Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Trust no one

The Ascent to Godhood by JY Yang

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Cbr11bingo Rainbow Flag, Bingo #6 From About the Author: JY Yang is the author of the Tensorate series…. A finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, they are also a lapsed journalist, a former practicing scientist, and a master of hermitry. They are a queer, non-binary, postcolonial, intersectional feminist, and have more than two dozen pieces of short fiction published. They live in Singapore and have an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. JY Yang’s fourth novel in the […]

“We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts”

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

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The Little Friend is not a mystery, despite what the description might lead you to believe. If it falls into any category it would be a coming-of-age story. Harriet Cleve Dufresne, a precocious twelve year old girl takes it upon herself to solve the murder of her older brother Robin, whom she has never met but whose death casts a pall over both her family and the small town she lives in. What begins as an adventure out of one of the many books Harriet […]

“All the innocent crime seemed alright at the time”

The Trial of Lizzy Borden by Cara Robertson

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  I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The Trial of Lizzie Borden is thoroughly researched and Cara Robertson’s writing is clear and moves the narrative along quickly. But it turns out that without the wild speculation that goes along with the Borden case, I really don’t find the story of Lizzie Borden all that interesting. She seems like an upper class white lady who wanted more money than her father would allow her and resented her stepmother’s very presence and […]

Sometimes the ones we call our heroes are the greatest monsters of all

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

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cbr11bingo Cannonballer Says/Bingo #4 & 5 I think this book has been reviewed by a few Cannonballers, most recently by TeresaElectro. It’s the introductory novel to what is going to be a fantasy series centered on the Navajo or Diné who have survived an apocalyptic event known as the “Big Water.” Rebecca Roanhorse, who is Indigenous American, has won Hugo and Nebula Awards, among others, for her sci-fi/speculative fiction. Trail of Lightning was nominated for a 2019 Hugo in the best novel category. It features […]

“For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing”

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

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This the best historical non-fiction I’ve read in awhile. It might be the best book I’ll read this year. Patrick Radden Keefe takes a subject as serpentine and fraught with strong emotions as The Troubles in Ireland and presents it in a clear concise that is powerful but never melodramatic. He uses the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten who was pulled from her apartment by masked men in 1972 and never seen again until her body was discovered in […]

The spotted custard was the kind of place where exceptions were made, because everyone was strange and exceptional.

Reticence by Gail Carriger

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CBR BINGO: Love This I have been a huge Gail Carriger fan now for a decade. Yep. That’s when she started rolling out her “Parasol Protectorate” series. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE those books and pretty much adore the “Custard Protocol” series (of which this book is the last of). Sassy, witty, stylish romps served with the perfect cup of tea. This is the 13th book (plus a handful of novellas and short stories) in Carriger’s alternate Victorian London full of vampires, meta and pretnaturals, were-younameits, […]



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