Chai and Cat-Tales (2024) by Lynn Strong is a collection of three cozy fantasy novellas that completely enthralled me. Full disclosure: the author reached out because of this blog and gave me the e-book so that I could read and review, and I was glad to do so.
The three novellas are set in a fictional magical Middle-Eastern world, in the city of Tel-Bastet, which is full of cats, market-witches, and one fat prophet who is also a prince and archivist.
The first novella, The Prince of Her Dreams, has one of my favorite first-page sentences in a long time:
Ghada told Najra always to wear her veil, so that her face wouldn’t tell the people around her whenever she thought they were behaving like monumental imbeciles.
Najra convinces her grandfather to let her and her sister to go to Tel-Bastet, where the youngest brother of the God-Emperor spends his time studying the archives and he might appreciate the assistance of a scholarly young woman. When she arrives, she is surprised to find that Faraj knew she was coming, as he is a prophet as well as an archivist. We also meet Kamil, Faraj’s catfolk bodyguard. The novella takes up most of their becoming acquainted and learning about each other, as neither Najra nor Faraj is exactly what they seem.
The second novella, Priye, is told from the perspective of a very small young cat living in the Catsprowl in Tel-Bastet, trying to figure out humans and their ways. There’s a strange man who spends too much time in the water and with soap and smelly oils (the bathhouse) who doesn’t eat meat. But there’s also a fat god and his priests, who feed kittens. I thought it was a really interesting perspective on how cats and humans’ perspectives differ.
Finally, in the last novella, The Potter’s Dream, we meet the priests of Upaja, the fat god, whose calling is to nourish every sentient soul. Shai Madhur uses a walking stick for his sore hip, and visits Master Asharan’s bathhouse for help figuring out this dream he has about a potter.
All of these are fat-positive in the best ways. Fat characters get to be sensual and the main characters! I thoroughly enjoyed this collection.
Reading While Fat 