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Robin Sloan: Sourdough: A Novel (2017, MCD) 4 stars

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with …

A happy romp through a weird and wonderful high-tech food-science future, with a sprinkling of magic realism

3 stars

As I've become a sourdough enthusiast myself, I found the existence of this book intriguing; a story about a woman robotics worker living in Silicon Valley, who starts experimenting with sourdough, obtains a 'mother' from an exotic ex-boyfriend, becomes involved with privately-funded underground project based in an abandoned military base, where various 'mad scientist' types research their bleeding-edge food technology, working towards the opening day of the ultimate exotic food market - sourdough, but also crickets, slurry grown from fungus, etc.

I enjoyed it, but on reflection, the fact that the plot could be encapsulated as "woman programmer discovers that actually she prefers baking" left a sour taste. And that was before I discovered that the author, Robin Sloan, isn't a woman as I had assumed.