Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Mystery and murder and mayhem IN SPACE

Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre

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#CBR12 Bingo: Book Club (this was a pick in my fantasy/sci-fi book club a few months back) Offical book description: Hundreds of miles above Earth, the space station Ciudad de Cielo – The City in the Sky – is a beacon of hope for humanity’s expansion into the stars. But not everyone aboard shares such noble ideals.   Bootlegging, booze, and prostitution form a lucrative underground economy for rival gangs, which the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye to until a disassembled corpse is […]

Sadly, a rather disappointing follow-up to two very good books

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

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#CBR12 Bingo: UnCannon (YA fantasy, written by a woman, about dark-skinned heroine, with several queer characters as supporting cast) Official book description: Eight years have passed since the young Princess Bitterblue, and her country were saved from the vicious King Leck. Now Bitterblue is the queen of Monsea, and her land is at peace.   But the influence of her father, a violent psychopath with mind-altering abilities, lives on. Her advisers, who have run the country on her behalf since Leck’s death, believe in a forward-thinking […]

Bad Men

Quarry by Max Allan Collins

I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad by Baynard Woods & Brandon Sodeberg

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I read two books over the weekend about bad men. One fiction, one non-fiction. Both good in their own respective ways. Quarry 4 stars This month’s Hard Case Crime tale was one I had actually been avoiding for a while. I find Max Allan Collins to be insufferable. In interviews I’ve read with him, he seems to be the kind of blowhard-ish know-it-all I don’t care for in the crime community. His verbal racism at the Shamus Awards was obnoxious. Really, how hard is it to […]

The Blood of the Lamb

Once You Go This Far by Kristen Lepionka

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Read as part of cbr12bingo: Gateway. I frequently recommend Kristen Lepionka’s work to budding mystery fans, especially ones looking for an LGBTQIA+ author and/or protagonist. I don’t know how long Kristen Lepionka plans to continue with this series. I believe her next book is going to be a standalone separate from Roxane’s character (and perhaps universe?). I think she’s of the modern age sort of writer that unless you really catch bestselling fire with a series (a la Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch), there comes a […]

Please Send Help

The Next to Die by Sophie Hannah

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Bingo: Reader’s Choice, replacing the Roaring 20s square Everyone makes mistakes, but I now have to spend my Sunday night grappling with the fact that I chose to read this book of my own free will. I am not okay. It seems like the general consensus is that Sophie Hannah’s first few Spilling CID mysteries were okay–at least worth reading if you like that sort of thing. I certainly did–I remember tearing through the first three or four. I kept reading after that, even with […]

Much darker than I remembered

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

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Katsa lives in a series of kingdoms where a small percentage of the populations have a unique ability or grace. These people are known as Gracelings, and the abilities can be benign and useful, like being extremely skilled at baking, cooking, sewing, or in one case, being able to smell exactly what the person in question wants to eat or drink. They can also be dangerous, like Katsa’s extreme fighting ability, which was discovered when she accidentally killed someone in self-defense when she was only […]



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