Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Rights of Women and Machines

The Haunting of Tramcar 015 by P. Djeli Clark

by Leave a Comment

Bingo 14: Machinery The Haunting of Tramcar 015 takes place in the same world as many of the author’s other works, a steampunk alternative history version of Cairo. The titular tramcar is a major part of the setting, the plot, and we even get some attention to the technical specs on how the tech is supposed to work; thus I would argue this novella/novelette qualifies for the technology focus square. The other reason for the label is that there’s a pretty detailed discussion of whether […]

When I’m with him, anything can be true.

Big Boy by Ruthie Knox

by 1 Comment

Ruthie Knox’s Big Boy is an escape. Professor Amanda “Mandy” Sharp needs an escape. She suddenly became a single parent when her sister died, leaving behind a baby boy. Between her grief, new (not well paying) teaching job, and all consuming parental responsibilities, she’s lost herself. For an outlet she goes to a dating website and finds a man with 8 different dating profiles. That’s when I found him. Viscount Curzon. In his profile picture, he wore a cravat and a monocle. In another one, […]

The premise is the only redeeming feature and even that’s somewhat derivative

The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen

by 1 Comment

Bingo 12: Free I’m going to be up front about this: if this hadn’t been a free download from the Tor.com book club, I’d have been annoyed to have spent any money on it. The story is predictable, and the plot is both mostly lacking and also incomplete. I am reminded in a way of the Goosebumps series; I never really got into that as a kid in part because of how the endings were often not entirely endings. Same problem here. The Infinite Noise […]

To what extent can we forgive an ending?

The Secret Talker by Geling Yan

by Leave a Comment

Hongmei has a secret admirer. Secret stalker might actually be a more apt descriptor. She receives emails from a mystery person recounting her day, what she wore, how she acted, who she was with, everything about her current life. Rather than share these emails with her husband, Glen, a well respected English professor, she keeps them secret and engages in a correspondence with this mystery person, this secret talker. She ends up sharing with this secret talker things she has never shared with anyone: her […]

dreams fill in where memories fail

Space Invaders by Nona Fernández, Natasha Wimmer

by Leave a Comment

If you too are seeking respite from this surprisingly hot Saturday, I whole-heartedly recommend spending an hour curled up in front of a fan while reading Space Invaders from cover to cover. This is the second fictional account of being a child in Pinochet’s Chile to rise through my TBR pile this year; How to Order the Universe offered one girl’s story, while Space Invaders  trades dreams and memories from a chorus of children who grew up too soon against the terror of the 1980s. Unlike the precocious […]

Coffee with a shot of kink

Cup of Joe by Annabeth Albert

by Leave a Comment

When I saw there was a new queer shared series coming out that several of my favorite authors were writing in, I had to pick up the first book. The Bold Brew series revolves around a coffee shop in a Pennsylvania college town that’s a hub for the queer and kink-positive communities. “Hot, older electrician. Bedroom repair. If it wasn’t for me and my terminal awkwardness, this could easily pass as the start of a porno.” This book features Levi, a recent college grad who’s […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo