This is the story that I'll bet Ms.Cato longed to write for a long while.  If you've seen her website, you know how involved with food she is.  Right after writing, of course.  So here's a mélange of both.  Bon appetit!

Ada has an empathic connection to food and wine; which is much more than that sentence can convey. She can tell where a food was harvested, where the animal was when it was butchered, what the flavors will be on the tongue, and she can use that to blend them to the best effect.  And while she was in service as a Chef to the Five Gods and the rulers of her country of Verdania, she was also in thrall to her own mother who used her skills mercilessly.  Sixteen years ago, she left all of it to hide herself and her beloved grandmother; but she's been found.

This is a world where the Gods are very real and they frequently involve themselves with their human worshippers.  Gyst is the God that blessed Ada's tongue and as such, she and others like her were conscripted into the military forces as Chefs.  Expected to deploy at a moment's notice, Chefs were trained both in food preparation and martial arts. Chefs are especially prized for their ability to manage and prepare special foods known as epicurea.  These epicurea can endow the user with special abilities; abilities that were part of the original animal.  Ada is well familiar with managing epicurea as her own mother was a prime supplier in the black market.

On the run with her addled grandmother in tow, Ada has nowhere to go except back to her mother's house.  As she suspected, her mother was quite ready to enslave them both in her epicurea black market enterprise.  Having procured some supplies, she escaped; intent on contacting some old friends.  But, after discovering that they, like her, are being targeted and killed; she determines that she will find those responsible and punish them.

The other main protagonist is Solenn, a Princess of Braiz but now betrothed to Verdania.  This being a political alliance type marriage, her new country of Verdania is prone to characterize her country as being barbaric and backward.  Princess Solenn has something in common with Ada; she is a Chef; albeit an undiscovered one.  As a Princess, she always saw her duty to her people as paramount.  Now, having been primped within an inch of her life, she found herself at an engagement party with her very-much-younger fiancé and forced to be polite to people who thought he was marrying beneath himself.  And at same party, she suddenly - and forcefully - discovered she was a Chef; capable of discerning the features of food and drink at a distance.  On the heels of that discovery, she also figured out she couldn't possibly be the natural daughter of her parents as no Chefs had been in that line for hundreds of years.  But here she was…holding a wine glass, ready to toast to her impending nuptials, knowing that her betrothed is holding a glass of poisoned wine.  Unable to confess this new and unwelcome truth, she did the only thing she could do - act clumsily and ensure the wine spilled. But it was only a respite, whomever was trying to kill the Prince was not going to desist.  And the manner of death suggested her own country of Braiz; someone was trying to set her up and destroy the alliance.

Ada's attempts to discover who is trying to trying to kill her leads her to some unholy realizations about the sources of epicurea.  Solenn is experiencing the same revelations as she and her faithful bodyguard try to surreptitiously discover the source of the poison.   Both Ada and Solenn will discover more unwelcome truths as they each pursue their goals.  And both will have to decide what they are willing to do to stop a war.  And what they are willing to sacrifice to stop a God.

This was a very fun story from a well-published author; so this reader has to wonder why this book is being distributed through Amazon.  It's as good as anything else she's written and obviously a labor of love.  One hopes a publisher wakes up to what they are missing and gives her a contract.  The worldbuilding is what makes this story outstanding for me.  The slow buildup to familiarize the reader with epicurea and then to make it a focus of the story was well-done.  The characters were all handled expertly and I enjoyed how she brought together the threads for the end; even the Gods were relatable.   And the story definitely left room for a sequel which this reader would be very interested in reading.  ~~ Catherine Book

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