Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Fanfic — Classics Edition

The Song of Achilles: A Novel by Madeline Miller

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Cbr12bingo Gateway BINGO horizontal (Gateway to Shelfie) I first read The Song of Achilles for CBR4, and for me, it is the gateway to a genre that I will call “reimagined classics” or perhaps “fanfic: classics edition.” This is the first book I can remember reading that is based on a classic story, in this case The Iliad, expanding on a part of it and telling it from the perspective of a minor character. Re-imagined classics allow authors to go into more detail on aspects […]

I’ve discovered fanfiction!

Not From Others by FloreatCastellum

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So, I finally dipped my toe into fanfic. Now that we can review fanfic on here, I couldn’t really think of a reason to not give it a shot. It’s something I’ve long thought about for my favorite franchises: Star Trek, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings…. But I’ve never actually tried it. And it was both everything I thought it’d be, and so much more. Not From Others is a novel, you guys.  It’s over 130,000 words long, and was published in 2016. I […]

Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy walk into a bar… wait, that’s not right…

Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir & Sarah Andersen

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Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Wendy from Peter Pan, and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz have all had a rough go of it after their adventures in the stories.  And the stories we were told were not their only adventures.  No, these girls have grown up a bit and have spent more time in their respective other worlds.  Alice is bitter and angry, Wendy always carries a knife, and Dorothy has been subject to electroshock therapy, but that last bit is cannon, I think.  […]

If Start Trek Got Blah and Some Part of it Knew That

Red Shirts by John Scalzi

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Bingo Review 17: Red Red Shirts (‘red’ is in the title, and occasionally referenced in-text) is basically Star Trek gone meta, really meta. I would divide the story into two parts: the part where certain members of the crew of the Intrepid start to notice some strange patterns surrounding the away missions: certain crew members always are fine (relatively) while certain others are nearly guaranteed to end up dead. But why is that? Ensign Dahl is the driving force behind trying to solve this strange […]

Oooh, you make me live (CBR12Bingo: Friendship)

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua

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I’m sure that tagging this as fiction and non fiction seems confusing to anyone who has not read this book. It’s a strange one, but a damn good one. The first dozen or so pages are 100% non-fiction, devoted to the life of Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” Lord Byron and the absolute last person in the world who should have married him, a woman who then raised Ada alone and kept her from following in her father’s […]

Girl Power Monsters

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss

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Mary Jekyll, daughter of the famous Dr. Jekyll, finds herself trying to solve the mysteries of her father’s past.  Along the way, she meets the off-spring of several of literature’s most famous characters – Dr. Frankenstein, Mr. Hyde, Dr. Moreau and Dr. Rappaccini.  Together with Sherlock Holmes and his trusty side kick Dr. Watson, her formidable housekeeper Mrs. Poole, and scullery maid Alice, the ladies join forces to help solve the Whitechapel murders (aka Jack the Ripper).   That’s a lot to unpack in a book. […]



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