Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Infinity War – But Even Better

Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone

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Earlier this year, I reviewed Dead Country, a newer installment in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence. Dead Country was an unusual entry in the series with its simpler parred back narrative and more personal focus— until we hit the end of course. That’s when a then-low lying series-spanning threat suddenly decided to make itself known. This leads us to Wicked Problems, which deals with the massive fallout. Tara had previously returned to Edgemont to deal with the aftermath of her father’s death, and while there, had […]

Something Skittering Just Out Of Frame

Dead Country by Max Gladstone

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Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence series is one of my favorite examples of fantasy world building. Gladstone took the core idea of ‘what if soul-stuff could be traded?’ and built a magical system—known as The Craft—out of it. He then expanded further and asked ‘So what if a world’s sole currency is well, the soul? What would this mean for the financial system? What kind of corporate world would develop around this? Imagine a metropolis or two arising out of this system? How would they operate?’ […]

Skillful Language, Elusive Impact

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

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You can read this book quickly, but don’t. Take your time. This book calls for attention. There is so much wordplay, sometimes intricate and subtle, which calls for re-reading sentences or paragraphs. I’m sure that I missed quite a bit both because of the depth of wordplay and because I only have so much patience, but the authors are just so skillful in their use of language (e.g., “Who’s infecting whom? We know from our hoarse Trojans, in my time”). The novella follows Red and […]

Twitter Win Fizzles

This is How You Lost the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

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Twitter was kind of saved from doom recently by a guy loudly and proudly promoting his favorite new book, and encouraging others to do the same. I approve of this behavior. I was with Bigolas Dickolas (a Monty Python reference, I hope) in his enthusiasm for about the first half of This is How You Lose the Time War, but then it lost me. The problem for me is that there is not enough world and character building to hold interest and keep the story […]

“I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. Listen to me. I am your echo. I would rather break the world than lose you.”

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

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Cannonball Read Bingo Square: Recommended I’m always eager for a good recommendation, and my friend Mindi gave me this one. She is one of my very best pals, but our book tastes do not often align, in fact, we are predictably unpredictable in giving each other solid recs. We’ve joked about needing to catalog our reads and likes to find the determining factors to create a Venn diagram of where our tastes comingle because it’s that ineffable. So far, of books we have both read, […]

Wow am I glad I picked this up again after abandoning it!

This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone

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I couldn’t get through this book the first time through, and abandoned it. This time it seemed so easy to get through–not sure what happened. More patience? I’ve read a lot more since then, and so find confusing plot threads easier to stick with (helllo Gideon the Ninth and then “hold my coffee” Harrow the Ninth). I also think the whole conceit of “leaving messages for one another” is cute and all, but once we move past (?) (ha) that to the more plot-y parts of the book […]



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