Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“We cannot turn back time, but we can keep on living.”

Among the Burning Flowers: A Roots of Chaos Tale by Samantha Shannon

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(This is the third book in the series, and the second prequel.) Set a few years before The Priory of the Orange Tree, Among the Burning Flowers tells the story of how the Kingdom of Yscalin became under Draconic rule; told from the alternating points of view of Marosa, heir to the Yscali throne, her fiance Aubrecht Lievelyn of Mentendon, and Estina Melaugo, a former thief living elsewhere in Yscalin. This book proves why the Roots of Chaos series is  my preference in Samantha Shannon’s […]

As she watched, a single dark red petal broke free from the vine just above the plaque and floated, strange and slow, all the way to the ground.

Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti

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After reading Charlie Jane Anders’s Lessons in Magic and Disaster last month, I particularly enjoyed reading about two women writing books and falling in love in Georgian England. In Lessons, Jamie was researching magic and queer subtext in a fictional novel written by real 18th century woman, Sarah Fielding. In Ladies in Hating, Georgiana and Catriona are each authors of gothic books under pseudonyms. It is still scandalous for a woman to be an author, especially of gothic literature, though Georgiana’s identity is somewhat of […]

Sapphic golem fantasy debut

The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez

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The Maiden and Her Monster fulfills the “diaspora” square for CBR17 Bingo. As soon as I learned of The Maiden and Her Monster, I knew I needed to read it. I love explorations of Jewish experiences and especially love different ways the golem story can be reimagined. Set in a Medieval Prague inspired setting, The Maiden and Her Monster follows Malka as she ventures into a cursed forest that has been killing the girls of her village so she can free her imma from the Church’s idea […]

Who has the right to history?

The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai

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The Memory Hunters fulfills the “red” square for CBR17 Bingo. I really enjoyed Mia Tsai’s Bitter Medicine, and was very excited to try The Memory Hunters, which is a completely new world and setting. It is set in a type of near future where climate change has resulted in much of the coast as we know it being devastated and swallowed by the ocean and storms, and fungi being used as a way to collect and remember history. It opens when Kiana Strade, a memory […]

Room Mates

Make Room For Love by Darcy Liao

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Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: Recommendation. This was recommended to me at a romance bookstore when I was looking for sapphic romance tales with trans MCs. We’re in an age where the formerly established fact of multicultural democracy is becoming unsettled. And as such, more stories by gay, queer, trans, enby creatives are going to be going by the wayside. You’ll probably still have “the table” at Barnes & Noble as the bookstore tries to cash in on branding writers by their identity more […]

Personhood in Sci-Fi

Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon

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Volatile Memory fulfills the “purple” square on CBR17 bingo. Generally speaking, I don’t consider myself a sci-fi reader, but Volatile Memory kept coming across my feeds because it’s sapphic and I finally gave into the promo, and I’m glad I did because this ended up being a really interesting story. I’d put it in the same conversations as books like Automatic Noodle and The Stars Too Fondly for the ways it explores transness and gender through presentation as well as whether memories make a person […]



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