The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections by Tina Connolly

Tina Connolly’s story of regret and resistance takes a clever fantasy conceit and deftly uses it as both a frame to tell snippets of Saffron’s life and play on the theme of food, taste and memory. As Saffron tastes each one, she recalls events in her life prior from meeting her future husband to losing her sister to Duke Michal’s oppression.

The Rose-Pepper Shortbread of Sweetness LostĮach dish is designed to transport whoever eats into personal memories that encapsulate the feeling.

The Fennel Flatbread of Sunlit Days Gone By.

The Rosemary Crostini of Delightfully Misspent Youth.

The banquet takes us through such delights as: Firstly she is a warranty against the ‘traitor king’ Duke Michal from being poisoned by her own husband but secondly her role is to describe to the assembled diners what each pastry is and also what each pastry does.īy means of special herbs and arcane baking, Danny has confected the means to evoke emotional memories in his dishes. Not a question uttered, but a question that stays poised on the tongue, and does not fall.” The little prince still sleeps in his nursery-but for how long? That is the question on everyone’s mind in the last year. Their warm smiles have been perfected as the Traitor King’s power grows, inch by inch, as those who object to his grasp fail and fall, as the printers are vanished, as the daughters disappear from their homes. “Saffron has been Confection Taster all that time, her husband Danny Head Pastry Chef.

One tastes the meats and salads but the other is there to taste only the pastries.

A tyrannical Duke-Regent enjoys a sumptuous banquet with his courtiers.

The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections by Tina Connolly