Hey there, Bibliophiles! Welcome to November, a great month to chill and read books, and of course stream shows based on books on your favorite streaming service, aka Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Paramount/CBS, Amazon etc. I'm looking forward to birthdays and cooler temps and Thanksgiving, of course, but I'm also looking forward to Christmas and cheery lights everywhere. Meanwhile, I've got some interesting tidbits and four book reviews for ya'all. So grab a cozy blanket and enjoy!
I was a huge ACC fan when I was a teenager, and I think it's wonderful that his award live on and help authors with creating new science fiction.
Awards: Arthur C. Clarke Winner
Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles has won the 2022 \Arthur C. Clarke Award https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAaKn70I6alkJEp3GA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBWJ71poMLg-gVdw for science fiction book of the year. According to the Guardian, the book is told in Orkney dialect and comes with a parallel translation into English. "It follows Astrid who is returning home from art school on Mars, and Darling, who is fleeing a life that never fits. The pair meet on Deep Wheel Orcadia, a distant space station struggling for survival as the pace of change threatens to leave the community behind."
Chair of the judges Dr. Andrew M. Butler called Deep Wheel Orcadia "the sort of book that makes you rethink what science fiction can do and makes the reading experience feel strange in a new and thrilling way. It's as if language itself becomes the book's hero and the genre is all the richer for it."
The winner was announced at the Science Museum in London as part of celebrations for its exhibition Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination.
I've been a fan of Gabriel Byrne for decades...this looks like a wonderful production. I wish that I could see it on Broadway.
On Stage: Walking with Ghosts
Actor and author Gabriel Byrne has brought Walking with Ghosts https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAaLk7gI6alkKh9-HQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBWZLwpoMLg-gVdw, a solo show adapted from his memoir, to Broadway, with a 75-performance run that began October 18 at the Music Box Theatre leading to an October 27 opening night. Ahead of its official opening, director Lonny Price and Byrne spoke with Playbill https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAaLk7gI6alkKh9-Eg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBWZLwpoMLg-gVdw about what to expect from the show.
This movie looks interesting because it has Edgar Allan Poe in it and because it's based on the Bayard novel. I don't like Christian Bale, and will not go out of my way to watch him...but this movie sounds so intriguing that I may have to see it anyway.
Movies: The Pale Blue Eye
Vanity Fair offered a first look at The Pale Blue Eye https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAaMxL0I6alkdhF-Sw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBXsX1poMLg-gVdw, the new historical thriller starring Christian Bale as a retired constable in 1830 who joins forces with a young Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) to solve a series of grisly slayings. Based on the 2006 novel by Louis Bayard, the film debuts December 23 in theaters and January 6 on Netflix. It is Bale's third collaboration with filmmaker Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace), who has been developing this movie for nearly a decade.
"Every character in the story has secrets," Bale said. "And while Poe seems to be the one who is clearly putting on a performance, he is actually the most sincere. Everyone else is more quietly putting on a performance, but no one is who they are pretending to be."
Cooper added: "I thought, okay, I have an opportunity to do three things with this film: Fashion a whodunit, a father and son love story, and then a Poe origin story. Poe at this young age was quite warm and witty and humorous and very Southernly. The experiences that I'm putting forth in this film led him down the darker paths that we have come to know him for."
The Pale Blue Eye also features "an increasingly rare return to the screen for 91-year-old Robert Duvall, a longtime friend of Cooper, who turns up as another hermit-like scholar living in the woods. Duvall's Jean-P is a world traveler and occult expert whose library provides clues about what might be behind the series of bizarre slayings," Vanity Fair wrote.
All The Tides of Fate by Adalyn Grace is the delicious sequel to All The Stars and Teeth that I read (and enjoyed) last month. It's an epic YA swashbuckling fantasy that is as mesmerizing as a mermaid. Grace's prose is scented and lovely, while also being gritty and powerful when it needs to hurtle over those tough plot points where all hope seems to be lost. the plot starts at a regular pace and then zooms along in the final third of the book. I just couldn't put it down. Here's the blurb: Through blood and sacrifice, Amora Montara has conquered a
rebellion and taken her rightful place as queen of Visidia. Now, with
the islands in turmoil and the people questioning her authority, Amora
cannot allow anyone to see her weaknesses.
No one can know about
the curse in her bloodline. No one can know that she’s lost her magic.
No one can know the truth about the boy who holds the missing half of
her soul.
To save herself and Visidia, Amora embarks on a
desperate quest for a mythical artifact that could fix everything—but it
comes at a terrible cost. As she tries to balance her loyalty to her
people, her crew, and the desires of her heart, Amora will soon discover
that the power to rule might destroy her.
I won't spoil the book except to say that I was surprised by the solution that Amora came up with for her kingdom and its people. I honestly didn't see how Grace was going to make an HEA out of all the horrors of the past and present, yet she deftly wove everything together to make an HEA that was satisfying (except for the part where we lose a main character). At any rate, I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who read the first book in the series.
Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood is a contemporary romance featuring women in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics fields (STEM) and men who are usually misogynists and incels working against women in STEM fields. It's similar to Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. Though the prose was adequate and the plot unfussy, the story itself shone like a sterile lab beaker in the sun. Hazelwood's characters are the real stars here, as they have enough foibles and flaws to seem like that science nerd you knew from high school or college. Here's the blurb: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis comes a new STEMinist rom-com in which a scientist is forced to work on a project with her nemesis—with explosive results.
Like
an avenging, purple-haired Jedi bringing balance to the mansplained
universe, Bee Königswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie
Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuroengineering project—a
literal dream come true after years scraping by on the crumbs of
academia—Marie would accept without hesitation. Duh. But the mother of
modern physics never had to co-lead with Levi Ward.
Sure, Levi
is attractive in a tall, dark, and piercing-eyes kind of way. And sure,
he caught her in his powerfully corded arms like a romance novel hero
when she accidentally damseled in distress on her first day in the lab.
But Levi made his feelings toward Bee very clear in grad
school—archenemies work best employed in their own galaxies far, far
away.
Now, her equipment is missing, the staff is ignoring
her, and Bee finds her floundering career in somewhat of a pickle.
Perhaps it’s her occipital cortex playing tricks on her, but Bee could
swear she can see Levi softening into an ally, backing her plays,
seconding her ideas…devouring her with those eyes. And the possibilities
have all her neurons firing. But when it comes time to actually make a
move and put her heart on the line, there’s only one question that
matters: What will Bee Königswasser do?
There's a lot of creative swearing in this book, which I laughed at and loved, and there's many, many good points made about all the sexual harassment that women go through in male-dominated fields, from even getting a job to having men take credit for their work when they finally do get a job, which usually pays less than their male counterparts. Interestingly enough Bee and her frenemy Levi soon discover that the corruption and misogyny go all the way to the top, and the only way to combat it is to have a guy help her ferret out the bad apples in the barrel. There's also a great through-line about the unfairness and bias present in the GRE and other gatekeeping exams that are currently required before you enter grad school. They're expensive and completely unnecessary, and have been found to be a poor indicator of success for any given grad student. Yet, not unlike the BMI, which was never meant to be an indicator of health, the GRE and others are still required in the US. That Bee and her cohorts rally to fight this requirement was heartwarming and made me hope that there are real people out there fighting the good fight against this elitist nonsense. For that among other reasons, I'd give this book an A-, however I did feel that Bee became helpless in the face of desire/love a bit too often. I would recommend this book to anyone with a female person in their life.
Poison Promise by Jennifer Estep is the 11th book in her Elemental Assassin's series, and though I have the same complaint about every book past the first few (that the authors spends way too much time recapping previous books and Gin is constantly reflecting on things that happened in the first book or two, which is boring if you've already read those books), I did enjoy reading about Gin being back in action and working to find a way to kill the latest big bad in her hometown. Here's the blurb:
As usual, Gin's the one who ultimately gets beat up to near death by the bad guy/gal, but this time she actually allowed her posse of family and friends to help her put the odds in her favor. I like it when the peripheral characters, like Gin's foster brother and her sister the cop snap into action and the whole plan comes together. Though there's more gore than I'd like, I enjoy the fact that justice prevails in Esteps books, and her endings are always HEA and satisfying. I'd give this book a B+ and recommend it to anyone who has read the rest of the series.
A Little Red by Bethany Maines was a cheap ebook contemporary romance based on a fairy tale that initially looked like it would be right up my alley. Unfortunately, most romance novels I read these days are light on the romantic part and heavy on the sex part, with lots of routine sex scenes that all read like they were taken from a book about "how to write a sex scene." They all start the same way and end pretty much the same, and the woman involved always seems to become some kind of nymphomaniac that can't get enough sex with the big built male protagonist. It's pretty paint-by-numbers and after awhile predictable and laughable. It's also inevitably sexist, and the trope of the tiny "child like" blonde woman hooking up with the huge dark haired 6 foot 5 male protagonist for sex that sounds like it was written by a sweaty middle aged pedophile creep in his basement apartment, is just BORING and horrible and nauseating. Shame on this author for falling prey to the cliche of child-like blonde women being the only sexually attractive women on earth. The fact that they are child sized makes it even more heinous, because it promotes the idea of female helplessness and pedophilia, which is misogynistic and disgusting. Here's the blurb:
Of course Scarlet is an "earth mother" witch with fae parents, (women are only valued for being mothers who fix things, clean things, are domestic and underplay their strengths because any woman who owns up to being talented or smart is a turn off to egotistical guys, right? UGH) who falls in love with a werewolf in trouble, and then has to rescue and heal all the ecologic and personal troubles around her, because men are incapable of handling emotional intelligence work, even if they're wolves in love. Again, UGH. If you can make it past the sexist twaddle and the long and inevitable sex scenes, there's a decent story to unearth, which could have been written without all the stupid misogyny and cliche. The prose is decent but the plot wobbles all over the place, though it finally lands at the HEA. I'd give this messy romance novel a B-, and only recommend it to those who don't mind mining the text for the good stuff.
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