Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Don’t swim with the dolphins during a labor dispute. No matter how much they try to convince you otherwise.”

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

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I really enjoyed Starter Villain, and then I put it aside for a couple of weeks (*cough*months*cough*) because I had other reviews that need to be written sooner, and when I came back to write this review, I had a warm fuzzy feeling, but nothing of substance to say. That’s not the worst thing I can say about a book – that all I remember is a good feeling. So I reread Starter Villain, and that was not a chore. I enjoyed it again, though I […]

“If an old story is enough to scare people away, then the whole world should scare them.”

After Dark with Roxie Clark by Brooke Lauren Davis

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CBR 15 Bingo – Adulthood: This YA book is a coming-of-age story for Roxie and Skylar, who must grapple with the difficult themes of guilt and closure before they can move past a massive tragedy. A year after Roxie’s sister’s boyfriend is found brutally murdered on the outskirts of town, an unexpected discovery sends Skylar on a frenetic search for the killer, heedless of who might get hurt in the process. This is a fitting read for spooky season – a family curse? A ghost […]

It would technically be fiction, but the kind of fiction that was true in all the ways that mattered.

System Collapse by Martha Wells

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SecUnit is not ok. I am also not ok. System Collapse, the seventh in the Murderbot Diaries series is stressful. Amazing, but stressful as heck. You cannot read System Collapse if you haven’t read Network Effect. The action picks up not long after Network Effect ends. ART is still repairing its worm hole drive, the Preservation crew and the University crew are working together to create a charter that will give the colonists (formerly known as the Targets) control over their planet and their future. […]

The Ghost That Will Never Quit

The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear by Nat Segaloff

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CBR 15 Bingo – Picture This: This book is all about the visual medium of cinema and television, discussing the Exorcist franchise from many perspectives. The Exorcist is at first glance the story of a mother desperate to save her daughter from evils beyond her reckoning, but in the fifty years since it was first released it had gone on to become a beloved, long-running franchise rife with controversy. I have never actually seen The Exorcist. Of course I know the movie and how iconic it is, […]

You must run now, and—” she hesitates. “And?”“Keep running,”

Shadow Thief by Intisar Khanani

Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani

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A few years ago several Cannonballers were reading Intisar Khanani’s self published YA fantasy books. Khanani writes the kind of book that grabs you and doesn’t let go featuring teen girls who are chronically underestimated. Khanani is rereleasing her Sunbolt Chronicles, and I am brushing off my YA reading hat. I haven’t read YA since the pandemic started, and that’s no slight to the genre, it’s just where my head has been. Shadow Thief and Sunbolt are a great re-entry point. Hitomi is an immigrant […]

That Feeling When Your Dog Retrieves a Dismembered Leg

Flight Risk by Cherie Priest

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CBR 15 Bingo – North America: This book is set in rainy Seattle, Washington, and we see plenty of the splendor of its nature as well. Leda, a travel agent and part-time psychic, gets swept up in the case of a dual disappearance when a couple is reported missing in seemingly unrelated circumstances. This is the second book in The Booking Agents series, which follows Leda and a skeptical police detective, Grady, as they solve confounding crimes. I read the first book a few years […]



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