Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

WHen zombies may not be just zombies and the body and soul connection is not what anyone seems to think

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Bingo 9: Strange Worlds Nona the Ninth takes place in an apocalyptic city but there are references to space travel and planets and other not-Earth realms (namely The River, but that might be a little spoiler-y); this novel definitely fits the strange part of Strange Worlds and by the final third or so starts to really get more into the worlds part. Nona seems to be around 12 or so, but really has maybe only existed for about 6 months, at least that’s as far […]

“Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously”

Sawkill Girls (2018) by Claire Legrand

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I find it hard to write or think about YA fiction without thinking about Taylor Swift sometimes–in this particular case, ‘Seven’ from Folklore (2020): “Please picture me in the weeds / Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously /Any time I wanted.” Sawkill Girls is a scream of a book beneath its veneer of preppy popularity politics and teenage drama and desire: a scream of fear and despair and fury, a loud barbaric yawp against vanishing and silencing, a howl against monsters and the different […]

When it hits home

Flooded by Mariajo Ilustrajo

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The picture book Flooded by Mariajo Ilustrajo hit close to home. Recently my state had serious flooding happen. (I went by business X early Sunday evening. By Monday the building was half underwater at the same time). My town, while thankfully mostly missed this last time, has already weathered at least three big storms and a bad winter flooding over the last decade. Thankfully, not first hand, but I know about flooding. I have a friend anytime a storm hits, she has PTSD (I would too […]

Twisted

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

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Oryx and Crake is the first installment in the Maddaddam trilogy, a dystopian future with a liberal dose of gene splicing at its core. The novel is told through the perspective of “Snowman”/Jimmy, a depressed man, clothed in a bedsheet, presiding over a gaggle of ‘Children of Crake’ – innocent genetically engineered people living in a ruined world. Through his reflections, with learn about Jimmy and the world that was. We learn of the red-hot gene splicing industry, creating smart Pigoons, delicious Chickienobs, and adorable […]

Good old fashioned pop culture salutes

Villains' Vignettes Volume 1 by Drew Hayes

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Bingo 4: Hold Steady Drew Hayes has been one of very few authors who has been both reasonably consistent and prolific without getting dull; he’s also a favorite of mine, so for all those reasons, he counts as Holding Steady. What’s new is that Villains’ Vignettes Vol 1 is a story without a connecting plot building; the three tales are a bit long to be short stories, so maybe we’ll call them novelettes. The style somehow manages to be straightforward but still have snappy dialogue […]

So this important magical guy gets amnesia, saves a slave (who’d fit in at a Furry convention), and has a few adventures along the way to finding the truth about himself

TwoKinds by Thomas Fischbach

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I saw the graphic novel series TwoKinds by Thomas Fischbach on the shelves of my bookstore. For a long time I wondered, “Do I / Don’t I?”  I was only planning to read volume one, but I liked it enough to go on. But I haven’t gotten to it yet, as I saw that volumes three and four are due late August 2023. But volume 5 is out. Yes, this is a thing. Long story short, don’t worry, it is also a webcomic (but I […]



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