Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Poppy War (Not Your Parent’s Light Fantasy Escapism)

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

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The Poppy War is a hard book to say you recommend. It’s well written, for sure. But the last few chapters are, without giving anything away, excruciating. I had been warned this was the case, but yet I still found myself staying up one night, and reading the final section with increasing horror. Reader, be warned, this is a wonderfully written book, with one hell of a trigger warning. The start of the book is classic enough. Rin is a poor orphan girl from the […]

Opportunity walks into a bar

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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I so loved Station Eleven when I read it earlier this year that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Emily St. John Mandel’s latest novel. I wasn’t disappointed; yet, The Glass Hotel is so like and at the same time so unlike Mandel’s previous novel that I’m not sure where to begin. While I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as Station Eleven, I’m giving it 5 stars because (once again) the writing is so damn beautiful that it transports me. […]

“All whiteboards are magical.”

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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From Goodreads: Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the […]

A murder mystery in the heart of a space opera

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

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I brought this book home in March 2019.  It was Mysterious Galaxy’s featured speculative fiction hardcover pick for the month.  Over the past year this book kept getting recommended; by fellow Cannonballers, articles, and it is nominated for a Hugo award.  That nomination finally pushed A Memory Called Empire to the top of my TBR. In a normal timeline, I would have torn through this book in a matter of days.  Instead it took a few weeks.  This book pushed all the right buttons; excellent sci-fi world […]

David Sedaris might finally be growing on me

Theft by Finding, Diaries 1977-2002 by David Sedaris

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I have a confession to make: I’m not much of a David Sedaris fan. I vehemently disliked Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. I think I read Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls and thought it was ok, but since I can’t remember a single essay or joke, I don’t think that qualifies me as much of a fan. This lack of enthusiasm is unsettling to me, because I am very white, and David Sedaris is #25 on the  Stuff White People Like blog, the bible of all things I’m […]

It ends at the beginning but doesn’t add up

Season of Storms: A Novel of the Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski

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This final Witcher novel was written over 10 years after The Lady of the Lake, the finale of the Witcher series, apparently because the Witcher video games had taken off and Sapkowski figured he could milk that cash cow one more time. Season of Storms is actually set before the rest of the series, which fits in with Sapkowski’s predilection for out of whack time lines. I can’t say that it really adds much to the series overall. There’s plenty of violence, treachery and gore, […]



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