Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

thoughtful villains to start the year off right

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

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Starting the year off right by a) fudging the read date of my first few books and b) writing reviews soon after finishing them!!! Let’s see how long this lasts this year. Many recommendations for this book from the Cannonball community, and really this should have been an easy one to pick up given how enjoyable The Kaiju Preservation Society (just tried typing “Kaiju Appreciation” and didn’t find anything) was. I’d characterize Scalzi as a unique voice amongst those writing today–you can really tell the […]

Much lizard, so destruction

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

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The Kaiju Preservation Society is about a masters graduate who loses his job and falls into doing menial labour (via a loosely-rebranded Uber Eats stand in) when the pandemic hits.  His job brings him back into the orbit of an old friend from college, who hits him up with the mysterious job opportunity of a lifetime. After preparing his will and getting shot full of vaccines, he’s whisked away to a world of nightmares to, in his words, ‘life heavy things’.  It turns out he’s […]

Ian Flemming Goes Cozy and Slightly Comedic

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

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I don’t know how John Scalzi would feel about his work being labeled “cozy” but that’s basically what Starter Villain is, a cozy adventure riffing in Scalzi fashion this time on the James Bond spy thriller. If you’ve read any of Scalzi’s more recent work, especially The Kaiju Preservation Society, Starter Villain will be kind of familiar. Take a down on his luck smarter than he might initially appear regular person, a former journalist now substitute teacher named Charlie, and throw him into an improbably […]

Of course cats are sentient and working with villains

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

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CBR15 Bingo: Adulthood – Charlie struggles with many of the downsides to adulthood, loans, parental loss, divorce, and barely scrapping by.  Bingo #3! History (replaced with Nostalgia) to Europe. John Scalzi is almost an auto buy for  our household.  However, the most recently trilogy had us feeling a little cold.  Then last year’s The Kaiju Preservation Society was a spectacular showcase of what makes Scalzi such a fun writer.  Based on The Kaiju Preservation Society I was already looking forward to my preorder of Scalzi’s newest […]

“Don’t swim with the dolphins during a labor dispute. No matter how much they try to convince you otherwise.”

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

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I really enjoyed Starter Villain, and then I put it aside for a couple of weeks (*cough*months*cough*) because I had other reviews that need to be written sooner, and when I came back to write this review, I had a warm fuzzy feeling, but nothing of substance to say. That’s not the worst thing I can say about a book – that all I remember is a good feeling. So I reread Starter Villain, and that was not a chore. I enjoyed it again, though I […]

Watch This Space #3: Electric Space Boogaloo

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

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The Last Emperox completes The Interdependency trilogy – a sprawling space opera that examines the political and scientific ramifications when the ‘flow stream’ that connects the various hubs of humanity across the universe start to fail. Book 1 introduced us to the fledgling Emperox Grayland II of the noble Wu family, who has the misfortune of taking the title over right as The Interdependency begins to unravel. We also met: the flow scientist, Marce, who comes bearing the bad news about the collapsing flow stream; […]



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