Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I feel like this isn’t about me”

Yellowface (2023) by R. F. Kuang

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I don’t really know what I can say about this book, which I think means it’s worked? I can say that it’s blistering, and brilliant; I can say that it fits the ‘Fiasco‘ square because it’s about someone who “reached for the stars and utterly failed…a disaster created by human actions” and in this case the disaster is a person who finds herself in a nightmare of her own making, but the disaster is also the publishing industry and the surrounding discourse, and also the […]

Tower of Cards

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang

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There’s a lot that I liked about this book, so in true form for me I’m going to start with two things I really didn’t like. First, you get one subtitle, max. Zero is preferable, and two or more is asinine. Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution reeks of trying to have it not just both ways, but all ways. Pick a title and stick to it. Babel would have worked just fine on its own. Secondly, […]

Wherein plagarism is an insincere form of flattery

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

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Yellowface is a story about a brilliant writer, Juniper, who lacks ideas. She is cursed with a very successful writer friend, Athena, who churns out best sellers like it’s no big thang. June and Athena are hanging out one evening, drinking and laughing and actually acting like the friends they sorta kinda are, when Athena chokes to death on a pandan-flavoured pancake. Though June is a bit rattled by this experience, she decides in teh moment to steal Athena’s latest, secret manuscript before leaving the […]

More History Inspired Fantasy!

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

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I have already read another R.F. Kuang book, Babel, which was fantastic. So, I had high expectations coming in. They were met. I wouldn’t say this was the best book I’ve ever read, but it was certainly fantastic. I really don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll try to be as vague as possible, but there were so many things about this book that I liked. First, the main character didn’t just have everything handed to her. She faced challenges, and overcame them not only through […]

Historical Fiction With Fantastical Flair

Babel by R. F. Kuang

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This is definitely more historical fiction than it is historical fantasy, though the fantasy elements are integral to the story. In this way, Babel is similar to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell, to which it’s hard not to make comparisons as both are set in England in the 1800s and involve magic. It was a good book but not the 5-star read I was expecting after having heard so much about it. Babel tells the story of Robin Swift, who was born in China and […]

An Unsettlingly Realistic Satire

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

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Just a few pages into Yellowface, and I was like, wow, June needs therapy. She’s thinking about how Athena must like her company because June isn’t a literary threat to her, and June goes on to write, “Don’t we all want a friend who won’t ever challenge our superiority, because they already know it’s a lost cause? Don’t we all need someone we can treat as a punching bag?” Um, no, June, we don’t, and that’s not a healthy thing to think. The novel is […]



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