Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Which World is Really the Game?

Noble Roots by Drew Hayes

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One of my least favorite fantasy adventure tropes is the tournament arc; often there’s virtually no plot, no character development, just a lot of fights with miraculous and/or unexpected power-ups. About half of Drew Haye’s Noble Roots, books 5 of the Spells, Swords, & Stealth series, goes here. I suppose it was kind of inevitable that this happen since the series is based on two premises: what happens when you focus on the NPCs in a D&D-style game and their lives when they aren’t interacting […]

One flighty cat

Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space (This Is a Reissue of a Previous Edition) by Dominic Walliman

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Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space (This Is a Reissue of a Previous Edition) has much in the way of scientific facts which are seriously presented but are paired with very cartoon illustrations.  The text in Dominic Walliman’s book is long, dense, and not for all readers. The serious tone of the wording would work for a more serious reader/learner, but the cartoon art might turn them off. Of course, the student might be drawn to the cartoons and that will keep their attention with […]

I read this book back in February, sorry for the rather lacklustre review

Hunt the Stars by Jessie Mihalik

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Hello, welcome back to Malin reviews things she read several months ago, in this case – FIVE whole months. Let’s start off with the official book description: Octavia Zarola would do anything to keep her tiny, close-knit bounty hunting crew together—even if it means accepting a job from Torran Fletcher, a ruthless former general and her sworn enemy. When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can’t refuse—no […]

The President has an Academy Award and Who’s the Prime Minister of England?

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

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So it turns out that you can have a decent Laundry Files novel without Bob Howard as central figure; The Labyrinth Index follows Bob’s colleague Mhari Murphy who was turned into a vampire in a previous novel (one I haven’t read) thanks to a computer program/advanced math/parasite infection thing. It turns out that England is now under the control of new Prime Minister N’yar Lat-Hotep, although he doesn’t use that name with the general public. Mhari though being formerly of the Laundry which now goes […]

Let’s Save the Endangered Walking Nuclear Dinosaurs

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

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I have to admit, I didn’t especially enjoy the only other novel by John Scalzi that I read (Redshirts) so I was hesitant about The Kaiju Preservation Society, but the premise was just too good to not at least give it a chance. The basic gist is that there are parallel worlds to our own Earth, and one them is home to kaiju, basically nuclear powered dinosaurs the size of mountains; once when one accidentally got through the barrier between worlds, someone who saw it […]

More Than a Female James Bond

The Night of Morningstar by Peter O'Donnell

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This is a recreational reread for me. I love the pulp novels of Peter O’Donnell and his exciting secret agent, Modesty Blaise, and reread the 13 novels every couple years. Modesty, in this novel, works with her equally competent partner, Willie Garvin, to combat a worldwide organization attempting to take over the world. In the other books, her beginnings as the head of a European crime syndicate is mentioned, but in this story, we watch her early retirement as she and Willie have decided crime […]



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