Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Merryn's Reviews:

Multiple dimensions of disappointment

The Dark Forest by Ciuxin Liu

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** some thematic spoilers ** I loved The Three Body Problem and had high hopes for the sequel.  But I found this book so hard to get through.  It’s dense.  The first half or so is so slow.  I persevered, because I also found the first book hard to get into and all that critical acclaim had to have some justification.  But as the pace started to pick up, more dimensions of disappointment unfolded. Even before the nihilistic Battle of Darkness took place and the […]

Australian outback tall tales

Larrimah by Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson

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Bingo square:  Question – What happened to Paddy Moriarty and Kelly?  What is it about Larrimah that drives the feuding and petty hatreds? “There’s a bottomless well of trouble in this town and it’s hard to know which parts we have a right to haul to the surface.” Larrimah is an expansion on the Lost in Larrimah podcast created by the journalist authors.  Ostensibly a ‘true crime’ story about a missing man (and dog) the podcast digs into the complex relationships between the mostly elderly inhabitants of the […]

“My heart is a hand reaching”

Devotion by Hannah Kent

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Devotion is a gloriously beautiful, heartbreaking story of impossible, indestructible love. Hanne is a girl becoming a woman in a community of Lutheran extremists in 19th century Prussia.  She has never doubted her family’s faith, but feels a deep spiritual and synaesthetic connection to the natural world, hearing an underlying hum of music. “Baptise me in rainfall and crown me in sunrise.” “I could hear the sunshine ringing like a blow to the ear.” Hanne’s oddness is a barrier to friendship with the other girls of […]

Slight prequel to Cormac Reilly series

The Sisters by Dervla McTiernan

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This prequel to Dervla McTiernan’s Cormac Reilly series takes us back to the beginning of Carrie Ryan’s career, when she was a keen young constable striving to break into the detective boys’ club.  Carrie is diligent, with excellent investigative instincts and people skills, but she is beginning to realise that this may be less useful in building a career than being accepted as one of the lads. Carrie shares a small studio apartment with her sister Aifric, a junior barrister who has yet to build […]

Who wouldn’t want to be saved from this world of pain?

Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas

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Damascus is the story of Saul of Tarsus, Saint Paul, the man who took the message of Yeshua the saviour to the Strangers.  It is also the story of a cult struggling to become a religion, outliving its founders, pulled in different directions by followers who have built their hope of salvation on their own suffering , struggling to hold onto their belief in the kingdom to come, that surely should be here by now.  “He is risen.  .. Truly, he is risen. … He is […]

Space opera binge – “Nothing touched by empire remains itself”

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

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              ** Some spoilers for the plot of Ancillary Justice in the review of later books in the series ** Space opera can definitely be big, loud and dumb and that can be fun and exciting.  But I love my space opera to be populated by complex, conflicted people (and other beings) living in intricate worlds with a deep culture and history.  Add beautiful writing, and big questions about identity and ethics, and I am in heaven. So I […]



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