Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A cyberpunk space adventure romance

City of Shattered Light by Claire Winn

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City of Shattered Light by Claire Winn is a YA science fiction story set in space. Asa has been bred to take over her father’s tech empire. They excel at creating weapons and advances in AI technology. When her sister’s brain is used for an experiment, she flees with it to find her a new body. She crosses paths with Riven who has a rag-tag crew living in the slums and taking freelance jobs for the syndicates. One job is to catch Asa, but things get […]

A foray into darkness with Taylyn

Talyn: Seed of Darkness by Caspian Drake & Geoffrey Rickett

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Talyn: Seed of Darkness is a new comic series from Banished Shadow, written by Caspian Drake & Geoffrey Rickett. With comic one, this is all setup and atmosphere. We start in the past by meeting The Vorden Hunters – Vlad and Amelia. They want to eradicate all magic users. They’re pretty evil and think they have a just mission to save the world from the Black Death plague. We see them fight the witch in the forest. She plants a magical seed to be reborn. […]

Review #12: I miss the “lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!”

The Unwanted Guest by Tamsyn Muir

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I have some concerns! Publisher’s short description: “Featuring Ianthe Tridentarius and Palamedes Sextus, this story was originally published in the trade paperback edition of Nona the Ninth.“ The Unwanted Guest by Tamsyn Muir is short story (#3.5), built around being a play, meant to flesh out two main characters in the Locked Tomb series. I guess it’s time for a small rant, but I’m becoming more and more suspicious that the upcoming fourth book, Alecto the Ninth (#4), while be nigh indecipherable. I was already […]

Emily St John Mandel is So Good.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel

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I am so glad I read this.  I’m always so glad I read ESTM’s books. Told in a series of vignettes, connected only by the recurring appearance of Gaspery, Sea of Tranquility spans hundred of years and doesn’t really have much of a plot beyond “What is life?  And does it matter?”  There’s not a lot there, beyond a faith that meeting and spending time with these characters will have a narrative and emotional payoff.  And yet, it does.  And yet, utterly compelling from end […]

Review #11: “Boy, I was daid”

Neuromancer by William Gibson

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A re-read, but one I do every year or two because of just how much I love this book. Publisher’s description: “The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus-hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace… Henry Dorsett Case was the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of […]

Review #9: The best of “New Weird”

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

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This was actually a re-read, I first tackled this book six or seven years ago. It was the first Jeff VanderMeer book I’d read, and I was so enamored with it that I wanted to read it again to see if it held up. Publisher’s description: “Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in […]



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