Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Somehow this all seems familiar

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry

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I don’t remember how I heard about The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, but I saw it on a library shelf not long after I heard about it, so of course I had to check it out (pun intended). The story concentrates on two brothers, Rob the older from whose perspective the story comes, and Charley the younger, genius of the sort who finished a PhD and publishes an academic book on Dickens at the age of nineteen. There is the usual kind of brotherly […]

I thought this one was better than the first.

The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut, #2) by Mary Robinette Kowal

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So I never actually wrote a review of the first book in this series. I review-amnestied it late last year, in the 40+ reviews I just gave up on because I let my review backlog get Out Of Control. We read this for my IRL book club, and we were all excited to read about lady astronauts doing science and winning against misogyny, but all of us had very mixed feelings about it. I flew through the book, but also had problems with it at […]

Re-read review of the first two books, and also more people still need to read this series so I can have someone to talk about it with!!

Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1) by Ada Palmer

Seven Surrenders (Terra Ignota, #2) by Ada Palmer

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This is a re-read review for the first two books in this series, which were originally written as one volume, and then split in two before publication. After reading them back to back for the first time, I can definitely say they work much better together as one story than they did the first time I read them, almost a year apart from each other. The arc of the story—the rising tension, climax, resolution—is much more clear and satisfying when they are read together. My […]

“It’s not what the Masquerade does to you that you should you fear . . . It’s what the Masquerade convinces you to do to yourself.”

The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1) by Seth Dickinson

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The Traitor Baru Cormorant is probably the strongest (fictional) condemnation of colonialism that I’ve ever read. (And there have been some contenders.) I’ve been putting off writing a review of this book (and rating it) for a month now, because I was having such a hard time trying to sum up its complexities, and what it did to me as I was reading it. Mainly, though, this is exactly the reason I love fantasy and science fiction, because it can take real-world concepts like anti-colonialism,  […]

The Book of the Phoenix-a great work by a new favorite author

The Book of the Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

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I first heard of the works of Nnedi Okorafor through a friend who attended a writing workshop with her many years ago but this is the first work of hers that I have read. And I loved it but it is a complicated, dense work. The story begins in Africa. The world has been devastated by some calamity and this older man is seeking shelter to avoid an unusual storm. In a cave, he finds computers that provide him with a recording of the woman […]

It is the best of times and worst of times, to read Station Eleven

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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Okay, yes, that is a Dicken’s quote, and it would have been more appropriate to use Shakespeare, but the sentiment is there.  Being on the verge of a potential pandemic makes reading Station Eleven occasionally challenging, as it’s easy to extrapolate how this could happen.  However, the book ends in hope.  While the world has gone through an apocalypse, people are still creating and sharing art, lifting each other up by nourishing the soul.  And I would hope the same would happen in our world […]



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