Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Unhappy Meal

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

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Imagine a world ravaged by diseased animals, where humanity collectively agrees to cull all animals and, in their place, breed humans for consumption. That is the terrifying premise at the centre of Tender is the Flesh, a dystopian novel by Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica (translated to English by Sarah Moses). This book disturbed me to my very core and motivated me to cancel my recent butcher-box delivery subscription. The novel describes, in great detail, the process of slaughtering humans for meat. Though never explicitly said, […]

A believable and scary postapocalyptic future

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

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In this post-apocalyptic novel, there is not single earth shattering apocalyptic event.  Instead, there is just a gradual breakdown of society brought about by climate change, corporate greed and social inequality (all interrelated anyway).    Lauren Olamina is a relatively privileged teenager living in a small walled enclave.  She’s privileged in that she has a home, her father still has a job with a salary, and she knows how to read and write.  This is not much, but compared to the thousands, or maybe millions […]

Not exactly Little Red Riding Hood

Big Bad Wolf by Suleikha Snyder

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Disclaimer! I got an ARC from NetGalley. That has in no way influenced my review.   In a dystopian alternate reality, where the 2016 election led to the USA becoming a tightly regulated surveillance state, pretty much at the same time as the existence of a number of supernatural beings were revealed, several big cities, including New York, are now a Sanctuary City for supernaturals. Joe Peluso, an ex-soldier turned werewolf through military experimentation, is in prison for murdering six bear shifters with ties to […]

Hold on to your butts (and your obelisks)

The Obelisk Gate (Broken Earth #2) by N.K. Jemisin

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Imagine me, standing up, doing a slow clap standing ovation. That is how I feel about this trilogy. It’s been a while since a series has gripped me so thoroughly, and this coming from someone who doesn’t ready a lot in the genre of epic fantasy science fiction. And I guess this book is all of these? But it also transcends definition in a lot of ways because it is SO MANY THINGS. And how does she do all of these things well? I DON’T […]

The reviews I forgot to post, part 1!

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

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Somehow I ended up reading three dystopian novels in a row. Maybe not the best choice during an actual pandemic.  Wilder Girls is set in an all-girls boarding school on an isolated island off the coast of Maine.  About a year and a half before the novel starts, something… happened.  A sort of disease that was probably already present on the island suddenly made an evolutionary jump from two species (an iris and a crab) to everything else, including people.  The disease, which they call […]

A Study in Literal ‘Othering’

The Wall by John Lanchester

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The Wall follows the exploits of a young Draftee, Kavanagh, as he does his time patrolling a literal Wall encasing his entire island nation (this name of which is never explicitly revealed). The Wall separates the ‘good’ people of Kavanagh’s homeland from the ‘Others’, sea-faring refugees who are desparately seeking to conquer The Wall and resettle in safe lands. A cataclysmic event (climate change? nuclear war?) has rendered most of the world uninhabitable and plunged most countries beneath the ever-rising sea. Kavanagh does not initially […]



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