Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Another one of those moments when Ruby had to choose whether to go crazy or just deal. A close call this time.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

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“It never fails,” Montrose said. “No matter what they do to you, afterwards it’s like nothing happened. You’re supposed to just be grateful you’re still breathing.” Upon receiving a letter from his estranged father, Atticus Turner returns to his hometown to discover his father missing. He and his uncle George follow the trail to Ardham, Massachusetts, where, with the help of their hometown friend Letitia, they learn secrets about Atticus’s late mother’s family history, and how he and his family could be the keys to […]

Number One Fan- Huh. Didn’t blow me away, but I’m still thinking about that ending.

Number One Fan by Meg Elison

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She created a beautiful world. Now he wants it all. On her way to a speaking engagement, bestselling novelist Eli Grey gets into a cab and accepts a drink from the driver, trusting that everything is fine. She wakes up chained in the stranger’s basement. With no close family or friends expecting her to check in, Eli knows she needs to save herself. She soon realizes that her abduction wasn’t random, and though she thinks she might recognize her captor, she can’t figure out what he wants. Her only clues are […]

“Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously”

Sawkill Girls (2018) by Claire Legrand

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I find it hard to write or think about YA fiction without thinking about Taylor Swift sometimes–in this particular case, ‘Seven’ from Folklore (2020): “Please picture me in the weeds / Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously /Any time I wanted.” Sawkill Girls is a scream of a book beneath its veneer of preppy popularity politics and teenage drama and desire: a scream of fear and despair and fury, a loud barbaric yawp against vanishing and silencing, a howl against monsters and the different […]

Adventures in Space That Live up to the Hype

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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I’ve been itching to read this since I finished The Martian, and my expectations did not let me down. I was so surprised by the unexpected event that occurs partway through the book – not a twist, but not something I was expecting, and it was so exciting! I’m trying to avoid spoilers, as you can see. The book starts with Ryland Grace waking up with amnesia from a coma and discovering that he is on a spaceship and that that spaceship is not in […]

An Amazing Nigerian-Inspired Fantasy

Forged By Blood by Ehigbor Okosun

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Wow, this book is so amazingly good. If you’re fond of epic fantasy, political machinations, and soulmates this is a book you should absolutely read! Dèmi grew up having to keep her abilities secret because just before her birth the kingdom of Ìfe was conquered and all Oluson persecuted for fear of what their abilities could do against the Eingardan. One day, though, a young boy is brought to Dèmi and her mother, poisoned, and the act of saving his life condemns Dèmi’s mother. Dèmi […]

Nanorrobots Prodigiosos?

Virus. La guerra de los mil millones de años by Juan José Gómez Cadenas; Juan Botas

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So for my European bingo spot, I’m going to review a science book about humanity’s tangles with viruses that eventually builds to the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Virus. La guerra de los mil millones de años‘ (‘Virus. The war of a billion years’) is a bit of a curiosity for me: this book about viruses, diseases, and pandemics, which was written with a Spanish perspective in mind, was completed during the very first few months of the pandemic. The authors state in the introduction that the writing […]



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