Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Magnificat – an incredible ending to this series

Magnificat by Julian May

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It has been a lot of fun re-reading all 9 books in this series but it finally comes to an end with Magnificat. Julian May truly has crafted a series that is extraordinary in scope and with characters who are vibrant. And that series does come full circle in this final installation. One of my favorite TV shows is Firefly and a quote from that show that I love is “It’s not about the destination, it is about the journey.” We have know from the […]

Diamond Mask – well, no one bats 1.000

Diamond Mask by Julian May

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It had to happen eventually, I did not care for this book, the first one in the series that I would describe in this manner. Why? The titular character, Dorothea MacDonald. All of the previous books, including the ones set in the Pliocene, are focused on the Remillard family. The abrupt shift to another character, and one who is not terribly sympathetic early on, is jarring. Diamond Mask is placed in danger from an early age by Hydra and Fury, and it honestly does not […]

Jack the Bodiless – a worthy addition to the series

Jack the Bodiless by Julian May

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This book kicks off the last part of Julian May’s Galactic Milieu series and does so with aplomb. References to Jack Remillard had been numerous in previous books but always vague. It had been stated that he was, arguably, the most powerful psychic ever born but why he did not have a body and how he died was never fully explained. The story begins with a death, that of Denis Remillard’s brother Victor, who had been the main antagonist in the earlier books. As Victor […]

No books were harmed, this time

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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I was 16 when I read The Handmaid’s Tale and I was just beginning my love affair with dystopian tales. I don’t think I liked bleak stories all that much growing up, but man, as soon as I read Fahrenheit 451 they were all I wanted. Give me some of that sweet, sweet harrowing future straight to the veins, and anything like it. When a friend gifted me The Handmaid’s Tale, I thought I’d love it. I read it voraciously, in about two days, and […]

An ecofeminist tale of endings, beginnings, and inescapable duty.

The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

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I picked up the wall (second hand, of course) knowing nothing about it, other than it featured a humanity-ending catastrophe and potato propagation. Which in hindsight is an accurate, if not underselling, summary. I’m finding my mind fixated on adaptation lately. The earth is heating, the oceans are rising, the rain is refusing to fall. My environmental preoccupations, which I’ve struggled to push to the back of my mind since first learning of the hole in the ozone layer as a child, are no longer […]

(bad “Electric Feel” joke)

The Power by Naomi Alderman

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The Power is horrifying in a lot of ways, one of which is how parts of it are also rather cathartic, which it shouldn’t be on the whole. If that opening sentence sounded a little confused and contradictory, that’s because it reflects my feelings about the thing. On the one hand, it’s about women getting to win, but on the other hand, the violence and abuses of power by men and women make it hard to feel good about anything, because it comes off as […]



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