Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“We’re both exiles, she’d thought, right then, and had hated herself for thinking it. She’d been gone a few months. She had no right to the name. She was home. She wasn’t, and she knew it. (There was no such place any longer.)”

A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2) by Arkady Martine

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What a great series, top to bottom. I don’t even want to talk about it. (Or, I want to talk about it for five hours straight.) I kind of already want to re-read. If you like science fiction, this is a must read. It’s so self-assured, so smart, so well put together, so full of heart and yet also full of thinking. It’s so hard to find an author who can stimulate both my thinking brain and my feeling brain, and Arkady Martine is a […]

A lot of characters to follow, three plots, and wondering if or when it will all make sense

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

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It took me way longer to really get into A Desolation Called Peace than it did A Memory Called Empire. Part of the problem in A Desolation Called Peace is that there are too many different groups and places that take almost ¾ of the novel to really come together. I get that that is a technique for suspense, but it doesn’t work terribly well here, especially when Mahit’s thread has so little to do with everything else which actually does eventually connect. It feels […]

An intriguing but ultimately disappointing take on aliens coming to Earth

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

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This was such a cool idea! Aliens land in the ocean outside Lagos, and basically start granting wishes to sea creatures. This swordfish wants to be enormous? Done. This eel thing wants to be able to fly? Done. Then the aliens come ashore and are basically like “Yo, earthlings, we’re here, we plan to stay, there’s nothing you can do about it, hi!” No nefarious plots, no interstellar war, no kidnapping humans for experiments. The main alien ambassador chooses three humans to be her representatives, […]

I will begrudgingly be grateful that I learned the word ‘pseudopodinously’

Preternatural by Margaret Wander Bonanno

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When an author who likes to do cheeky asides uses a big word and tells the reader “Look it up,” which is more insulting: when you DO know the word, or when you DON’T? I cogitated on that during the whole book, and couldn’t decide. I do know that when the cheeky asides tell you “Now pay attention here,” it is pretty much always insulting. This book was a clever idea, nearly drowned by an author who got too preoccupied with the idea of being […]

I did not know this was about space viruses when I started it

Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress

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I had never heard of Nancy Kress, but she showed up as one of the few female names on this list of 25 best hard science fiction novels my dad sent me. My library (which I miss so much!) didn’t have the specific one on the list, but had this one available. It’s fine, and weirdly about an impending global pandemic, but nothing super special. Marianne is a scientist, studying genetics and DNA and something called haplogroups. She discovers a new haplogroup, and all of […]

Definitely Something That Benefits from a Group Discussion

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

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I read this for a book club. It’s a very philosophical book, and I never would have read it on my own. I can’t even say I enjoyed it very much, and it’s the rare novel where am grateful I went to the screening of the 1970s movie version at the art cinema. I also didn’t exactly enjoy the movie but it helped me stay focused on the book when it would become pages of philosophy. Despite that or maybe because of that, it made […]



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