I've been a fan of Cassandra Khaw work since I first read her in a few scifi magazines. I love genre mashing and specially when it mixes the fantasy, the horror, the expectations and several tropes such as Chinese gods, the underworld, a damned chef (!!!!), and having to keep a bunch of ghouls happy with their meals. This is a fantastic read full of horror, gore but also humour. A snarky book, really worth the reading.

A fascinating take on Lovecraftian fiction. Khaw writes with an addictive elegance that kept me enthralled as the story unfolded. Highly recommended for fans of all ages.

I love Khaw's world! So much horrifying, demonic fun!

Cassandra Khaw is my new favorite author. I cannot express how wonderfully eccentric her stories are, and yet strangely enough, down to earth. (Or should I say, under earth?) I look forward to her future writing.

I really enjoyed this sometimes-gruesome, sometimes-appetizing, sometimes-oh-my-god-gruesome-stuff-is-appetizing book. If you can't handle gore, stay away. If an absolutely fantastic command of language, especially in the area of food prep, is your thing, then you'll want to pick this up.

Really this reminded me a lot of American Gods by Gaiman or Matt Wallace's Sin Du Jour series. Definitely worth checking out if you're into either of those.

CK captures the breathless pace of "life" with her prose. It's a thrill ride through pantheons of glory and grime.

Cassandra Khaw has such a wild, original way of delivering a story that not many other authors could pull off in the same manner. She"s very high on my list of "new" authors to keep an eye on. She will rise to extraordinary heights in her genre/

This book was a feast for the imagination, even weaving in political commentary amidst intense action, complex relationships, strategic planning, and epic backstabbing galore.

Paying off a debt to the gods is never easy.

It’s not unusual to work two jobs in this day and age, but sorcerer and former triad soldier Rupert Wong’s life is more complicated than most. By day, he makes human hors d’oeuvres for a dynasty of ghouls; by night, he pushes pencils for the Ten Chinese Hells. Of course, it never seems to be enough to buy him a new car—or his restless, flesh-eating-ghost girlfriend passage from the reincarnation cycle—until opportunity comes smashing through his window.

In Kuala Lumpur, where deities from a handful of major faiths tip-toe around each other and damned souls number in the millions, it’s important to tread carefully. Now the Dragon King of the South wants to throw Rupert right in it. The ocean god’s daughter and her once-mortal husband have been murdered, leaving a single clue: bloodied feathers from the Greek furies. It’s a clue that could start a war between pantheons, and Rupert’s stuck in the middle. Success promises wealth, power and freedom, and failure... doesn’t. (via Goodreads)
I received an eARC of this novel from Netgalley and the publisher, Abaddon, in exchange for an honest review!

Despite the image I used for my post, this book is not vegetarian in any way shape or form.

Food of the Gods by Cassandra Khaw dives right into some pretty terrifying stuff - cannibalism, dead fetuses wanting to unionize, and Rupert Wong's undead wife and step-child.

Wong is offered all the riches he can't even imagine in exchange for a quest for the King of Dragons that seems undoable. If he fails, of course, he forfeits his eternal respite. As the book says, human scapegoats are all the rage for conflicts like this, and that definitely turns out to be the case in these short stories.

Cassandra Khaw's writing is like poetry. I could imagine all of these terrifying creatures in my mind once she'd described them, even though I am not as familiar with the Chinese and Malaysian mythological creatures that make up so much of this story.

Khaw is of Southeast Asian descent (her social media profile does not go any further into detail than that), and so is her main character. You can feel her love for the story in every line. I can't speak to the representation, though.

Frankly, there were a lot of good things about these two short stories novelized together, but these were way too bloody for my wimpy tastes. This book was freaking me out when I was reading it at night, and even in the morning when I went back to it.

So, if you love horror, real mythological creatures, and a whole lot of gore, this might be a much better fit for you. Khaw's writing is beautiful and I think I would have loved a different story by her a lot more.

This was a three star read for me, but that's almost entirely personal opinion. You can pick up a copy of Food of the Gods through Amazon, Indiebound, or your other favorite bookseller!

A fascinating and often hilarious look at a culture I wasn't familiar with. I definitely would love to read more of the character's adventures.

Rupert Wong may have been human once but mixing with Gods and demons and feeding their less than savoury appetites has made him something more…or less. It is a quirky journey through Southeast Asian and Western mythologies made real and set initially in a modern-day Kuala Lumpur.

The first part, Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef, is not always an easy read unless you are familiar with the region and its mythology, as terms are frequently not explained. In addition, the author has Rupert make asides to a ‘friend’ as though the book is being related as a story to another, but this is not done consistently and adds little to the flow or clarity. As a device it could have been better used to explain to the ‘foreigner’ what is going on. This improves in the second part, Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth, where he demonstrates more fully his abilities as chef with relocation to the UK. Parts two and three, Meat, Bone, Tea, are really one larger story, which draw the numerous threads together to a hodgepodge of an ending. Unsurprisingly there is a sequel hook.

Overall it is an easy read with good pace and varied, if gory, plot that carries Rupert on a rollercoaster ride through unpleasant things he can barely keep his head above. He is not a ‘good’ man, but he tries his best.