I love a good space opera, especially if it features a sentient spaceship, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a science fiction novel before in which food and cookery play such a big part as they do in Cat Rambo’s You Sexy Thing. A fun, action-packed SF adventure with a brilliantly diverse cast of characters and a pacy, page-turning plot, it opens on a remote space station with a group of ex-soldiers whose only way of escaping service to the Holy Hive Mind was to set up a restaurant and throw themselves into their new line of work. When TwiceFar station is destroyed, the soldiers-turned-restaurateurs escape on the aforementioned sentient spaceship (the titular You Sexy Thing, of course) only to find themselves in arguably even more trouble – involving a dead celebrity, a dubious food critic, pirates, an awkward ship and an unexpected new addition to the team.
If that all sounds like gentle, light-hearted fun, well…it is, in some respects. There’s a lovely dynamic between Niko Larsen – ex-captain of the Holy Hive Mind – and her team, sort of part military unit, part work colleagues, part dysfunctional family, and indeed there’s a strong theme of found family running throughout. For all that it’s often very funny though, that light breeziness hides a darker backstory to these characters, and there are some genuinely bleak moments scattered throughout the story. The Holy Hive Mind might sound like a bizarre mix of Monty Python and Warhammer 40,000 but it’s a pretty dark concept, an expansionist military power that’s part cultish religion, part creepy collective consciousness. The prospect of being forced to return to the Holy Hive Mind hangs over Niko and her team at all times, and over the course of the story it gradually becomes clear just how much they’ve all been through together before reaching this point, and how personal the stakes really are.
That backstory becomes increasingly important as the book progresses and the darkness starts to set in, Niko’s past coming back to haunt her even as more of this intriguing setting is revealed to us as readers. The world building on display is light touch but really impactful, and in particular the wild variety of alien races makes for a lot of fun. The visual archetypes behind these characters – the squidlike Skidoo, feathered Milly, leonine twins Thorn and Talon, and so on – go in some interesting directions, not least with the benignly promiscuous, sensation-seeking Skidoo, and the sheer variety lends itself beautifully to a story in which diversity and respect play important parts. For all the action and adventure, all the cool tech and weird aliens, what has the most impact is the relationships these characters have with each other and with the world around them – as SF settings go, this feels like one you might actually want to spend some time in.
It’s not often you read a space opera in which cooking plays as important a role as fighting or adventuring, but it works beautifully and adds a delightful extra element to this story, and there’s something genuinely satisfying about a spaceship trying to wrap its hyper-advanced brain around the culinary arts. These little moments of whimsy – including a few enjoyable pop culture references – fit perfectly in with all the other elements of this fun, irreverent novel, balancing out the darker aspects that lurk beneath the surface. All told, You Sexy Thing nails that brilliant sense of scope and potential that space opera allows for, but its own unique blend of ingredients (obligatory cooking reference) give it a sense of identity that sets it apart from the rest of the SF crowd. It’s fresh and it’s fun, and I can’t wait for the sequel (in the meantime though, I can see myself investigating Cat Rambo’s back catalogue!).
Many thanks to Cat Rambo and Tor Books for sending me a copy of You Sexy Thing, in exchange for my honest review.
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