Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Sweet Spin on Shakespeare

Midsummer's Mayhem by Rajani LaRocca

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I am a regular listener of the podcast The Worst Bestsellers. While the hosts often read and make gentle fun of some very popular books, they also recommend books to read instead of the bestseller. This book was recommended and I really enjoyed it. Midsummer’s Mayhem is a cute confection of a book for readers ages 8-12 and loosely follows the plot of a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mimi Jackson is 11, living with her two older sisters and one older brother. One day, a new […]

If stealing from dragons is bad, what about stealing for them?

Never Steal from Dragons by Patrick Dugan

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Never Steal From Dragons is a fun cozy sci-fi/fantasy heist adventure. A lot of the expected tropes are present: a group of very highly skilled but very different individuals are forcibly assembled by a mysterious powerful individual who wants them to steal something in return for basically making their dreams come true; it is of course an offer that cannot be refused. Chaos, clever remarks, etc. ensues. In the world of Harmony, there are any number of beings recognizable from folklore including pixies, dragons, kitsune, […]

“This is for the people of the sun”

You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue

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  I honestly just thought of leaving the lyrics to RATM’s “People of the Sun” as my review for this strange, hallucinatory story of the first meeting between two global empires. It’s a fictionalized account of Hernan Cortes’ arrival in the city of Tenochtitlan and meeting with Monteczuma. Without spoiling too much, I’ll say there is a critical change to the true story. It’s a picture of a moment in history that bears little resemblance to American history books but is no less worth reading. […]

I am the eye in the sky. Looking at you.

Null States by Malka Ann Older

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Null States is the second book in Malka Ann Older’s Centenal Cycle, a political technothriller which takes place in a future where much of the world is divided up into microdemocracies. Overseeing all of them is something called Information which is like if Google monitored everything. This second book takes place some time after the contentions election for which microdemocracy would take over the supermajority in book one. Ken and Mishima, two of my favorite characters, return in this story. We also meet Roz, an […]

War makes Hell look cozy

The Horizon Volume One by jh

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I was cleaning up old online reader copy links the other day and I said, “Self, let’s try The Horizon Volume one.” So, I did (though it is currently available).  Of course, I did not realize it was volume one (I have a habit of doing that) and just thought it was around 300 pages of a dystopian artistic graphic novel. And it was. Only the ending has a cliffhanger ending that made me say, “WHAT THE FLAMING MONKEY TOOTS??”  How did that happen? I […]

Well, at least I didn’t ugly cry this time…..

Viewfinder by Christine D. U. Chung

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All the points I have for this book, Viewfinder by Christine D. U. Chung and Salwa Majoka are for the illustrations. The wordless story is sometimes a smidgen hard to “get the exact story” (as each person will add their own twist), but overall it is a sad, yet hopefully, even beautiful story of how one Earth-like world (or Earth itself) has drastically changed. Due to the lack of text, I am not sure what the mushroom’s were made of (natural, due to the destruction, […]



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