Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

What if your worst enemy designed a videogame death trap for you and then placed you inside it? But he was also incompetent?

An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0, #3) by Scott Meyer

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First of all, this is one of the rare series that if you’re going to read it, you have to do the audio. You’re just missing something truly ineffable if you don’t. And I guess if you’re one of those people who can’t do audiobooks, then I don’t know what to tell you. I think I would have subtracted an entire star from all of these books without Luke Daniels’ performance. He brings a certain majesty of attitude and snarkiness, to these very silly stories. […]

Into the OASIS

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I actually first read this book, Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, a couple of years ago. And, at that time, I only gave it four stars.  I thought it was good, and sometimes even great, but uneven. Although I was familiar with a lot of the RPG gaming references and 80s movie references, the arcade and video game references were, for the most part, completely over my head. And the references to Japanese cartoon and robots were on a different planet. So, I didn’t […]

I had so much fun listening to this. Sometimes you just need nerd fluff.

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Martin Banks is a jackass. That’s all I kept thinking during the first half or so of this book. To be clear, my thinking the main character was a jackass in no way hindered my enjoyment of the story. In fact, I’m fairly certain the book encouraged that opinion. See, one day Martin is sitting at home being lazy, hacking websites just for the fun of it (he sees himself as a benevolent hacker, because he doesn’t cause any harm–he just likes doing it) when […]

I’m on board until someone mentions Zubaz pants.

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In a vacuum, I think this book gets four stars. In a vacuum, I think the general opinion for the book is that it’s an engaging story with fairly likable characters that pays homage to numerous classic and iconic science fiction stories from past decades: from Ender’s Game to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In a vacuum. But this book doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In the rich and dense atmosphere of Earth, this is the much anticipated follow-up to Ready Player One, which […]

Yes, it’s not Ready Player One. Let’s all move on.

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Okay, let’s get this out of the way: If you’re looking to recreate the singular reading experience you had with Ready Player One, to recapture that same magical feeling of wonder and awesomeness, you’re going to be disappointed with this book. Just, straight up. Armada is not RPO. They have similarities, but there also a lot of differences, and those differences are going to cause a lot of people not to like this one very much. Them’s just the facts. RPO, as far as I’m concerned, […]



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