Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The Resistance was the kiss of death, to friends and allies alike.”

Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse

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The reading experience of Resistance Reborn is a story of two halves for me. I enjoyed Rebecca Roanhorse’s writing, I find the way she uses a sparring amount of words to build a mood, and from a mood a setting to be incredibly effective, which I’ve enjoyed from her before. On the other hand, though, I wasn’t floored by the actual story covered within the pages of this book. Broadly, in this novel, Poe Dameron, General Leia Organa, Rey, and Finn struggle to rebuild the […]

The eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

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I see why this book is so much lower rated than her other two memoirs. It’s kind of scattered, and half of it is devoted to her affair with Harrison Ford, which isn’t told in a juicy manner but in a self-reflecting one, and the diaries that detailed her experience of that affair. I get why she wanted to tell this story herself; she wanted to control the narrative. It’s just . . . not super fun to read about. My favorite parts of this […]

You’ll never look at a giant space worm the same way again.

Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back by Various

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When it comes to Star Wars two distinct story universes have to be discussed. The first, the movies, tend to be simplistic and aimed at children and pre-teens. The movies largely follow the Skywalker family and those ancillary to them, and while there are interesting tangents, they follow a pretty safe, unsurprising track. Even the movies that try to do something different such as The Last Jedi are eventually course-corrected back to the path that provides maximum merchandise sales and the least amount of controversy. […]

Hot Kylo Ren, Toxic Relationships, and Dull Writing

The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster

The Last Jedi by Jason Fry

The Rise of Skywalker by Rae Carson

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I am obsessed with Adam Driver. If you are not obsessed with Adam Driver, I know not your constitution. I’ve become obsessed with the Star Wars movies episodes IX through XI and the sexy, tortured, full lipped character of Kylo Ren, who is the villain. I originally wrote “hero” by mistake, which shows how twisted my love is. So enamored of Kylo, Rey, and the movies in general, I somewhat abashedly bought the books based on the movies. And boy do they kind of suck. […]

In many ways, this is every bit as important to speculative fiction as The Lord of the Rings

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Born in 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs worked a number of odd jobs until, at the age of 35, he decided to pick up writing. Recalling in 1929 that, “if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten.” So, in 1911, he started writing what would go on to become A Princess of Mars, the first book in his Barsoom series. Shortly thereafter, he would go on to create Tarzan – […]

If It Walks Like a Duck and Talks Like a Duck (and Does Autocorrect Ducking Things)

(won't you let me) walk you home from school by somethingdifferent

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After postcardsandbooks‘ post I am newly emboldened to publicly review fanfiction! I feel like doing so will also clarify my review of Bloodline, not that it was fooling anyone. First, rules, both my own ones and the ones that I am sticking with re: reviewing. No less than 5:1 ratio for books : fanworks (and honestly I reviewed two fanworks** last year in the course of reading 130 books, I am not often called to write page-long reviews) (although I always comment!) It’s okay for […]



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