The Snow Sister movie, War of the Worlds TV series, Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, His Dark Materials TV series, Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Wonderland edited by Marie O Regan and Paul Kane, The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow and Stormrise by Jillian Boehme

Happy Tuesday on this brisk autumn day! I am going to try to get this blog post completed before I have to attend book group tonight, so I'm going to forgo my usual ramblings and get right into the tidbits from Shelf Awareness, followed by the reviews.

This looks like a fascinating book and movie, so I am looking forward to it's debut/premier.

Movies: The Snow Sister

Anonymous Content's "fledgling Nordic division is teaming up with popular Norwegian author Maja Lunde" on a film version of her children's book The Snow Sister http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42018262, which will be published this fall "in more than 25 territories from 20 international publishing houses," Deadline reported. The novel was published in Norway last October by Kagge Forlag.

Lunde will adapt her novel for the screen. Her books "have been translated into 36 languages and her debut novel, The History of Bees (2015), was a significant hit, selling to several territories before Norwegian publication," Deadline wrote. Her recent screenplays include the Netflix acquisition Battle.

I think that setting this new version of War of the Worlds in a time period closer to when it was written is a brilliant idea. I also think placing it in England is a wonderful idea, and the cast list is superb. This is another series that I will look forward to viewing.

TV: War of the Worlds

The BBC has released the first trailer for its reboot of War of the Worlds http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42050435, based on the classic novel by H.G. Wells, Deadline reported. Filmed in Liverpool, the series was adapted by Peter Harness (Wallander) and directed by Craig Viveiros (And Then There Were None).

The cast includes Rafe Spall (The Big Short), Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark), Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) and Rupert Graves (Sherlock). Deadline noted that this is "the first adaptation set in Edwardian England, rather than America, and follows George, played by Spall, and his partner Amy, played by Tomlinson as they attempt to defy society and start a life together against the escalating terror of an alien invasion. Graves plays George's older brother Frederick, while Carlyle stars as Ogilvy, an astronomer and scientist."

 I loved The Night Circus, so I was thrilled when I read that Morgenstern had written another book that will be out this month. I can hardly wait to read it, though finding money for books right now is difficult, as we're in a financial pinch in my household. Still, I know the universe will manage to miracle a copy to me, eventually.

Book Review

The Starless Sea

In her first novel in eight years, Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus) weaves a sprawling, ambitious spell of a story in which a young man becomes caught up in a centuries-old secret world of hidden archives, thwarted love and forces beyond human comprehension.

As a grad student in emerging media studies, Zachary Ezra Rawlins feels guilty about spending his winter break on pleasure reading rather than playing video games. When he takes out an uncatalogued book, Sweet Sorrows, from the university library, he reads about lovelorn pirates, the star-crossed romance of Time and Fate, and the rites of ancient orders dedicated to guarding a vast underground library on the shores of a mysterious sea. He also finds a short chapter about his own childhood, detailing a time when he unwittingly walked away from a chance to enter this secret world, and it perplexes and scares him. Determined to understand how a book written before his birth could chronicle his life, Zachary goes on a quest to track down its origins. His search leads him to a costumed ball where he meets elegant, pink-haired Mirabel and compelling, roguish Dorian. He's swept into a world where a door painted onto a wall can open, the Moon can take human form, and owls serve a shadowy monarch. Zachary searches for a way to protect a Harbor on the Starless Sea, a labyrinthine story repository filled with puzzles, secret rooms and the best room service in any world.

Thoughtful, slightly awkward Zachary makes a perfect every-reader, with his desire to take part in stories and his sympathetic nostalgia for the Choose Your Own Adventure novels. Morgenstern delivers more of the lush, lavish prose passages that made readers fall in love with The Night Circus, creating elaborate scenes that include a sprawling dollhouse landscape, a perpetual party set in a pocket universe outside time and an ocean made of honey. In a narrative of enormous scope and scale, Morgenstern takes slow, painstaking care in assembling the story's components behind fairy tale sleight-of-hand. Readers should enter her world prepared to spend a large portion of the experience combing for clues in short, metafictive fables written in a romantic, whimsical style reminiscent of the Flax-Golden Tales on the author's website.

While the plot takes its time coming together, the journey is nothing short of magical, like a fantastical, delirious dream that makes awakening back to reality a disappointment. Set aside a few quiet hours to devour this opulent feast. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

I'm also looking forward to this new adaptation of His Dark Materials series, which I loved reading, and will be keen to see on the screen.

TV: His Dark Materials

HBO released the official trailer for His Dark Materials http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42079391, a TV series adaptation of Philip Pullman's fantasy novel trilogy, "and it looks quite--for lack of a better word--epic," IndieWire reported.

The inaugural season covers the story of the first book, Northern Lights (a.k.a. The Golden Compass). The cast includes Dafne Keen, James McAvoy and Ruth Wilson.

"I thought it was time for the books to be liberated in a space that could do them justice," executive producer Jane Tranter had said during a Comic-Con panel. IndieWire noted that the adaptation "has already seen success prior to airing: The series has been renewed for a second season, which is currently being filmed. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Andrew Scott (as live-action cast), as well as Helen McCrory and Cristela Alonzo (as voice cast for dæmons) are also among some of the stars in the ensemble cast for this upcoming epic, a joint BBC and HBO production."His Dark Materials premieres November 3 on BBC and November 4 on HBO.

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is the sequel (and second book in the series) to Beautiful Creatures, which I read last month. The authors prose is evocative, if somewhat riddled with Southern dialect, and the plot, though meandering, does make its way to the end in a purposeful, if not swift, manner. My strongest problem with these two novels is that there is a pervasive sexism in the way that women/girls are portrayed in this book (unless they're old, then they are allowed their own power/agency). The young a pretty girls are all drawn as stupid, "slutty" and mean, or, if they are a "good" character, then they're weak and confused, trying to be a martyr and/or in dire need of rescue by the male protagonists, Ethan and Link, who are also stereotypically portrayed as overly hormonal, possessive and reckless teenage boys. The way these boys talk about the girls and themselves in sexist terms is rather nauseating, and abusive, in the case of John, a new character who uses Lena's vulnerable and confused state against her, and out of misplaced guilt, she almost dies of it. Here's the blurb: Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen. Sometimes life-ending.

Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems. 

Though I know we're supposed to think Ethan is the ultimate in romantic boyfriends, I found him, in both books, to be immature and overly possessive/obsessed with Lena, to the point that he doesn't let "no" mean no, and continues to stalk her after she's told him to go away. His idea of "love" is abusive IMO, and I am surprised that the authors would allow this kind of relationship to be highlighted. The "rescue" of the female protagonist is also a cliche that doesn't need perpetuating in modern YA literature. There are also tons of redundancies in every chapter. The authors seem to feel the need to summarize what has happened previously over and over again, as if someone with dementia was reading the novel. Still, I'd give this book a C+, and recommend it to anyone who has read the previous book, and who plans to read the third book in the series.

Wonderland, edited by Marie O'Regan and Paul Kane is an anthology of stories based in the world of the classic fantasy Alice in Wonderland. There were only two authors whose stories I wanted to read in this book, The White Queen's Pawn by Genevieve Cogman and Temp Work by Lilith Saintcrow. Having read many books by both authors I wasn't disappointed in either story, though Cogman's was more horror-oriented than Saintcrows. Still, it was nice to read something that was outside of their usual fantasy books/series, and I'd recommend this anthology for that alone. I would give these two stories As, but with the caveat that I didn't want to read the other stories by unknown authors, because I dislike reading works that aren't as well written as authors whose works are well known to me.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow was one of the rare books that I read on my Kindle Fire as an e-book. I am not really a fan of ebooks, because they're difficult to look back on, to quote or check on the ending, or anything else, plus it's hard for me to read from a screen for long periods of time without my eyes blurring. It's also difficult to erase them, so if you don't like a book you can't just take it back to the library or donate it. It's there to haunt you forever. Still, while this was an interesting book, I am glad that I didn't spend more than $10 on it, because it wasn't as well written as I'd hoped, nor was the story as cohesive as I would have liked it to be. Here's the blurb:

In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

Lush and richly imagined, a tale of impossible journeys, unforgettable love, and the enduring power of stories awaits in Alix E. Harrow's spellbinding debut--step inside and discover its magic.

For some reason, the author skips POV from chapter to chapter, to tell the story of the protagonist's (January) mother and father, and their love that is so encompassing that it obliterates the mother's love (and fathers) for their infant daughter (or at least makes it a secondary concern). I found this to be reprehensible, not romantic at all, and while they both seem to feel bad about it, they also expect their daughter to understand and forgive their bad choices that adversely effected her life. I really didn't feel any sympathy at all for either parent, as they left their child in the hands of a monster and his monsterous minions. I would have preferred to have just read January's story, and I believe the whole plot would have felt less patchwork and hard to follow if Harrow had done this. The prose was a bit redundant and slow in spots, but the characters were very well fleshed out, though they weren't as sympathetic as I would have liked. I'd give this book a B-, and recommend it to anyone who is interested in time travel of the old fashioned, hardscrabble variety.  

Stormrise by Jillian Boehme is a YA fantasy along the lines of Disney's Mulan, about a young Chinese woman who pretends to be a boy in order to join the military and fight for her family and her country. Here's the blurb:

A combat warrior will risk everything to awaken the dragons and save her kingdom in Jillian Boehme's epic YA Fantasy debut, Stormrise, inspired by Twelfth Night and perfect for fans of Tamora Pierce.
If Rain weren’t a girl, she would be respected as a Neshu combat master. Instead, her gender dooms her to a colorless future. When an army of nomads invades her kingdom, and a draft forces every household to send one man to fight, Rain takes her chance to seize the life she wants.
Knowing she’ll be killed if she’s discovered, Rain purchases powder made from dragon magic that enables her to disguise herself as a boy. Then she hurries to the war camps, where she excels in her training―and wrestles with the voice that has taken shape inside her head. The voice of a dragon she never truly believed existed.
As war looms and Rain is enlisted into an elite, secret unit tasked with rescuing the High King, she begins to realize this dragon tincture may hold the key to her kingdom’s victory. For the dragons that once guarded her land have slumbered for centuries . . . and someone must awaken them to fight once more.

I have to admit that at first I kept hearing Donny Osmonds "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan as the background music during the first few chapters of the book and while Rain/Storm trains with the other warriors. Eventually, though, the story became more complex and the music faded as I was engrossed in Rain's life and her dilemna of falling in love with her sister's intended (they'd never met, due to arranged marriages common at the time) while still trying to maintain her secret as a female in a male military unit, where discovery is punishable by death. Though I found the prose delicious and the plot swift, I was unhappy with the extreme sexism of the Chinese culture portrayed in the book, though I realize it is historically accurate. Women really were seen as only valuable as wives/mothers who were completely subservient to men and considered weak and ignorant to boot. I also didn't understand Rain's forgiveness or kindness toward Sedge, the antagonist who tries to rape and kill her, yet when he finally dies she's devastated. I think he deserved a far worse fate than what was meted out to him. Still, this was a rousing tale of dragons and battle that reminded me a great deal of Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series. I'd give it an A, and recommend it to those who like female-driven adventure and heroism.