Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Sure, why not take your mortally wounded lover and shove her into an ancient machine of uncertain effectiveness? What could go wrong?”

Blood of the Chosen: Burningblade & Silvereye Book Two by Django Wexler

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Wexler continues writing excellent sci-fantasy.  I love the melding of energy swords and healing magics.  A highly, technically advanced civilization that has fallen.  Magic is held in the hands of a few, tech is tightly controlled and scrounged from remnants of the previous age.  Life is very different depending on where you live, within the Republic, in the splinter kingdoms, or outside on the fringes. Blood of the Chosen picks up immediately after the events of  Ashes of the Sun.  A potentially humanity ending calamity […]

Around the world redux. This time, plants!

Around the World in 80 Plants by Jonathan Drori, Illustrated by Lucille Clerc

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Back in 2019, I read Jonathan Drori’s Around the World in 80 Trees and was as shocked as anybody that I could truly love a book about trees. But love it I did, so much so that when I heard Drori had written a follow-up book about plants, I rushed to get my hands on a copy. Around the World in 80 Plants follows the same format as its forerunner: Walking roughly in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps, Drori takes a trip around the world, starting in […]

You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

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I remember hearing about this novel a few years ago and wanting to read it, then forgetting all about it until donttrustthe_bea reviewed it earlier this year. This winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize is set in contemporary South Korea, and through a plot involving a missing person, writer Kyung-Sook Shin examines a clash of generations and dreams dashed. Family is family whether in Korea or elsewhere, and the fact is, we don’t always understand our parents (and vice versa). Too late we regret […]

A wonderful introduction to the writing of Kate Canterbary

The Worst Guy by Kate Canterbary

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4.5 stars Sebastian Stremmel is a trauma surgeon at a large Boston hospital, rumoured to be the chief of staff’s pick for the next chief of surgery. He’s also known to be grumpy, rather antisocial, and a workaholic. Sara Shapiro is an introverted plastic surgeon working at the same hospital who forces herself to be cheerful and friendly in public to hide her own social anxiety and unease around others. Sebastian finds Sara annoyingly chirpy, she finds him unbelievably rude and arrogant. They try to […]

Overall good but appreciated the stories by characters that aren’t Harry Dresden in particular.

Brief Cases by Jim Butcher

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Last year I listened to the first Dresden Files short story collection, Side Jobs, to be able to listen to the excellent narration by James Marsters (on the recommendation of ardaigle!).  Marsters is a great narrator but he fell short when it came time for Karrin Murphy’s story at the end of the book.  For the next collection of short stories, Brief Cases, they brought on two female narrators, Cassandra Campbell and Julia Whelan for stories from Anastasia Luccio and Molly Carpenter’s POV.  No disrespect to […]

Kaiju fun and a great standalone from Scalzi

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

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The Kaiju Preservation Society is a fun romp and a refreshing reset of Scalzi, for me.  His most recent works, “The Interdependency Saga” (a trilogy), left me feeling ‘meh’.  My review for the second book had me questioning whether I was cooling on Scalzi.  I still have yet to read the third.  When Scalzi announced this book, I was intrigued by the name and that it would be a standalone novel.  The Kaiju Preservation Society was preordered, and I’m grateful I did because it provided much […]



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