Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When someone is that calm in a crisis, either they don’t know what’s happening, or you don’t.

The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley

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Suffering doesn’t make people good or noble. A little bit gives them perspective. A lot turns them cruel, and too much – you get a murder or a marvel, and neither of those are really people any more. ― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus His duty was hurting him, and this is the medicine, and the only reason you think that’s unreasonable is that your duty has hurt you much more, there never was medicine for you, and you don’t see why other people […]

There was joy for having arrived, and sorrow for having left, and no way to even pretend this was home.

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley

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It’s called the illusory truth effect. If you hear something often enough, for long enough, you’ll believe it. Even if you originally knew that the information was false. ― Natasha Pulley, The Mars House It made January angry too, when people declared that giving someone poor some basic human consideration was the same as being Stalin. It was the kind of argument deployed by people who were saving up for their own private golf course. ― Natasha Pulley, The Mars House CBR17 Bingo: Migrant We […]

Mystery, Political Intrigue, Science Fiction, and Quiet Romance

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley

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January Stirling is a ballet dancer in a future England, forced to flee Earth as a climate refugee when his city – and seemingly much of Britain – becomes submerged in a massive flood. Climate refugees who manage to get off-planet are sent to Tharsis, the only city on a terraformed Mars, where their strength – unaffected by the weaker gravity and thinner atmosphere of Mars – causes them to be a major threat to the naturalized Martians. Earthstrongers, as they are called, are required […]

Grab bag!

Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshaw

The Half-Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

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Long Live the Pumpkin Queen – Shea Ernshaw Shortly after her wedding to Jack Skellington, Sally is overwhelmed by her new duties as Pumpkin Queen. Seeking to find solace she retreats to the grove of doors where she stumbles across a broken door hidden in the bramble. She opens it and sees nothing, but neglects to close the door inadvertently releasing the Sandman. Soon all of Halloween Town is asleep except for Sally. Unable to wake her friends, Sally looks for help in the other […]

I don’t know how a novel with a mechanical octopus could go so wrong

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

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CBR 14 BINGO: Time, because there is a watch on the cover, and a watch in the title, and it deals with the way a person’s possible futures can shift through time Note: I’ve included spoilers to explain what it was that I didn’t like about this novel. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street has all the ingredients required to create something I should love: interesting characters, a non-linear interpretation of time, steampunk-esque mechanics, a beautiful cover, a dash of feminism, and an anthropomorphic clockwork octopus. […]

I have crossed oceans of time to find you.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

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Joe Tournier is an amnesiac living in the French colony of England in 1898. His first memory is of stepping off a train platform in London after arriving from Glasgow with no memory of who he is. He has recurring and fleeting memories of a woman named Madeline, a lighthouse, a man on a beach, and a sense that something is wrong. He is taken to an asylum and a doctor diagnoses him with a rare form of epilepsy, one that has afflicted hundreds of […]



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