Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Archives for December 2021

Small unsatisfying bytes of sci-fi

Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland

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‘Cosmogramma’ is a collection of speculative short stories of a science fiction bent. Robots, AI, space travel… with a little sprinkling of mermaids and zombies and superhumans to keep things interesting. Given it’s a collection of short stories, I’ll do my best to review each briefly and then give my overall impression: Percipi A dispassionate retelling of a robopocalyse. Engaging, well told, and very believable. I wish that this short story was fleshed out and just the whole novel, honestly. Reminded me of ‘animatrix’.  Five […]

CBR Diversions – So How’d It Go In There?

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In another shocking turn of events, 2021 is almost over. That means it is time to start thinking about the end of CBR13. There is more to the year than just your best and worst reads (did you get those in to MsWas?). How did your year go? Did you get in some good reading? Did you write the reviews you wanted to write? Did a theme emerge? What surprised you? Is there still stuff you want to do before CBR13 ends? I’ll put my […]

Paranoia! Paranoia! Everybody’s Coming to Get Me!

Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America by William Jacobson

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A few weeks after the, shall we say, contentious 2016 primary, a former friend who I still somewhat interacted with on Facebook (and who was and maybe still is a dyed-in-the-wool Way Too Online Libertarian) started blasting me in the comment section of some post I made. He accused me of supporting weird, horrific stuff that made no sense just because I voted for Hillary Clinton. Not being a patron of the Conservative Reddit Extended Universe, I had no idea what he was referring to. […]

The Superheroine duo is now the foreshadowed Heroine Trio!

Heroine's Journey by Sarah Kuhn

Haunted Heroine by Sarah Kuhn

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Heroine’s Journey and Haunted Heroine are the third and fourth books in Sarah Kuhn’s fun ‘Heroine’ series.  Demons breached our dimension and some humans gained powers as a result.  Set in present day San Francisco and surrounding areas, Aveda Jupiter and her best friend Evie Tanaka have become the superheroine darlings of the city.  Aveda’s telekinesis combined with fighting prowess and Evie’s ability to create and throw fire have made them a fantastic duo.  The road to get there has been rough as they each had […]

My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side.

Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories by Women by Paula Guran, editor

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As a reminder, I was really interested in reading vampire fiction before Halloween, and this book of short stories, cobbled together by Paula Guran, was a really wonderful sampler. There are about 25 stories ranging in eras from the early 1600s with Catherine of Aragon and Henry VII, vampire slayers, to a dystopian future where teenagers decide to ‘just do it’ and become vampires to rush the inevitable. The anthology is organized by era and showcases a wide variety of world-building concepts, tones, geographies, and […]

“Mum spent a lot of time in my formative years gently reminding me that people don’t think about us nearly as much as we think they do, because they’re all busy worrying what people are thinking about them.” 

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

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Imagine a high school that has zero teachers or staff, just students trying to learn and advance. When you show up the first day of freshman year you don’t leave until graduation day senior year. All you have with you is what you had in your pockets or even in your mouth — No suitcases or trunks. It’s a school of magic, but not like Hogwarts or Watford. And that school is actively trying to kill you. This is the world that our “heroine,” El […]



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