Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About GentleRain

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Your jack of all trades eccentric. Knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little. Tends to mainly read non-fiction (history, true crime, old gossip, etc), SF/F, horror, graphic novels, "genre" books. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: GentleRain's Quick Questions interview.)

GentleRain's Reviews:

“But it’s too late:” YA Nihilism and Queer Tragedy

As You Wish by Chelsea Sedoti

by 2 Comments

This book was surface level readable, but morally it’s made me more and more mad the longer I think about it. It’s the kind of YA book where you read it in an intense sitting but are also irritated that the author isn’t trying to do more with the material. There is a lot jammed in here — a town where everyone gets a wish on their eighteenth birthday, football angst, romantic angst, dealing with your little sister being hit by a car and blaming […]

Community, Queer Romance, Near-Future SF….What More Could One Want?

The Short While by Jeremy Sorese

by 4 Comments

This was a really nice surprise to read, as I had no real expectations going in besides being a follower of Jeremy Sorese’s illustrative work on Twitter. I knew he dealt with queer themes and I like his art style, so when I saw on Twitter that he’d done a graphic novel, I looked at the excerpt and decided to buy it. Pricey at US$30, but it is 432 pages and a mixture of illustration, comic panel style sections, and text, so you are getting […]

I Disliked This Enough To Not Even Come Up With A Pithy Title

Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald and Jose Pimienta

by 4 Comments

The best I can say here is that this is perfectly inoffensive teen fantasy. I didn’t hate it but neither will I remember much about it in a few months. It was fine as a palate cleanser book. This YA-aimed graphic novel follows Andrea and Darra, who are high school freshmen feeling trapped in their small town. Apparently that town is in Massachusetts, but I had to check the back of the book because nothing I read made me realize it was set there — […]

Even New Houses Can Be Haunted

The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

by Leave a Comment

This is the only horror novel Anne Rivers Siddons ever wrote, and the only book of hers I’ve ever read, so I feel like we were on some sort of haunted parallel footing here. This is a very well done haunted house story written in a lyrical style, but with a lot of brutal, horrible scenes. The contrast between the nice, aesthetic portions of the book and the growing realization that a nasty little scene is right around the next page makes for a tension-filled […]

Sometimes even your favorites can disappoint

The Baby-Sitters Club: Claudia and the New Girl by Gabriela Epstein (based on Ann M. Martin's novel)

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Claudia and the New Girl focuses (big shock) on Claudia, who is my favorite character in the series. A new girl, Ashley, joins Claudia’s class, and she’s also an artist! And she likes Claudia’s art and wants to be friends! Claudia gets swept up in the validation of having a friend share an interest and validate her work as something special. This leads to tension with her other friends and her not living up to her duties as vice-president of the Baby-Sitters Club. Friends falling […]

Revelator: Sometimes God is One of Us

Revelator: A Novel by Daryl Gregory

by 3 Comments

To risk starting out on an annoyingly pretentious foot, Daryl Gregory is an author I liked before he was cool. I’d been enjoying his work before he broke out into the front tables of bookstores with Spoonbenders, and I feel an affection for his writing and the interesting things he does within the horror/fantasy field. I find him to be a writer like Robert Charles Wilson, a sure-footed storyteller whose name on the cover of a genre novel guarantees an interesting and fast moving read. […]



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