Cannonball Read 11

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Fofo

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Fofo's Reviews:

Ancillary Space Opera

Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

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Target: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) and Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch #2) Profile: Science Fiction, Space Opera The Imperial Radch series is a relatively simple little space opera, in the classic sense of the term.  Spanning hundreds, if not thousands of years, multiple star systems and a variety of cultural influences, it’s a series firmly rooted in the tropes of its genre.  While Ancillary Justice does wonderful things with those ideas and concepts, building a surprisingly compelling setting and cast, the series as a whole is somewhat underwhelming.  Lacking the bombast of James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse […]

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3/30/2015 's CBR7 Review No:4 |

Egyptian Nights

Cairo by G. Willow Wilson

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Target: G. Willow Wilson’s Cairo.  Art by M.K. Perker Profile: Modern Fantasy, Urban, Middle Eastern, Graphic Novel Cairo is, in many ways, a prototype for G. Willow Wilson’s later novel, Alif the Unseen.  They are stories of clashing cultures. Both the complex internal clash between Islamic hardliners and the culturally diverse youth of the Middle East, and the more external, if no less complex conflict between encroaching western culture and the entrenched lifestyles of Muslims.  By necessity, Cairo is more spare, crashing through a much simpler plot at breakneck pace, but it manages to hit the same powerful notes that […]

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2/24/2015 's CBR7 Review No:2 |

The future is ADVENTURE! Ready, Steady, GO!

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

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Target: Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One Profile: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Pop Culture, Adventure! Ready Player One is one of those books that’s been sitting on the shelves at Barnes and Nobel taunting me with nearly universal acclaim for longer than I care to think about.  Not only that, but it falls clearly into my ‘near future, speculative fiction’ bailiwick and even focuses on video game culture, so I really have no excuse as to why I’m only just now adding it to my library.  And that’s a shame, because it really is quite good. … Any returning readers will […]

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2/4/2015 's CBR7 Review No:1 |

Sticks and stones may brake your bones, but words will turn you into my meat puppet.

Lexicon by Max Barry

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Target: Max Barry’s Lexicon Profile: Speculative Fiction, Thriller As I have written before, I find book recommendations to be more annoying than useful (which raises some interesting questions about why I write book reviews).  There are so many variables involved in what makes any given book appealing to a given person that, without a history of literary compatibility, it is almost impossible guarantee that any two people will like the same book.  Still, every so often I’ll follow up on a recommendation or a particularly good review from a source that I like and it won’t disappoint me.  Lexicon not only did not […]

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9/13/2014 's CBR6 Review No:25 |

This review is of dubious value to the forces of Light

New Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

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Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s New Watch.  Translated by Andrew Bromfield (The Watches pentalogy #5) Profile: Modern Fantasy, Suspense, Horror Sergei Lukyanenko ostensibly drew his Watches series to a conclusion with Last Watch, but almost six years later he released a fifth book.  New Watch is a very different kind of novel than its predecessors.  It draws inspiration from other contemporary and urban fantasies, most notably the Harry Potter series.  There is a greater emphasis on the mechanics of the world’s magic system, answering some questions from previous novels, but shifting the tone of the series away from the cerebral contemplation of the battle between good […]

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9/12/2014 's CBR6 Review No:24 |

Eat, Sleep, Game, Repeat…?

A.D.D. Adolescent Demo Division by Douglas Rushkoff

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Target: Douglas Rushkoff’s A.D.D. Adolescent Demo Division. Art by Goran Sudžuka and José Marzán Jr. Profile: Comics, Media Criticism, Science Fiction For those of you who don’t know, Denver is home to the largest single comic book store in the world.  I didn’t know this either until a few months ago when a friend of mine blew into town from Boston and we went.  The warehouse used to be a clearing house for cross-country comic shipping and at some point Mile High Comics claimed it, along with the considerable overstock and turned it into 45,000 square feet of comic book nerd […]

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7/17/2014 's CBR6 Review No:23 |

This review is acceptable to the forces of Darkness

Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

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Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Last Watch.  Translated by Andrew Bromfield (The Watches pentalogy #4) Profile: Modern Fantasy, Suspense, Urban Fantasy So, I spent a really unreasonable amount of time waiting for and then looking for the Harper paperback release of Last Watch.  I waited so long that the fifth book in the series was published stateside and my copy actually started to gather dust on my shelf.  Eventually I contacted Harper Collins which prompted a very curt autoreply informing me that they didn’t have the publication rights.  Although the Random House imprint they directed me to doesn’t seem to have the U.S. rights either, […]

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7/11/2014 's CBR6 Review No:22 |

Math is hard. Also bad for novels.

Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright

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Target: John C. Wright’s Count to a Trillion. (Count to Eschaton Sequence #1) Profile: Science Fiction, Space Opera After Action Report: Count to a Trillion is a strange sort of novel.  It seems primarily dedicated to avoiding any kind of resolution to any of the narratives it establishes and finding other literary ways to annoy me.  Poor characterization, egregious technobabble and obnoxious timeskips are just a few of the book’s many sins.  And yet, there is an interesting and ambitious concept at its core.  Ultimately, I think the novel falls short of its goals, but it takes us on what could be the […]

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7/7/2014 's CBR6 Review No:21 |


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