3 Spoiler-Free Reviews of Fall Vibe Books for your TBR. The Devil and The Dark Water, Hamlet, and Heresy

Well, hello, my fellow mood reader. Welcome to The Book and the Vibe, a mostly historical fiction podcast, where every week you get a spoiler-free book recommendation anchored in atmosphere and vibe, as well as some curious history behind the book in order to enhance, but never spoil, your reading experience. I'm your host, Helen Gabay, a former corporate executive who recently traded flying to business conferences for books, travel, and the places the stories take us. I live outside Richmond, Virginia, and it's a special episode because this is our very first stacked episode of the podcast. About once a month, I want to bring you an episode stacked with not one, not two, but three spoiler-free book recommendations, and of course, a little historical insight behind each book while carefully avoiding plot spoilers. If you reach for historical fiction often, but maybe not exclusively, and want to know exactly what kind of world you will inhabit inside your next book, then you're in the right place. So, in the interest of learning, if there really is something rotten in Denmark, let's talk about our first book, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. But with the giant asterisk that this is an easy-to-consume novelization of the play, retold in a bit of a thriller-style genre, but still true to the time and setting. It was written by A.J. Hartley and David Hewson, and with an audiobook narrated by Richard Armitage, it was a five-star book for this castle-loving reader. My only regret on this one, not being in a castle while reading it. While the story is fiction, the castle in this story, and of course in the original play, is the very real castle of Kronborg in Denmark. This was nothing less than an excuse to take in Hamlet through an easier medium than the Bard's prose for me. Going into this book, I give myself about a four out of ten for knowing the story of Hamlet before picking this version up, which I guess I should maybe be a little embarrassed about, but I'm not, and it certainly won't keep me from bringing you this recommendation. Therefore, to my own self, I will be true here and admit I don't even think I read Hamlet in high school, or at least I don't remember it. I did see the Mel Gibson movie about a hundred years ago. Of course I knew the famous to be or not to be came from the play. I knew Ophelia was crazy and loved Hamlet, and that no one was sure if Hamlet was crazy or not in the Shakespeare version. I also knew that Hamlet thinks his uncle or mother had something to do with his father's death. And finally, I remembered there was a ghost in there somewhere. Oh, oh, I knew the names Rosencrantz and Gildenstern would be in there somewhere, but had zero idea what their part was in the story. And that's it. That was my starting point. And it turns out Rosencrantz and Gildenstern's fate in the story is a delicious little plot twist. I found this version of Hamlet through an audible recommendation. When it starts playing another sample you may like after finishing another book, I sampled it at the beginning of a walk with my dog, Rip the Rhodesian Ridgeback, and official podcast mascot. It was that very first morning that gave us Richmonders the teeny tiniest hint that fall may one day grace us with its presence. And after this past summer's insane humidity levels, I was ready to grasp at anything resembling autumn. So I found myself giddy with excitement after only a minute or two of listening because the mood that our narrator, Richard Armitage, was setting was so perfect for fall. In fact, I'm a wee bit jealous of those of you who will get to read it or listen to it with truly cooler temperatures outside. Speaking of our audiobook narrator, you may know Richard Armitage. If you ever watched the North and South miniseries based on the UK book by Elizabeth Gaskell, the one made by the BBC in 2004. Apparently Armitage also played the dwarf king in the Hobbit trilogy movies. I didn't see those, but it turns out he's been doing a lot of audiobooks and voice work recently, and as well he should because his voice is ear candy. The story opens with Hamlet's father, the King of Denmark, in his final moments. In these moments, we also get a lightning fast setting of the geopolitical climate around Denmark. It's a fairly short opening chapter, and then we fast forward to three months later, and winter has come. A night watchman sees the ghost of the dead king pacing the walls, while meanwhile, back inside the castle walls, Hamlet's mother has already remarried to the dead king's brother. And Hamlet is busy brooding about how fast everyone, especially his mother, has moved on from his father's death. Hamlet has also either conveniently forgotten or decided it really doesn't matter that his father wasn't exactly a beloved figure. He was a ruthless, unlikable man, very viking in his style and his brutality. So Hamlet's grief isn't really about him missing a warm, wonderful dad. He's pissed at how speedily everyone moved on, and he thinks that says something sinister about all the people in his orbit. So there I was, walking in the woods, and while I was into the vibe from the very start, I was 100% invested in the story around the time we hit the scene with Ophelia and her brother Laortis, which is less than an hour into the audiobook. So if you're not rocking along and invested after about 60 minutes of listening, or after Ophelia and Laertes' first scene in the story, this one is probably not for you. Speaking of scenes, each one definitely feels like watching one from a movie or play while you're taking it in. The mood is very sensory heavy. It's about as gothic as they come, which is what a lot of us want in the fall. The setting is cold, gloomy Denmark, in a castle that's really its own character with tapestries and apartments and hiding places. While we certainly have everyone sneaking around poisoning each other and quietly questioning their own sanity, in addition to Hamlet's sanity, we also have politically unsettling events unfolding outside of the castle walls in and among the palpably bleak winter landscape and threatening the peace within. We're also treated to a big, creaky, storm-riddled wooden boat sailing from Denmark to England, and throw in a short but memorable scene in Queen Elizabeth I court, plus a couple of graveyard scenes, and there's your sensory board if you are going to make one out of this book. You could even pretend you're a student again going back to school this fall, and this book is your English lit assignment. But instead of buying the Cliff Notes, since you're not really in the mood for Shakespearean language, you get to enjoy the story of Hamlet as more of a thriller-styled historical fiction book that feels authentic yet accessible in its prose, which leads me to another important point of this version. This is not a heavy internal monologue-drenched version of Hamlet. The authors have deliberately made it sensory and plot forward, while also keeping the characters and big moments from the Shakespeare version, so it feels familiar. Instead of the long soliloquies the play is famous for, we get a lot of Hamlet's internal spiraling through conversations he has with the court chester, which is a character invented by the modern author and who is witty and brutally honest with Hamlet in a way no one else is, and he's easily the best character in the story. Think Tyrion Lannister in his more likable moments from Game of Thrones. My small quibble for this book is that some of the scene-to-scene time jumps are a little disorienting, though I suspect that's from Shakespeare's play and not a flaw in this version necessarily. Subsequently, a couple of times I wasn't sure if a scene was supposed to be the next hour or the next day, or maybe a whole month after the previous scene, but it was just a few times and didn't really hinder my enjoyment or keep me from understanding what was happening. Of course, thinking out loud here, it also may have been a deliberate choice to accompany the theme of madness the story is known for. Let's wrap up with the stats. If you read the book, it is only about 250 pages. If you listen to it, it clocks in at just under nine hours on audio. I blew through it in about four days between walking the dogs and doing stuff around the house. On Goodreads, it has an average rating of 4.12 out of 5 stars with about 3,000 ratings. I'm giving it 4. My advice is to read this with mold wine or hot chocolate in a mug next to a dark window, or listen to it on crisp fall walks. If you have zero interest in a Danish prince avenging his father's murder, or if you are a purist with your Shakespeare, then this one's probably not for you. But if you want something that scratches the literary itch and tells you a classic tale and unfolds like a gothic historical thriller, give the first part of this particular version of Hamlet a try and see if it grabs you with its impeccable fall sensory experience like it did me. This is Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, a novelization by A.J. Hartley and David Hewson. Now I had a lot of fun thinking of a mini unearthed segment to accompany this book since there was so much to choose from. Let's start with past performances of the Shakespeare play. It seems the famous skull in the graveyard scene has more than once been an actual human skull. The most famous instance of this was when a Polish musician willed his own skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company. He did this specifically so he could have a role in the play after he died. His skull really was used on stage in a 2008 production by the company, and when the Royal Shakespeare Company told the press they'd quietly swapped it out for a replica of a skull, in order to avoid distracting the audience once the story had gotten out, that wasn't true. The real skull actually stayed in the production for the rest of the play's run. Actors including Andrew Scott, who played Moriarty from the Modernized Sherlock series a few years ago, Mark Rylance, who played Cromwell on the BBC's Wolf Hall, and also Daniel Day Lewis have all played Hamlet on stage to rave reviews. Daniel Day Lewis reportedly hallucinated because he was so into character and walked off of the stage and has never acted in live theater again. Now let's talk about Shakespeare's inspiration. The original story of Hamlet is actually way darker than the one we all mostly know. Hamlet comes from a 13th century Danish legend about a prince named Amleth. And in that version, Amleth doesn't brood and sulk and put on a play to prove out his theory like Hamlet did. Instead, Amleth feeds the body of someone he caught spying to the pigs, and at one point he sneaks back into the country disguised as a guest at his own funeral, and then proceeds to burn the whole hall down with his enemies inside. Definitely darker. Now on to the original legends. The real Scandinavian folklore this whole story comes from is packed with way more gore. In the Norse tradition, the dead seen walking, like Hamlet's father, were called Draugar, and they weren't polite, armored, translucent visions just looking to get the ball rolling like Hamlet's dad was. In the original folklore, they were supposedly walking dead in the flesh. They were rotting corpses that never left their burial mounds, could grow to enormous size, smelled awful, and attacked anyone who disturbed them. Some Norse sagas even describe people taking precautions such as stabbing and leaving sharp objects inside the chests of their dead before burying them just to be on the safe side, that they wouldn't become drawgars in their afterlife. Let me wrap up by saying if you find the evolution of the story of Hamlet just a little bit interesting, it's definitely worth reading or listening to the author's note at the end of this version. Alright, it's time to leave Wintery Denmark and move on to our second book, one that is equally fantastic to read in autumn, but with a very different setting. Let's talk about The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton. If that author's name sounds familiar, you may have heard of The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Turton's first novel, which was published in 2018 with some sizable commercial success. I read that one about five years ago, and it had some elements I loved, including a locked room mystery, always a favorite, with some science fiction elements. The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle reads like Downton Abbey meets Quantum Leap and was a lot of fun, even if I wasn't wild about the ending. But we're here to talk about his follow-up novel, The Devil in the Dark Water, so here is our spoiler-free setup for that. In The Devil in the Dark Water, it's the year 1634, and a gentleman named Samuel Pipps is the world's most famous detective of his age. Pipps, strangely, being transported as a prisoner from Indonesia's capital city at the time, Jakarta, back to Amsterdam. He's being transported for undisclosed accusations of criminal activity. Pip doesn't even know why he's been arrested, and neither do we as the reader. Before the ship departs for this incredibly long voyage, a leper on the shore makes a dire prophecy about what will happen on the voyage and then proceeds to set himself on fire. The prophecy from the leper and his morbid death hangs over the entire voyage from the start like a suffocating cloud of smoke. Once the ship has been out to sea for a little while, a murder happens on board. So this quickly becomes a locked room mystery, except the room is an entire ship months from reaching its destination. The governor, who is also on board, refuses to grant the captain permission to turn around. So on they go. Back to Pip, who is being transferred for crimes unknown. Pip's strongman, Arendt Hayes, who accompanies Pip everywhere, including this voyage, joins forces with the governor's wife to try and solve the murder. We get our story in third person mostly through their two perspectives. You'll want to know that the city of Jakarta, Indonesia, where the book opens, was a colonial city founded by the Dutch East India Company. At the time of the story, it was called Batavia, and the journey between it and Amsterdam regularly took around eight months to complete in real life. Yes, eight months. So these people are in for a long voyage with a murderer on board. The cast here is eclectic and memorable. We've got the truly hateable, bombastic Governor General, along with his long-suffering wife and children, as well as his mistress that the governor has brought along on the journey. We've got Musketeers, we've got Samuel Pipps, the detective, and his bodyguard, turned lead detective Arnt Hayes, who turns out to be so much more than just the muscle when he has to solve the mystery since Samuel Pipp is locked up as a prisoner for the voyage. There's satanic activity, a paranoid crew, and passengers thoroughly convinced the devil is either on their boat or stalking their boat. There are shipwrecks, pirates, and a boat that is very much a character in its own right. In fact, there's a map of it in the front of the book. I do suggest earmarking it and making a list of the characters as they come on the page. They're not horribly difficult to keep track of, but there are a lot of them. I kept a list on an earmarked page of my Kendall to refer back to, and it made it easier for me in a few moments of forgetfulness. As you may have guessed by now, and as the author likes to boast, the book refuses to be pinned into a single genre. It's historical fiction, it's a thriller, it's a sea voyage, and it's a locked room mystery. It's also a scathing rebuke of the arrogance of the Imperial trading companies with a touch of fantasy and the darker cult running through it. However, none of the genre hopping gives you whiplash. It's all one great story, and the genre bending adds to the fun without you even stopping to realize it's everything all at once until you sit with it and try to think about why you liked it so much. I also have to briefly mention the opening chapter because it might be one of the strongest openings I've read in historical fiction this year. The atmosphere is set so completely and so quickly that I was locked and loaded from the very first page. I liked it so much that I'm going to read a quick passage from that first chapter. A rock thudding into the ground at Arnt's feet, spraying his boots with dried dirt. Another crocheted off Sammy's chains. Traders were selling them out of sacks and making good coin doing it. Damn Batavia, snarled Arendt. Bastards can't abide an empty pocket. On a normal day, these people would be buying from the bankers, tailors, cord wainers, binders, and candlemakers lining the boulevard. They'd be smiling and laughing, grumbling about the infernal heat. But manacle a man and offer him up to torment, and even the meekest soul surrendered itself to the devil. Quick question for you. Do I have a future as an audiobook narrator? It's okay. I didn't think so either. Aren't Sammy Pipp's bodyguard is a mix in my head of Jack Reacher's build and moral code crossed with Jamie Fraser's face and personality from Outlander. That said, there's not really any spice of the Outlander kind in this book to speak of. When the mystery is solved and subsequently explained for the reader, it does tip a bit into Scooby-Doo territory with the culprit essentially walking us through everything they did with glee and excessive details and with a lot more running on at the mouth than anyone probably would do in real life, but I'm only docking a quarter star for it because the characters are strong enough and the story is good enough, I'd happily take this journey again. It also goes on to give us a very solid final ending for the characters after the mystery wraps up, something the seven and a half deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle didn't really do for me. I went between the Kendall and the audiobook, and the narrator for the audiobook is excellent. He's got a deep, grand quality to his voice, somewhere between a nature documentary narrator and the guy from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, so you can't go wrong either reading it or listening to it. For sense of time and place, I'm giving this a 9 out of 10 overall. Turton admits in his afterword that he used some maritime technology for the story that wasn't invented until 100 years later than when the story is set. So if you're a stickler for total historical accuracy, that might bother you a little. Let's wrap up and touch on our stats. It's 463 pages, and I read it in about five days. It was published in 2020, so a little bit backlist, and Goodreads has it at a 3.83 average with about 68,000 ratings. I disagree with that number. I'm giving it four and a half stars. And even though the book begins set somewhere warm, this actually makes a wonderful fall read, since once they set off on the boat, it becomes a locked room mystery with elements of the occult, ghostly appearances, and that claustrophobic feeling of closeness that comes from being trapped at sea. For a good drink pairing, go with a Spanish red, like the ship's officer would have had at dinner, on this same route in real life. So if you enjoy any stories at sea, these kinds of mysteries, or books with a touch of the occult, or perhaps the dynamics of some light romance surrounding a male-female detective duo that's thrown together, you're going to find something to love here. This is The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton. And since our second book today was all about a dangerous voyage from Batavia or modern-day Indonesia to Amsterdam, a voyage of more than half a year, let's do another mini unearthed segment and count down three of the most unsettling elements surrounding those real life voyages. Number three, scurvy. Of course, that's an obvious one, and we've all heard of scurvy, and we mostly think of it as something that's pretty bad associated with not getting vitamin C. In the instances of these long voyages, the crew would eat mostly salted meat and hard biscuit, and the scurvy would usually show up in the crew within two to three months at sea. What I didn't know was that scurvy causes the literal disintegration of the body because it stops the production of collagen, which holds tissues together. So in more severe instances, as the cartilage surrounding the sailors' ribs went away, their bones would rub together, and you could hear the sound of rattling and rubbing bones when they moved. Number two, the odds of survival were brutal and real records proven. Average mortality on the voyage ran at least 12% per trip during the company's busiest years, which meant roughly one in eight people who set out didn't survive. Can you imagine walking on board with those odds? And that number was very often much, much worse. Back in 1595, a company voyage set sail with 249 men and came home with only 88. This high mortality rate associated with the long sailings definitely led to our most unsettling element surrounding these voyages, which was in the cottage industries that popped up because of the mortality rates. Like any major booming city of the time, Amsterdam was flooded with immigrants seeking a better life. When immigrants arrived with nowhere to stay and no job, and when they were at their most vulnerable, they would often be targeted by owners of boarding houses. These were predatory landlords and loan sharks who would offer the men a place to stay in exchange for a promise to pay them later when they eventually found work. The housing debt would inevitably run up, the immigrant would become desperate, and that's when the landlord would make his predatory move. He'd make sure the indebted tenant was present at the next public Dutch East India recruiting event for sailors. These landlords were nicknamed soul stealers because they took these immigrants in, knowing their new lodgers would end up on one of these high mortality sailing boats due to the terms of their agreement. The mortality rate on the long sailing voyages was no secret, and it was not a job people took on if they had other options. The way the agreement between the landlord and the tenant was written was such that the sailing company would directly pay the landlord and not the new recruit. It was a very semiotic relationship the sailing company had with the predatory landlords to help feed the never-ending need for sailors. So, in conclusion, I recommend the book. I'm glad I don't have to take long voyages in boats 400 years ago, and it's time to recommend our third book for fall reading vibes. Let's talk about Heresy, written by S. J. Paris, which is a pen name for Stephanie Merritt, a British journalist. Here's the setup of the book. Heresy opens with our main character and monk fleeing an Italian monastery in the middle of the night in order to avoid the Roman Inquisition and possible torture. He's young and he's desperate to escape being charged with heresy due to his burgeoning beliefs and his reading of banned materials at that time. The story then picks up several years later in 1583, and our now ex-monk has been excommunicated and is calling himself Giordano Bruno. Bruno arrives in Oxford, England, as part of the entourage of a visiting Polish prince during touring the college. Leading this entourage is Bruno's old friend Sidney, who happens to be the nephew to Lord Robert Dudley, the absolute favorite of Queen Elizabeth I for years and years. Bruno has gone to Oxford as part of this little group for two reasons. Officially, he's chasing down an ancient manuscript as part of his quest for religious truth. Unofficially, he's spying for Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's spy master, and he's nosing around for any possible Catholic conspiracies against the Queen. Once in Oxford, while Bruno is staying at one of the colleges, people connected to the university start turning up dead. Their methods of demise all have an eerie similarity, and Bruno finds himself pulled into solving the murders. So I guess we could call this dark academia meets historical fiction meets murder mystery. The story is told in first person from Bruno's perspective, and the setting of Oxford during the end of the Tudor era does much of the historical and sensory work here. Picture creepy old wooden stairs leading up to cramped Oxford rooms, slanted dormer windows, candles, stiff white collars and black suits, horses and rain and mud during some urgent nighttime rides. It feels like a compact little college world where everyone already knows everyone, and of course, that only raises the stakes once people start dying. I knew absolutely nothing about Giordano Bruno as a real historical figure going in, but it felt important to have some background, so you'll want to know some basics going in too. Bruno was a Dominican monk in Naples who got caught when he was young reading banned writings he kept hidden in the monastery privy. Bruno fled the monastery in real life, and through his writings and debates, it became well known he believed that the earth orbited the sun and that the universe was infinite. He eventually became personal tutor to Henry III, King of France at the time. Bruno taught the king memory techniques, which were so much more advanced and intricate than a memory palace, that people started whispering it might be witchcraft. When the whispers on the continent got too loud, Bruno smartly took his leave and made his way to England, which is where the book Heresy really picks up his story. Bruno is ultimately deeply caught up in the paranoia of Elizabeth I and her followers in this fictionalized imagining of his visit to Oxford. But the paranoia of the time was real. Most of the continent of Europe at that time wanted Mary Queen of Scots, a devout Catholic, on the English throne instead of Elizabeth, and many rulers and religious leaders actively sought ways to make this happen throughout the many years of Elizabeth's reign. Until, of course, she had Mary executed. This author does a great job of blending real people with the invented ones, and I was fully immersed within two or three chapters. In fact, I'd say that's the real test of this one. If it hasn't grabbed you by chapter three or four, it's probably not going to. Chapter three specifically will reward a close reading. That's where most of the major players and backstories get introduced, and once you're through it, you're mostly equipped for the rest of the journey in the mystery. The back half is where the historical fiction really shines. The spy elements start to weave together with the mystery in a very satisfying way. And an interesting, if not so subtle, strong theme of martyrdom starts to come together for a genuinely strong ending. I found this one through my library in Chesterfield County, both on Kindle and on audio. And since I usually bounce between audio and reading if both mediums are accessible to me, this made me super happy to have both available and free simultaneously. Even though the book is technically set in early spring, it is an extremely cold, rainy, windy early spring. So I actually kept picturing October and November the entire time I read it, because the weather is 100% gray and gloomy. So for Americans, the sensory experience will scream autumn and not spring. A note on the audiobook. I give it a very solid four stars, and the ending made me want to read the next in the series. There are no major cliffhangers at the end, so you don't have to worry about continuing on if that's not something you end up wanting to do. If you're interested in Giordano as a historical figure, or if you want to walk around an Oxford College set during Elizabeth I's reign, or if you're drawn to the religious tension between Protestants, Catholics, and the Jesuits in this area, this one may be a good fit for you. This is Heresy by S.J. Paris. Since we wove in the real history of Bruno into the setup for heresy, I'm going to say we have checked our unearthed box with that review and we'll close out our show with a note from the road. Okay, I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here because I want to share more of my vision for this podcast. Our segments are locked in for now, but there's something I'm passionate about that I haven't said out loud yet. I want to bring you books that appeal to both men and women. I'm tired of the lazy book covers. You know the one, a woman's back turned to the camera or half her face is cut off, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, and equally as annoying, a full-on battle scene or warrior close up on the cover. They are basically shorthand for this book is for her or this book is for him. And most of these books aren't actually 100% one or the other, and that's the shame of it. Both types of covers turn this reader off, and I'm betting do the same for a lot of you out there. I say just about any book published in the past 10 years or so, we have every right to judge by its cover, especially when you consider the resources available to publishers to try and make the right impression. I'll admit it, I don't pick up newly published books with a woman's back or half of her face on the cover on principle. I think it's lazy on the publisher's part, and I don't reach for the pure battle scene covers or warriors either, the ones clearly aimed at men. What I want to bring you here on the podcast are books that are excellent, full stop, books that appeal to both men and women. Not to make some bold statement, because I think a lot of readers out there think like I do. They want books that stand on their own merit, books that aren't getting shortchanged by a cover or a description or a marketing strategy that doesn't do the story or the readers justice. Of course, of course, some of those books with those lazy covers really are layered and complex. And some of them actually are a bit flat and one-dimensional, and maybe they earned that cover. But the era of lazy book covers that's so prevalent in historical fiction feels like a decent metaphor for what I refuse to be with this podcast. And of course, there are lots of historical fiction books out there that are very thoughtfully designed and are chef's kiss and my hat's off to them. Anyway, that's my own little personal view on book covers and marketing today, and the effect it's having on the future of historical fiction and readers that are perhaps new to the genre. That's our note from the road this week, as well as, I suppose, a bit of a flag in the ground for the show. It's also the conclusion of our very first stacked episode. Send me a note to let us know what you think of the stacked format. Until next time, may this be the year you get to read a book set in a castle while staying in a castle, or whatever your historical fiction loving heart desires.