s humorous commentary and Bo and Seon’s supportive nature. Tala’s stoic presence balances out Cai’s fire, and the group is incredibly entertaining to follow. Place that amusing band of compatriots into a delectable world packed with savory dishes and set against the backdrop of Chinese and Southeast Asian folklore, and what results is a fantastical adventure that will have your mouth watering from start to finish.
High Stakes, Hot Woks, and Heart
Will Cai live her Baba’s dream of cooking for the gods? What is so terrifying about the Celestial Banquet that the memories of past competitors have been wiped? Will Cai and her team even make it to the next round, or will one of the Major Gods zap them into oblivion? With everything on the line, it all comes down to the wok! Described as Iron Chef meets The Hunger Games, if you love a book with delightful characters, vivid imagery, a sweet love triangle and plenty of delicious food, then Celestial Banquet is for you!
About Roselle Lim:
Roselle Lim was born in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada as a child. She lived in north Scarborough in a diverse, Asian neighbourhood.
She found her love of writing by listening to her lola’s (paternal grandmother’s) stories about Filipino folktales. Growing up in a household where Chinese superstition mingled with Filipino Catholicism, she devoured books about mythology, which shaped the fantasies in her novels.
An artist by nature, she considers writing as “painting with words.”
