Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When West Meets East, Sharpshooters and Demons

Shadow Roads (Volume One) by Cullen Bunn

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Shadow Roads (Volume One) is one very large screwy ride! Cullen Bunn and Brain Hurrt make realism and science fiction collide. They bleed together to create a familiar but new world where Victorina England and the American old west are only a portal jump away from each other. There is magic, native tribes and demons. There are people who are not what they seem and people who are the comic relief. There is an Annie Oakley-like kid who also could pass herself off for Little […]

Short stories in comic form.

The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman

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This is essentially a short story collection in comic form. The afterword notes that Gaiman needed a break from the main storyline after finishing up The Doll’s House arc, and had a few ideas he wanted to play around with. I found all of them to be satisfying enough, but none of them really knocked my socks off, either. The standout in the collection for me was the first one, “Calliope,” in which a novelist with a terrible case of writer’s block holds one of […]

“For Those About to Rock, We Salute You”

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

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Not entirely sure anymore whether I picked this one up because of coffeeshopreader’s review or badkittyuno’s, but between the premise and the cover, I thought it sounded fun.  And I think it is, but it’s not quite my cup of tea.  I guess it’s a sense of humor thing and sometimes it can be hard to predict what will be incredibly amusing vs. kind of entertaining, even if everything else seems like it should fit. For some reason, something about the vibe reminded me of […]

They already were trapped.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

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This is the case of a good idea already sort of perfected (or done so effectively) by a previous work that this one both feels derivative and cheap. It’s also the case where this one feels underserved by its brevity. So it’s a weird case of it’s not great and there’s not enough of it. The novel takes place on the wagon train of the Donner/Reed Party, famous for its mythic and mythologized end that may or may not have involved cannibalism after the party […]

A book I did not expect to hate.

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

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I think I mostly hated this? Yeah. I did. And I don’t really know why. I liked but didn’t love The Shining Girls when I read it a couple of years ago. I assumed I would similarly like not love this. And it does sound creepy and intriguing. A boy turns up dead in Detroit, his top half attached to the dead body of a deer. There are multiple narrators, including a detective on the case, a teenager, a journalist, and a homeless man. But […]

A new version of a classic short story from Neil Gaiman

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman

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I admit it, I am a Neil Gaiman fanboy. There are two shelves in my library devoted to his works and this short story, Snow Glass, Apples, sits among the greatest pieces he has created. So what is it about? Take the story of Snow White, keep all of the elements of the story we are familiar with (the stepmother, the dwarves, the stepmother’s attempt to kill Snow White, the Forest, etc.), then invert some, distort others and create a whole new perspective on a […]



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