Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Novella Round Up – Expanding Urban Fantasy universes

How Green This Land, How Blue this Sea by Mira Grant

Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus by Mira Grant

Sanctuary by Ilona Andrews

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I read these novellas at various points this year and figured at this point, it might just be easiest to do a quick post covering all 3 to get them done. The first two are part of the same series. So Green This Land, So Blue This Sea – 3 stars The one follows one of the side characters from Shawn and George’s original blog as he visits some of their network in Australia to write a news story about Australia from an outsider’s perspective. […]

Invading plants from outer space

Overgrowth by Mira Grant

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Seanan McGuire is an incredibly prolific writer – I tend to prefer the things she publishes under Seanan McGuire but I still check out her Mira Grant work. Under that pen name, I like her Newsflesh series (zombies) and her mermaid novellas most. This novel is my least favorite thing I have ever read by Seanan McGuire. I wasn’t sure about the premise even going in but I figured Grant/McGuire would have an interesting take. It started strong, beginning with the horror of a little girl’s […]

And this is how the end begins

Countdown by Mira Grant

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This is one of many novellas that Mira Grant (also known as Seanan McGuire) has written to flesh out her Newsflesh trilogy – or her version of a zombie apocalypse. As a result, I would definitely not recommend this as the entry point even though this is chronologically first and goes back to the very beginning, explaining the circumstances that led to the beginning of The Rising. She had already introduced these ideas in the main trilogy but here goes into the details, introduces the […]

In the Shadow of Spindrift House

In the Shadow of Spindrift House by Mira Grant

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Seanan Maguire tends to write her most experimental stuff as Mira Grant. It just so happens that these are my favorites of her books (notable exception: the Every Heart a Doorway series). In the Shadow of Spindrift House is Lovecraftian to an extreme degree, blending elements of Shadow Over Innsmouth and the Rats in the Walls (minus of course the most racist name for a cat ever ashamedly put to pen) to produce familiar themes, blended with the fun of Scooby Doo and the threat […]

Kingdom of Needle and Bone- THAT’S the Mira Grant I know and love!

Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant

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We live in an age of wonders. Modern medicine has conquered or contained many of the diseases that used to carry children away before their time, reducing mortality and improving health. Vaccination and treatment are widely available, not held in reserve for the chosen few. There are still monsters left to fight, but the old ones, the simple ones, trouble us no more. Or so we thought. For with the reduction in danger comes the erosion of memory, as pandemics fade from memory into story […]

Symbiont- Eh?

Symbiont by Mira Grant

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The SymboGen-designed tapeworms were created to relieve humanity of disease and sickness. But the implants in the majority of the world’s population began attacking their hosts, turning them into a ravenous horde. Now those who do not appear to be afflicted are being gathered for quarantine as panic spreads, but Sal and her companions must discover how the tapeworms are taking over their hosts, what their eventual goal is, and how they can be stopped. This was….okay I guess? Sal is being held captive by […]



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