Robin Sloan

A software engineer is left a sourdough starter from sibling bakers after they're forced to close their shop, a gift that leads to a new vocation, a legal dispute, and a venture into a secret market that fuses food with technology.

"It is eleven thousand years from now. A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard's rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient,...