New Bullitt Movie, RIP Greg Bear, Everyman Wodehouse Comic Fiction Prize, Ship Wreaked by Olivia Dade, The Jeweler of Stolen Dreams by MJ Rose, Kill the Queen by Jennifer Estep and A Shoe Story by Jane L Rosen

Hola and welcome book lovers and friends of the book! We're almost ready for December to descend on us, and today we finally got some snow here in the PNW in preparation for the holidays! My birthday is upcoming, as is Christmas, so I'm excited to turn the calendar over for the last month of 2022. We've lost a bunch of great people this past year, and since I just tested positive for COVID 19 a second time, (Ugh, when does it end?!) I'm hoping that the new year will bring better health and well being for myself and my family. I'm hoping the best for you and yours as well, gentle readers.

I remember watching Bullitt with my family back when I was 7-8 years old. My brothers and dad loved it, my mom and I didn't engage with it that much. I think its a good idea that they're not doing a remake but making it a whole new story. Should be interesting.

Movies: Bullitt

Bradley Cooper has been cast in Bullitt https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAbekeQI6aliIkx3Gg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBDJCspoMLg-gVdw, Steven Spielberg's upcoming film about Frank Bullitt, the character made famous in the 1968 Steven McQueen movie. IndieWire reported that the project, inspired by the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L. Fish, will not be a remake of the original film by Peter Yates, but a completely original story featuring Bullitt.

Cooper will join Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger as producers. Oscar-winning Spotlight screenwriter Josh Singer will write the screenplay for the new Bullitt film, with McQueen's son Chad and granddaughter Molly executive producing.

Though I've only read a few books by Bear, they were unforgettable.I don't think anyone who read his work was unaffected by it. Smart prose and stunning plot lines combined to make thrilling reading for SF fans. He was also instrumental in getting the Science Fiction Museum up and running in Paul Allen's music museum, which has now become the Museum of Popular Culture. Though he was 71, that still seems way too young to die to me. RIP GB. 

Obituary Note: Greg Bear

Science fiction author Greg Bear https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAmIl-oI6aliIR1_GQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jOWpaipoMLg-gVdw, who wrote more than 50 books and "played a leading role in defining how global audiences saw future final frontiers," died November 19, GeekWire reported. He was 71. Bear had his first short story published in 1967 and began writing full time in 1975. His works include multiple award-winning series, a Star Trek novel and a Star Wars novel, as well as a trilogy set in the Halo video-game universe.

Bear won Nebulas for novels Moving Mars and Darwin's Radio, as well as three works of short fiction, two of which--"Blood Music" and "Tangents"--also won Hugos. In 2006, he received the Robert A. Heinlein Award. His final novel, The Unfinished Land, was published last year.

Bear's influence on the science-fiction community "extended far beyond the written page," GeekWire noted. He was one of the founders of San Diego's Comic-Con International and served for two years as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (now the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association).

Current SFWA president Jeffe Kennedy said, "When I took over as a newbie president of SFWA, past-president Greg Bear was unfailingly gracious to and supportive of me. I loved his work and admired him as an author, so to discover what a truly kind person he was meant so much. He will be greatly missed by SFWA and the larger community."

After moving to the Seattle, Wash., area in 1987, he became a member of the team that created and organized the Washington State Centennial Time Capsule. GeekWire contributor Frank Catalano recalled introducing Bear to the late software billionaire Paul Allen--a contact that helped lead to the creation of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, now part of Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture.

Author Harry Turtledove tweeted: "Greg the man was a friend. Greg the writer was quite remarkable."

Bear was best known "as a writer of 'hard' science fiction--stories that are grounded in the improbable plausibilities of science and technology," Geekwire noted. "For example, in Strength of Stones, a novel first published in 1982, Bear laid out a world in which cities that are governed by artificial intelligence rise up against their human creators. And in his War Dogs Trilogy, Bear gave leading roles to private space ventures like Elon Musk's SpaceX."

In a tribute, author John Scalzi wrote : "What I will add here is the personal observation that in my experience of him, he was kind and decent, and treated me as a peer from a very early stage in my career, which is something I noted and appreciated, and tried to emulate in turn. I have condolences and care for Astrid and their children, and all who knew him, either personally or through his work. He will be missed. He is missed, already."

Oh how I adore PG Wodehouse's works, and I've always loved that he gave out a pig and champagne for his eponymous award. Nowadays they just name a pig after your book, they used to give the author a pig. Sigh. 

Award: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize

Percival Everett won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAmIkeQI6aliIRBySw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jOWpCspoMLg-gVdw, highlighting "the funniest novel of the past 12 months, which best evokes the Wodehouse spirit of 'witty characters and perfectly-timed comic phrases,' " for his novel The Trees (Graywolf Press), the Bookseller reported. Everett receives a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvee, a case of Bollinger La Grande Anne, the complete set of the Everyman's Library P.G. Wodehouse collection and a pig named after his winning book.

Prize organizers praised The Trees as a "bold and provocative book in which Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can't look away.... Confronting America's legacy of lynching, it is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance, while at the same time a comic horror masterpiece."

Everett observed: "It's ironic that this prize for comedy goes now to a book about the American practice of lynching, but that's why I love comedy. Comedy allows us for short bursts to be smarter animals than we usually are. To realize the absurdity is to transcend the absurdity. Funny that. Thank you."

Chair of the judges Peter Florence added: "Comedy can entertain, can mock, can tease out our compassion and empathy, it can make you laugh and smile and feel better about other people and even ourselves. And Percival Everett's The Trees can do something else as well. It can lighten the most atrocious darkness and tell truths in ways that begin to make sense of the absurdity of life. He brings us back to the core of our own humanity. You have to go back to Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to find this done so well as Percival Everett does it. He's in that company with Heller and Swift, with Chaplin, Pryor and with Wodehouse. What a joy to read such a book."

Ship Wreaked by Olivia Dade is a delightful rom-com that reads like the best YA fiction, full of witty dialogue and fun, but while also containing a lot of adult sexual situations and more than it's fair share of swearing and cussing. Though I'm not generally opposed to cursing, I felt that there was a touch too much in this otherwise well written and nicely plotted novel. Here's the blurb:

After All the Feels and Spoiler Alert, Olivia Dade once again delivers a warm and wonderful romantic comedy about two co-stars who once had an incredible one-night stand—and after years of filming on the same remote island, are finally ready to yield to temptation again…

Maria’s one-night-stand—the thick-thighed, sexy Viking of a man she left without a word or a note—just reappeared. Apparently, Peter’s her surly Gods of the Gates co-star, and they’re about to spend the next six years filming on a desolate Irish island together. She still wants him…but he now wants nothing to do with her.

Peter knows this role could finally transform him from a forgettable character actor into a leading man. He also knows a failed relationship with Maria could poison the set, and he won’t sabotage his career for a woman who’s already walked away from him once. Given time, maybe they can be cooperative colleagues or friends—possibly even best friends—but not lovers again. No matter how much he aches for her.

For years, they don’t touch off-camera. But on their last night of filming, their mutual restraint finally shatters, and all their pent-up desire explodes into renewed passion. Too bad they still don’t have a future together, since Peter’s going back to Hollywood, while Maria’s returning to her native Sweden. She thinks she needs more than he can give her, but he’s determined to change her mind, and he’s spent the last six years waiting. Watching. Wanting.

His shipwrecked Swede doesn’t stand a chance.

I've read  All The Feels and Spoiler Alert, and I enjoyed both novels, so I wasn't surprised that this one gripped me from the first chapter and would not let me go until the last. It was the best kind of page-turner, the kind that keeps you awake until the wee hours so you can see what happens to the main characters. Dade is also a master of witty dialogue and fake funny twitter feeds, as well as the bon mot and the hilariously dry aside. Having done stand up comedy (I took a class) briefly, I know that comedy is not easy to write or perform, so kudos to Dade for tackling comic writing and nailing it. Since both characters had traumatic childhoods, I was gratified to see that the characters managed to overcome their respective traumas to learn to love again. However, I do think it needs to be said that not everyone with a traumatic childhood is able to overcome it this easily or well. Anyway, I'd give this lovely funny book an A, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys a well written rom-com.

 

The Jeweler of Stolen Dreams by MJ Rose was a NetGalley ebook that I was allowed to read as an ARC, well before it's pub date of February of next year. This, as with all the other Daughters of La Lune books, is a gorgeous novel inside and out, with a bright and colorful eye-catching cover and a near-perfect historical romance/mystery/adventure between the covers. I've read a number of other MJ Rose books, and though they're all beautiful, I'm always surprised when she's outdone herself and made each subsequent book better than the last. Jeweler of Stolen Dreams contains some of Rose's most lush and magnificent prose, with fascinating, believable characters and a plot that flows like French champagne on New Years eve. Here's the blurb:

A captivating tale of two passionate women separated by decades but united by a shared vision. One, the famous jeweler Suzanne Belperron, fighting to protect her company and rescue the man she loves. The other, a young auctioneer whose exceptional gifts reveal a secret that endangers her very life.

“Only one thing saves you, and that is not losing sight of beauty.”

Paris, 1942. Suzanne Belperron is known as one of the most innovative jewelers of her time. Elsa Schiaparelli and the Duchess of Windsor are just two of her many illustrious clients. What no one knows is that Suzanne and her dear friend, American socialite Dixie Osgood, have been helping transport hundreds of Jewish families out of France since the war began. But now, the war has come to Suzanne’s front door—the Nazis have arrested her business partner and longtime lover, Bernard Herz.

New York, 1986. Violine Duplessi, an appraiser for a boutique auction house, is summoned to visit the home of Paul Osgood, a scholarly lawyer and political candidate who aspires to take over the Senate seat of his recently deceased father. Paul has inherited everything inside Osgood Manor, from the eighteenth-century furniture to the nineteenth-century Limoges china. But a vintage Louis Vuitton trunk is what calls to Violine, with the surprising but undeniable thrum of energy that can only be one thing: the gift passed down to her by La Lune, the sixteenth-century courtesan.

Since childhood, Violine has been able to read an object’s history and learn the secrets of its owners by merely touching it, but she silenced her psychometry when it destroyed her last relationship. Why has it returned now?

While inspecting the trunk, she senses it holds a hidden treasure and finds a hoard of precious jewels that provoke nightmarish visions and raise a multitude of questions. Who owned these pieces? Why were they hidden inside the trunk? Were they stolen? Could their discovery derail Paul’s campaign and their burgeoning attraction to each other?

So begins a search that takes Violine to Paris to work with the Midas Society, a covert international organization whose mission is to return lost and stolen antiques, jewels, and artwork to their original owners. There, Violine will discover both her and Paul’s surprising connections to the trunk—and to Suzanne Belperron, who silently and heroically hid an amazing truth in plain sight.

Told through Violine’s first-person account and Suzanne’s diary entries, The Jeweler of Stolen Dreams is a riveting story of magick, mystery, romance, and revenge. Inspired by the real-life legend Suzanne Belperron, it marks yet another masterpiece by New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author M.J. Rose.

I was utterly engrossed and riveted by this story from page one to the last sentence...I could NOT put it down! Violine and Suzu's stories are so compelling and tragic, that I kept wondering what was going to happen in the next chapter, and I felt as if the characters were so real that I could actually go to France and have a coffee or a drink with them at a cafe. The effortless elegance of the jewelry designs mimics the seemingly effortless elegance of the story itself, and the characters backgrounds and lifelong mysteries are revealed like facets in a diamond cut to brilliance. I'd give this book an A (I'd give it a higher grade if there was one) and recommend it to anyone and everyone who has an interest in historical romance and jewels and WWII.

Kill The Queen by Jennifer Estep was a fantasy/romance that was patterned off of books by Sarah Maas and Jennifer Armentrout. Though the story was interesting, it read like a paint-by-numbers work that didn't have all the plot holes covered or the characters filled in before it went to print. Here's the blurb:

Gladiator meets Game of Thrones: a royal woman becomes a skilled warrior to destroy her murderous cousin, avenge her family, and save her kingdom in this first entry in a dazzling fantasy epic from the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Elemental Assassin series—an enthralling tale that combines magic, murder, intrigue, adventure, and a hint of romance.

In a realm where one’s magical power determines one’s worth, Lady Everleigh’s lack of obvious ability relegates her to the shadows of the royal court of Bellona, a kingdom steeped in gladiator tradition. Seventeenth in line for the throne, Evie is nothing more than a ceremonial fixture, overlooked and mostly forgotten.

But dark forces are at work inside the palace. When her cousin Vasilia, the crown princess, assassinates her mother the queen and takes the throne by force, Evie is also attacked, along with the rest of the royal family. Luckily for Evie, her secret immunity to magic helps her escape the massacre.

Forced into hiding to survive, she falls in with a gladiator troupe. Though they use their talents to entertain and amuse the masses, the gladiators are actually highly trained warriors skilled in the art of war, especially Lucas Sullivan, a powerful magier with secrets of his own. Uncertain of her future—or if she even has one—Evie begins training with the troupe until she can decide her next move.

But as the bloodthirsty Vasilia exerts her power, pushing Bellona to the brink of war, Evie’s fate becomes clear: she must become a fearsome gladiator herself . . . and kill the queen.

It might be because I am NOT a Game of Thrones fan (or the spin off  House Of Dragons), but this book felt like it was trying to be too many things at once, and in the attempt failed to do one coherent storyline well. There was also way too much time spent on describing weapons training and Evie's sparring. Nobody outside of a dojo really cares about how long it takes to master a certain type of sword, or how inevitably sore/bruised you get while sparring with seasoned warriors. While we all, of course, would have empathy and sympathy for all the horrors that poor Evie has faced (and somehow survived against all odds) I felt that she didn't really come into her power as a woman and a warrior fast/soon enough to really beat the baddies at their own game. She was battered and bruised but not defeated, which was nice, but it seems that it took several other people to tell her that she could do it for her to actually get the job done. Still, the story held my interest and I felt the prose was stout and muscular, while the plot felt a little too fast and breezy for the harsh blood and gore of the prose. I'd give this book a B- and recommend it to those who want a GOT-lite type of read.

A Shoe Story by Jane L Rosen was a lighthearted romantic comedy for all those who love women's shoes and the power of fashion in a young woman's life. Here's the blurb: A young woman has one month and a closet full of shoes to discover the future she thought she'd lost in this captivating new novel from the author of Eliza Starts a Rumor and Nine Women, One Dress.

Esme Nash is eager to leave her small town and begin her carefully planned post-grad life: a move to New York City, an apartment with her loving college boyfriend, and a fancy job at an art gallery. But when tragedy strikes, instead of heading to Manhattan, she returns home to care for her ailing father, leaving every bit of her dream behind.
 
Seven trying years later, Esme is offered a dog-sitting job in Greenwich Village by a mysterious stranger, giving her access to all of her long-buried hopes and dreams—as well as to an epic collection of designer shoes. Esme jumps at a second chance to step into the future she's sure was meant to be hers.
 
As she retraces her steps, one pair of borrowed shoes at a time, making new friends and reconnecting with her old love, Esme tries on versions of herself she didn’t know existed. But the hazy August days and warm summer nights pass too quickly, and Esme must decide how much of the life she imagined still fits, and what—and who—is on the road ahead of her. 

The prose was slinky and as pretty as a new pair of pumps, while the plot danced along in a fun and flirty way that was never dull or boring. Though I'm not a huge shoe fan myself, I understand being a passionate collector of something you adore (for me it's books and pens and purses) and I also know what happens when your original dream gets derailed by life, so Esme's journey resonated with me and I had a great deal of empathy for her. I loved that she was able to borrow the shoes of the person whom she was dog-sitting/walking for, and that she realized that she can still have her dream, but that it might take a different direction now that she's older and wiser. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to anyone who likes shoes and knows what it is like to strive for a dream deferred.