Cannonball Read 9

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

Interesting concept, no interesting characters

City at the End of Time by Greg Bear

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I couldn’t figure out where to even begin writing a plot synopsis for this dense monster of a book, so I checked Amazon and Goodreads to see if there was a recap I could start with. They were all three paragraphs long or more, and that would be my whole review! So apparently nobody knows how to summarize this mess. Let’s see. A few ‘special’ misfits exist in our time, able to see all possible paths from all possible actions and skip to the best one. Unimaginable eons (or “Ians,” TM Rincewind) in the future, a few ‘special’ misfits have dreams […]

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7/10/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:16 |

A Tana French wannabe

False Mermaid by Erin Hart

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This is a mystery starring a bunch of Irish people with a taste of the possibly-supernatural thrown in. It reads like Tana French wrote it when she was in eighth grade, before she learned to actually be good. Nora’s sister Triona was murdered five years ago. She suspects her sister’s husband Peter, but the rich golden boy was never charged, and the murder is still unsolved. Nora fled home to Ireland to recover, but returns to her family’s relocated home in the States when she learns that Peter is getting remarried in five days. She wants to solve her sister’s […]

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6/23/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:15 |

Really, book blurb? “Americans will find it exotic?” No.

The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald

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Several years ago, I moved to a new state far from home, and started the arduous process of attempting to make friends. I met someone, I’ll call her Gertrude, who seemed great at first. She was nice and friendly and chatty, and we started grabbing lunch every once in a while. Unfortunately, by the time I spent enough time with her to figure out that Gertrude was smug and narrow-minded and relentlessly negative, those lunches and texts and hangouts were routine, and I was stuck. I solved the problem by once again moving states and states away. This book felt […]

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6/14/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:14 |

A paint-by-numbers entry in a long-running mystery series (#25!)

Wanting Sheila Dead by Jane Haddam

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I used to really enjoy the Gregor Demarkian books, but I think they might have hit the Eve Dallas/Stephanie Plum stage of their run. I understand an author wanting to stick to a working formula, but when you get too checklisty (“page 84…time for a breakfast scene with quirky best friend”), it isn’t as fun for a reader. Gregor Demarkian is a retired FBI agent. He lives in Philadelphia, in his old Armenian neighborhood, with his friend/girlfriend/wife (depending on the book) and a cast of interesting characters (interesting the first dozen books, anyway). He consults on murder investigations for the […]

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5/25/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:13 |

Grim, with a side of bleak

Broken Harbor by Tana French

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  Unfortunately, I think I might be changing my mind about Tana French. I loved The Secret Place, but nothing since then has held up. I know my literary tastes tend to be a little on the pedestrian side, but I would like a few more loose ends tied up, and a little bit more of a happy ending. Detective Kennedy and his newbie partner Detective Curran (I listened to the audio book, sorry if I’m misspelling things) are assigned a case, the brutal slaying of an entire family. The crime took place in a spooky, half-completed subdivision that was […]

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5/11/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:12 |

Questing with snakes

Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre

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This one was recommended by fellow Cannonballers/Pajibans when I requested help finding women sci-fi writers, and I am so glad! It was post-apocalyptic and interesting and original. I had read some McIntyre before, but not this one. Snake is a healer, traveling around and helping people in villages that are too small to have their own resident healer. She works with three snakes, using their poison to combat cancers or other diseases, and using the ultra-rare dreamsnake to ease pain until the end in the cases she can’t cure. When her dreamsnake is killed by a panicked villager, she sets […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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5/2/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:11 |

Totally biased, totally proud

Sara's Station by Tom Howard

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Full disclosure: my dad (fellow Cannonballer sabian30) wrote this book! I’m so excited. He’s had so many short stories published I’ve lost count and has his very own Amazon author page, but now he’s got an officially official book! So I’m aware that I’m completely biased, but I thought the book was great. Dad grew up reading all the science fiction he could find, and he’s always been fond of Andre Norton. Sara’s Station is his take on a Norton-style story. I’ve read a few of hers, but probably not enough to catch every single in-joke. However, I do think […]

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4/17/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:10 |

Haven’t read the original being spoofed, so I missed a lot of jokes

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

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This was a good book that I would have liked an abridged copy of. I read Doomsday Book last year for #CannonBookClub, but this was a slightly different flavor, although set in the same universe of Oxford using time travel for history-studying purposes. Through a series of convolutions, Ned ends up in the Victorian era (not his specialty) trying to help fix a timeline incongruity. He’s working with a classmate, Verity Kindle (excellent name), who has already been back and forth to the era multiple times. He also gets involved with a love-addled doofus and a professor so absent-minded it […]

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3/27/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:9 |

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