Harvey, Samantha  ORBITAL

Six multi-national astronauts, some men, some women, are aboard the International Space Station. They swoop around the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour and experience 16 sunrises and sunsets in one 24-hour Earth day. We hear bits and pieces of their lives, meet their families, share their ambitions and dreams, hear about their food, and learn about some of their scientific experiments. The astronauts spend a lot of time taking photos out of the windows and Ms. Harvey describes what they are seeing at length, right down to the lights of various cities.  

What this all comes down to is a work of philosophical meditation on what it means to be a human being within the great unknown of the cosmos. One topic considered at length is would we have been better off sitting tight with the medieval belief that God had dropped us at the center with all things revolving around us i.e., scuttle Copernicus. Or should we charge forward to the moon and beyond with the hope of unlocking more of the universe’s secrets?  A dose of cynicism was added to the mix by noting that we sent Voyager out and desperately hoped, but heard nothing and probably never will.  We didn’t ask to be born or to inherit an earth to look after.  We are after all, alone “a piddling speck at the center of nothing.” 

To give a better idea of her prose style a longer quote might be helpful. “Without the earth we are all finished. We couldn’t survive a second without its grace, we are sailors on a ship on a deep, dark, unswimmable sea.” This was followed by the admonition that we had better start thinking about taking better care of it.

I know this novel won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2024, but I must admit I found its lush prose getting too repetitive. After the fifth recounting of a sunrise, beautiful as it was, I began to skip ahead and search for something that would produce more dramatic juice. That search was fruitless, and we ended up with an award-winning novel that doesn’t really have much of a plot in the classic sense. We have a series of events, or should we say revolutions, but no complications to create tension, thus producing no real climax or final conclusion.

I get it that her goal seems to be a lyrical meditation on both the position of humanity and the fragility of our planet, but it also defeats some of her own purpose by creating a kind of numbing word salad without the tension needed to move me at the finish.

I give it a mild 3.5

Steve Barry THE OMEGA FACTOR

 

Steve Barry is touted as having millions of readers in multiple countries. I confess I have not been among them. His The Omega Factor is a long, rather uneven, and occasionally pedantic slog into the dark secrets perpetrated by the Catholic church over the years. If you have read any Dan Brown, you know what I am referring to. The church is fraught with venal, corrupt clergy and many secret underground cults--some of which have been functioning for a thousand years or more. The hero, Nick Lee, is some kind of United Nations employee in an area devoted to lost or purloined artwork. He has a past that includes a prison stretch for accidentally shooting a boyhood friend. Not much is made of this other than he now has a hatred of guns. He is also absent from the book for long sections on church history and some 14^th century scenes that feature the painter Jan Van Eyck’s spy career before he created his famous Ghent Altarpiece—an art work that has had a checkered history over time.

In the current day, there is an art restorer named Kelsey. Conveniently, nine years ago, she was about to marry Nick just before she changed her mind and became a nun in a highly secretive order called the Maidens of St. Michael. Kelsey discovers some overpainting on one of Van Eyck’s altarpiece panels and Nick is traveling to see her when her art restoration studio is fire bombed. The panel is destroyed, and another young member of the order is killed by the Belgian police. Little is made of why a competent and sophisticated police force would fill a young woman with bullets other than it was needed to further the main plot, which now turns to the possession of a computer that has a digital copy of the lost panel on it.     

Enter now the Vatican’s group of scheming, venal Friars, Bishops, and Cardinals to unravel the secret protected by the Maidens of St. Michael. I trust you might be beginning to believe that I was on the verge of quitting this hodgepodge a number of times. I wish I had.

Perhaps I got up on the wrong side of the bed, but I can only give this one a bare two out of five stars.  

 

 CAMINO GHOSTS BY JOHN GRISHAM

Camino Ghosts is the third of a trio of books centered around a Florida barrier island named Camino. In looking at some of the reviews, the three seem to be kind of cruise ship light, but are flagged positively for retaining enough legal fireworks to remind you that master storyteller Grisham is still at the helm.

A newly successful novelist and writing professor, Mercer Mann, comes to Camino Island to marry and find inspiration for her second book. That inspiration appears when she intersects with local bookstore owner, Bruce Cable, who tells her the story of Dark Isle that is just a stone’s throw from Camino. This tiny island has a scary and violent history that begins when a slave ship coming to the United States breaks up in a storm and deposits some of its survivors on the shore. Their 200-year history of survival was told in a self-published book authored by the last surviving inhabitant of the island, who is now living in retirement on Camino. Her name is Lovely Jackson, and she is a peach of a character who dresses to kill in flamboyant African outfits. You will fall in love with her and her style. Mercer reads Lovely’s book and sees the story as grist for her next writing project. She meets her and arranges to get even more information on the island and its long, tragic history.  

This relationship barely begins to bear fruit before a greedy commercial real estate company announces plans to develop the island as a resort, casino, and golf destination. Enter a semi-retired environmental lawyer who agrees to represent Lovely as she fights an ownership battle in the courts. No surprise now, it's suddenly the old Grisham again.

The courtroom battle is compelling, and all the right people win. There are some echoes of The Boys from Biloxi as the crusading underdogs battle the evil forces of corrupt big business, but overall this is an enjoyable if predictable read.

I give it a four out of five and will look for the first two in the series.