Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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You Filthy Cockaroaches

Terra Formars Volume 1 by Yu Sasuga

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I have never met Yu Sasuga.  I have never read an interview with Yu Sasuga.  I do not presume any knowledge about Yu Sasuga.  And so, I will not accuse Yu Sasuga of being a racist. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to levy a strong complaint against Terra Formars as being a racist work.  I may be a little bit racist (maybe it’s a fact we all should face) in saying that there has, however, been a certain level of tone-deafness that arises in Japanese pop […]

The Unfamiliar Familiar

Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

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narfna posted a review of Bones of Faerie last week that, while not effusive, piqued my interest enough to get me to go through it this week.  Now I find myself very nearly in lockstep with the review in question.  It feels almost too brief to form anything like a true connection with the characters.  The plot is very nearly a perfunctory thing, a road trip here and back again with as little embellishment along the way as possible.  The characters are, for the most part, thinly […]

The Stunning Conclusion to the Saga

Dragon Kicker XV by Paul Chapman

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And so we come to the end of the series that began with Porn Gnomes and continued with Bike Riding Wood Apes and find ourselves asking: that’s it?  While I found both of Paul Chapman’s prior quirky, comic, tragic, and horrific short story anthologies fairly worthwhile, I’m left looking at Dragon Kicker XV with a bit of a shrug.  Part of this might be its length, clocking in with the least amount of stories and thus having the least chances to find something that really hits among the […]

“A brain!” “A heart!” “A home!” “Da vote!”

Marvel's The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum and Eric Shanower

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It’s all too common for modern readers to look into the works of the past and see things that may or may not have been intended in the fullness of time.  What we may see as a delicate, subtly woven metaphor to rail against some then-incumbent wrongdoing the author may have added as nothing more than a narrative flourish.  How much exactly did L. Frank Baum intend to comment on women’s suffrage, transgender issues, and the monstrosity of the pun?  I can’t safely say, given […]

Okay.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

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If Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem were here, he’d know exactly what to do.  It doesn’t matter that you can’t shoot cancer, because he’d probably find a way.  Maybe there’s a spectacular shrinking device that could put Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem (along with Specialist Manny Loco, Private Jasper Jacks and the rest) into the blood stream of someone afflicted with cancer so that a rain of heavy weapons fire would lay decimation to the root of the problem.  Maybe there’s another type of bullet, a medicine bullet that […]



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