Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Wake: to transition from sleep; a gathering before the funeral, the track left by a moving body

The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

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2022 continues to be the reading year of grief and trauma, which is no surprise giving everything that has been going on in the world for, well, a really long time. I can see how the generational trauma of colonialism has informed this universe. As I read, it became clear that Aliette de Bodard was playing with the word ‘wake’ in the title, The Red Scholar’s Wake. Wake: to transition from sleep; a gathering before the funeral, the track left by a moving body. Huân, […]

I love watching an author grow

Calling the Shots by Kelly Farmer

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Kelly Farmer’s Calling the Shots is a solidly entertaining and emotional contemporary sapphic romance. This is the third in her On the Ice series about professional women’s hockey players. She’s gotten stronger and more confident with each book. The characters are more comfortably layered and complex and the push/pull of Regan and Tierney relationship flows easily, even the third act break-up. Regan Lane has gone from being a professional women’s hockey megastar, to an assistant coach for a middling professional men’s hockey team. She has […]

Can’t leave justice up to God.

Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse

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It took me a minute to wrap my head around Rebecca Roanhorse’s fantasy western novella, Tread of Angels. Some part of my brain is still immersed in her Between Earth and Sky series so I was a bit resistant to the Western town setting. But, as always, Roanhorse delivers a gripping story. Celeste Semyaza and her sister, Mariel, are half-Fallen (their mother was descended from the Fallen Angels) in the mining town of Goetia. Celest can pass as an Elect, and deals cards at Eden. […]

You’re my beloved skitstövel (sh*t boot).

Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade

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  Ship Wrecked starts with orgasms and then becomes a slow burn. Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert series has centered around a Game of Thrones-esque tv series called Gods of the Gates. In Spoiler Alert and All the Feels, we’ve seen Maria and Peter, two of the actors, flirt and banter in cast interviews and group chats. I try not to develop expectations about how a book is going to go, but even so, I was not expecting Peter and Maria’s journey to relationship. There’s one particular moment […]

Paradise Lost

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk

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Even Though I Knew the End is a gorgeous, intense, tight rope 3 1/2 hour listen. Set in a slightly alternate, puritanical 1930s or 40s Chicago, C.L. Polk weaves together magic, gritty noir, Heaven, Hell, love, and grief. It’s both spare and lush with just enough detail to give the world texture and context. Women are second class citizens and being queer is dangerous. Helen Brandt sold her soul ten years ago and her payment is about to come due. She has worked as a […]

I might not know what you are feeling. But I know grief.

The Alchemy of Sorrow by Sarah Chorn, Virginia McClain

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The Alchemy of Sorrow: A Fantasy & Sci-fi Anthology of Grief and Hope was a gamble because I was only familiar with one author, Intisar Khanani. I like anthologies because I get to explore authors I haven’t read before in short bites. I love Khanani enough that I knew her story would be worth the whole anthology.  I did love her “Twice-Domesticated Dragons,” and I also loved several of the others stories as well. I read a lot of advance reader copies, which means that […]



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