#crown publishing

The Warehouse 

by Rob Hart

Blake Crouch told me to read this book.

Ok, not personally, but still. 

Initially, I read the first chapter, shrugged and put it down, slightly discouraged by the glossy magazine-sheen styled tone.

Then I received a BookBub email with Blake Crouch’s recommendation to read The Warehouse.

Having just acknowledged in my last B3 post that I might in fact jump off a bridge if the man suggested, I figured it was reasonable to read his book recommendation instead.

Naturally, I finished The Warehouse within a couple days because as the narrators and perspectives switched so did the tone of the book, making it as palatable as a CloudBurger at LivePlay. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Enter a world where The Cloud is king. Naturally, said world has gone to pot: climate change makes temperatures unendurable, unemployment is ubiquitous, water unpotable, meat scarce, and prospects dire for small business.  But at The Cloud, with fully stocked shelves of shiny goods, air-conditioned dorm rooms, built-in healthcare and tram cars, not to mention LivePlay entertainment and readily available Cloud Burgers, life is good. Well, not necessarily good, but tolerable. Well, not necessarily tolerable, but air-conditioned. 

So what if the shifts are 12 hours long, or there’s a $6 bank transfer charge, or you get docked ratings for not volunteering for extra work time? And so what if the bathrooms are constantly out of order, or the cinderblock rooms are the size of closets or your every move is tracked with a wristband?

The Warehouse is like if The Circle were written about Amazon and Apple combined featuring Steve Jobs and Lisbeth Salander set to an employee training video.

But don’t you enjoy having everything delivered at the click of a button? And for a such a reasonable cost? Have you ever wondered after you click “buy now” who is paying for the deficit? 

*B3 received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Artemis

by Andy Weir

What’s better than being stranded on Mars and abandoned by your crew with only potatoes to live on?

Anything really.

Anything would be better than that.

But if we are talking in terms of Andy Weir’s brilliant first novel The Martian, what would be better that Andy Weir writing the witty and scientifically credible story of one character? That would be Andy Weir creating a witty and scientifically credible story about a whole city on the moon with an awesome no nonsense female protagonist smuggler. Which he did when he wrote Artemis.

Having loved Weir’s writing voice in The Martian, I scooped up Artemis immediately and summarily devoured it. The protagonist, Jazz, a citizen of Artemis, the moon colony, slaves away as a smuggler to save up enough slugs for a better life. Because moon real estate sounds pricier than New York and San Francisco combined. An integral player in the city’s sordid underbelly, Jazz is roped into a scheme by a wealthy benefactor while desperately dodging the ever-watchful moon cop and a new slew of moon mafia. Which, let’s face it, is kinda challenging in a city that’s literally under a bubble. (Note to self: this could be included in the genre: books that effectively employ domes as a device.) Let’s just say that oxygen is at a premium in zero G.

With a seriously diverse cast of characters, an entirely new take on moon landing and a unique pen pal scenario, Artemis is bound to launch to the bestsellers’ list immediately. Pun intended.

Kudos to Weir for introducing a minority female protagonist who is dynamic, intelligent, flawed, and beautiful -  and incidentally, like a lot of the awesome dynamic, intelligent, flawed and beautiful female characters in my own life.  

Plus, reading Weir is like taking a cool science class as an adult, just in a totally different atmosphere.

*B3 received a galley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The last two weeks have been totally amazing for readings of books that I’m obsessed with. New to me in this round is debut author Stephanie Danler, who I saw in conversation with Prune chef Gabrielle Hamilton (who called this the next great food book after Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, if that says anything to you). The other three I’ve been fans of for a few years, and seeing them again at their readings was as delightful as always.

Rufi Thorpe’s DEAR FANG, WITH LOVE is the story of Vera and her essentially estranged father, Lucas, who takes her to his family homeland of Vilnius, Lithuania, after she suffers a breakdown at her high school boarding school. A wise, skillful second novel that ponders the meaning of family and the stark reality of mental illness.

Stephanie Danler’s SWEETBITTER is a novel that feels like a memoir, in that it parallels Danler’s own experiences in many ways. Tess moves to New York and finds work in a Union Square restaurant, revealing the dirty, gritty life of the service industry in the city as well as the relationships that develop between those who live their lives in this lane.

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s JUNE, her fourth novel, splits the timeline between depressed twenty-something Cassie Danvers and the teenage years of her grandmother June. The stories become entwined after Cassie inherits a fortune from a golden age movie star, and his family comes to visit her in her recently-deceased grandmother’s house to find out exactly what she knows and how she got involved, which she would like to know, too.

Emma Straub’s MODERN LOVERS follows two families in Brooklyn neighborhood Ditmas. The parents have all known each other since college, and are now discovering what adulthood and growing up means as they parent their teenage children and remember their own passions.

Please check out all of these books, out in the world within the last month. Support these amazing women and their amazing books!