Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Don’t get too excited about the psychic cats

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

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From the official plot summary: Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The tagline for this book is “Kidnappers. Alien Emperors. Psychic cats. And she’s out of coffee.” Two of […]

Just a fun book, and a quick read

Timeline by Michael Crichton

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Previous to this, I had read one book of Michael Crichton’s, The Andromeda Strain. I loved that book, and after being told to read this, I thought this would be good. Going in, I was expecting something very realistic, as Michael Crichton is generally very interested in science, and while he does falsify it, he rarely makes leaps that are truly, truly impossible. I have to just say that one of my only frustrations with this book is the leaps he makes. Yes, it is possible, […]

This deserves to be a classic

Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

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The Andromeda Strain is an amazing book by Michael Crichton. Michael Crichton is a fantastic science fiction writer in all of his books, and I love this one in particular. Although one of his most famous books is Jurassic Park, and it’s probably a good starting point, I started with The Andromeda Strain. I, in fact, did not realize that Michael Crichton was the author of Jurassic Park. I didn’t have any expectations going in, I had just found this book and didn’t have anything better to do. The […]

Rage Against the Machine

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

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This review contains some mild spoilers which I think are given away in the book jacket. Iron Widow is a YA story set in a future city of Chinese inspired Huaxia where men and women pilot mecha type suits to protect the population from aliens around the Great Wall. The suits are called Chrysalises, and the pilot, a man, teams up with a woman in the back in a merging of energy and minds that usually result in the woman’s death. This is how the […]

A Blast from the Past

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

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I first read Lovecraft as a teen and was instantly smitten.  The Rats in the Wall?  OMG!  So creepy!  So it’s fun, lo these many years later, to read Lovecraft again, seeing a little more behind the curtain, as it were. But I was amused to find the setting of most of these sinister tales in this collection were in obscure bits of the mid-Atlantic states (not the standard setting of gothic tales of horror) such as upstate New York.  OK, I’ll give you Rip […]

Classic Sci-Fi: Should You Read It? Metropolis

Metropolis by Thea von Harbou

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Classic Sci-Fi: Should You Read It? is a self-imposed project in which I read pre-1990 science fiction novels and categorize them as “classis sci-fi you should read,” “classic sci-fi you should read if you’re all hardcore about it,” or “classic sci-fi you don’t have to read.” For background on my project, please see the introduction to my review of 1984. Metropolis was written by Thea von Harbou in 1923 in Germany in conjunction with the screenplay for the silent movie by her husband Fritz Lang, […]



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