Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Is that your idea of how men advance?

Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold

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I love this series and this book clearly marks a different era of the series. In the previous novel, Memory, Miles’s career as a covert military admiral reporting back to his home planet’s imperial security agency comes to an end. He has taken up the post of imperial auditor, an investigative role similar to an inspector general or head of a fact-finding mission with blanket authority. That temporary post led to a new ImpSec head and a permanent posting as auditor. So now we begin […]

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

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This is a reread of this book, which I first read about 5 or 6 years ago. This is also me listening to the audiobook read by Grover Gardner, whom I love, but is an acquired taste. He’s the voice of the Vorkosigans for me now. Also, this was inspired by reading Jo Walton’s rereviews of the books in What Makes this book so great? And like with her book, you should expect a lot of these. Spoilers. The last book previous to this one […]

I love you dearly but if I’m going to be throwing up, I’d really rather be at home.

Winterfair Gifts by Lois McMaster Bujold

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown

Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon

Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibrain

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain

Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis

Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky

Start Now! by Chelsea Clinton

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Winterfair Gifts – 3/5 Stars This is a reread from a few years ago when I read all of the Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold. I also started rereading them last year and got through about half before I stopped short, but I bet this will get me started started again. This book also starts out or sets of to tell the story through an alternate perspective from the other books. So far we’ve had Miles being the lead protagonist in the most […]

Lois Pulled a Bait-and-Switch on Me

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  So, I am more than familiar with LMB’s two main series – The Vorkosigan Saga (Which is mostly a space opera), and her books set in the world of the Five Gods. (Which are a sort of semi-medieval fantasy.) What I’ve been slow to pick up though is her Sharing Knife series. Mostly because they are almost impossible to find in print! I’ve never stumbled on these books in a bookshop and had to go searching really hard across libraries to find a hard […]

New Vorkosigan Novella

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I don’t think Lois McMaster Bujold has released a full-length novel since 2016’s Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, which I sort of read as a capstone to the Vorkosigan series. Since then, she seems to have been spending her time experimenting with self-publishing novellas. While I’ve found those to be mostly very good, they’ve all been set in the World of the Five Gods. So I’m really pleasantly surprised to see that she’s decided to duck back into the Vorkosigan universe after all! The […]

Unpretentious, brilliant, engaging sci-fi.

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Two books into the Vorkosigan Saga, and I’m increasingly flabbergasted that it took me so long to read not only this series, but Bujold in general. These books are so competently written, and I want that understatement to be interpreted as laconic reverence, and not as an underhanded jab. The writing is uncomplicated and efficient, and is a real testament to the power of honestly good storytelling. A lot of sins can be forgiven by covering them in flowery, lyrical, and highly figurative prose. Bujold’s […]



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