Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Ladies do buddy cop stuff in early 20th century steampunk Egypt

A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark

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To be clear from the get-go, I hope A Master of Djinn is the first of a series. It’s got an interesting world, a twist of the classic steampunk which takes the perspective of the Egyptians not the English with a strong reliance of the local folklore/mythology (as opposed to the European traditions), it’s got some interesting characters, like Agent Fatma a queer lady Agent of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, Siti her capricious lover, and Agent Hadia rookie partner. Some of […]

OMG I just got it, she’s stuck on the Q train like the QUEER train is that it???

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

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It’s not THAT hard, I saw “new book from the author of Red, White & Royal Blue” and immediately put it on hold. And then proceeded to haunt all my libraries until one decided to buy it. To get the obvious bits out of the way: do I like this as much as I liked RW&RB? I can’t really remember, but I think perhaps not quite as much. From what I remember, at least, RW&RB might have a number of fantastical elements (our president is a Texas Democrat […]

Happy Pride from Malaysia!

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

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Happy Pride! Started off the month with this book, which features a trope that we well know–the disaffected millennial (…zillenial? ugh I’m getting OLD) who doesn’t know what they want to do. Except this time…it’s a gay Malaysian woman who’s recently graduated from Hahvard and moving back to Malaysia with her parents?? Already I am 100% more on board. I was going to say that Cho writes with a surety that’s impressive for a debut novel, but then I checked myself (and her profile) and […]

“These scratches are a history. They tell a story.”

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

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Linus Baker is a cog in a bureaucratic machine. He is a case worker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, or DICOMY. He is average in nearly every way: average build, average house, average desk job. Everything in his life is routine from his bus ride to work, to grinning and bearing it when he has to put up with his boss on a power-trip or his neighbor butting her way into his life, to the detailed reports he completes for all of […]

Two Gaming Nerds Go on a Road Trip and….

Conventionally Yours by Annabeth Albert

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I’m not sure how Conventionally Yours ended up on my radar since I’m not a reader of romance novels generally speaking. Basically, it’s a queer romance with a twist on the standard enemies to lovers plot, namely the setting is serious card gaming and convention. On the one side, there’s Conrad the good-looking friendly guy who seems to have the perfect social life and image, but is actually dealing with major issues in his life. On the other side, there’s Alden, the seemingly uptight, prissy, […]

Finally getting around to reading this–it’s not nearly as difficult as I thought!

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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CW: drunk driving What is this book not? I think it might be more helpful to frame what I did like that way. It’s not #ownvoices, a few times over–Reid (Jenkins Reid?) is a white, straight author (who, by her own admission, is not always very feminine presenting) writing about biracial, queer characters. I didn’t check midway through, but there were parts–I’m thinking of a passage where Monique was discussing her to her biracial identity, very near the start of the story, that rung a bit…odd, […]



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