Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Goth aliens call them ‘stop-stop dancers’ instead of go-go dancers

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

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It’s nearly impossible to read this book and not compare it to Hitchhiker’s Guide, and I don’t know how to give it a fair review without those thoughts tumbling around in my head. This was an interesting, fun read…but NOTHING is going to come out on top when you compare it to Hitchhiker. Humans are just getting close enough to attempting space travel to make the rest of the universe nervous, so they have to compete in the universal sentience test or risk total destruction. […]

I felt like I could see the wizard behind the curtain, pulling the strings

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

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 On a visit to London last year, I stopped by Foyle’s on Charing Cross Road a few times, and on one of those visits, I picked up three space opera books: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley, and Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. The cashier’s face lit up when he saw my choices, saying that he’d read and loved all of them, especially Ancillary Justice. I’m not sure why it’s the last of […]

Days of Our Trying Not to Get Humanity Blown into Smithereens

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

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By the time I was not even halfway through Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente I thought, “This is one screwed up book.” As one reviewer on Amazon put it, “it is a barrage of fluff” (more later). It is all these strung together words just to put words together. They are not run-on sentences but run-off-the-page-turn-left-at-the-corner-and-keep-going-on sentences. The story, once you get into it, is easy enough to understand: a has been singer (as one of my coworkers put it, “a Meatloaf like performer” […]

I taught you better than to open doors you can’t close

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

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Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts is yet another great example of the kind of book I would have missed had I not started reading more speculative fiction and diversifying the voices in my library. That would have been a pity, because this complex, powerful novel may very well end up at the top of my 2019 favorites list. After Earth suffered an unnamed cataclysm 300 years ago, the remnants of humanity were crowded onto the spaceship Matilda and launched toward some long-forgotten destination. Humanity […]

Spaceship pilot/dragon rider.

Skyward (Skyward, #1) by Brandon Sanderson

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I had so much fun with this book. I’ve not really seen Brandon Sanderson go full sci-fi before. He did that novella, Snapshot, but that’s pretty much it. Everything else has been in the realms of epic fantasy, superheroes, and the more speculative end of fantastical fiction that doesn’t really have a scientific basis (i.e. Legion). But I wasn’t really worried because a lot of the same tools he uses for his fantasy books are also applicable to sci-fi. He’s a fantastic worldbuilding, an excellent plotter, […]

Just as good as the first, maybe better?

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I was not disappointed by this sequel. P.S. writing this on my phone. I don’t actually have much to say about the book. I enjoyed it a lot, and I was worried that I would have forgotten everything that happened in the last book, and I sort of had, but Scalzi makes it easy for you to catch up. Cardenia is still emperox, Kiva is still a profane little firecracker, Marse is traveling around giving lectures about the flow collapse, and the effing Nohamapetans are […]



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