Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An intensely human space story

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

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[Read as an audiobook from the public library] Well, we’re straight out of Murderbot and right into some of the most serious big person pants sci-fi I’ve read since I started reading Leviathan Wakes about a hundred years ago. Bite-sized fun time space western this is not. It was some work, and it took some time, but the rewards are definitely ample. Ancillary Justice is on its face a sprawling space opera spanning a thousand years, with weird names and strange planets and ridiculously nuanced cultural […]

Go for launch

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

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  [Read as an audiobook from the public library] This has been on my to-read list for a while, but it’s always checked out when I’m in the mood to read it. But this time, I said to myself, “Duh, get the audiobook.” And so I did. This is such a quick, enjoyable read. The story doesn’t really break any new ground, and the plot beats are fairly predictable, but for all that it’s still fun and a well-built world that I don’t mind spending […]

How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

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I did it! I finished the trilogy!!! It feels a little weird to be proud, I mean, I’ve read a trilogy before, but because I started this journey with an arched eyebrow toward fantasy I feel like I have come out on the other side as a little different, a true fantasy fan. And that credit goes to the awe-inspiring Jemisin. I went down a bit of an internet rabbithole reading about her because she is so cool and smart and found an early AMA […]

Run, don’t walk, to read this trilogy!

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, 1) by N.K. Jemisin

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And a happy new Cannonball year unto you! It’s my first review of the new year, and as last year my full cannonball slipped through my fingertips I’m hopeful that this is the year…of redemption. But like, also, this is the year of realizing that it’s just a number and as long as I’m reading I’m a winner. Onto my first review! I had already heard of N.K. Jemisin from LeVar Burton Reads, the podcast wherein the ever delightful LeVar Burton reads short stories. He […]

The Best of the Trilogy

The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin

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  While the whole Broken Earth series was incredibly deserving of the Hugo award, the Stone Sky, in particular, was a feat of literary perfection (at least in my opinion). As I’ve said with both of Jemisin’s previous novels, her ability to successfully deploy second person POV continued to astound me in this last chapter of her epic, and while hints are given in book two of who this narrative voice is, it all comes roaring to the surface in book three. As with any trilogy, […]

What It Is to Be Human

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

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I’m going to assume that the reader of this review has already read the first two books in Chambers’ Wayfarer series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit). While there’s nothing specifically barring you from starting with this book, you’ll get a much better idea of the larger world if you start at the beginning. Well, I did it. I finished the series, despite really not wanting to. I hear that a new book is possibly on the way […]



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