Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“This is for the people of the sun”

You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue

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  I honestly just thought of leaving the lyrics to RATM’s “People of the Sun” as my review for this strange, hallucinatory story of the first meeting between two global empires. It’s a fictionalized account of Hernan Cortes’ arrival in the city of Tenochtitlan and meeting with Monteczuma. Without spoiling too much, I’ll say there is a critical change to the true story. It’s a picture of a moment in history that bears little resemblance to American history books but is no less worth reading. […]

I am the eye in the sky. Looking at you.

Null States by Malka Ann Older

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Null States is the second book in Malka Ann Older’s Centenal Cycle, a political technothriller which takes place in a future where much of the world is divided up into microdemocracies. Overseeing all of them is something called Information which is like if Google monitored everything. This second book takes place some time after the contentions election for which microdemocracy would take over the supermajority in book one. Ken and Mishima, two of my favorite characters, return in this story. We also meet Roz, an […]

Biggest K-Pop Stan in the Japanese Underground

The Yakuza's Bias, Volume 1 by Teki Yatsuda

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When the yakuza boss’s daughter drags top lieutenant Ken to a K-Pop concert, he finds himself utterly captivated by the group, especially the main rapper Jun. I only dabble in reading manga, but one genre I have found myself enjoying is light-hearted gag mangas – with one major caveat. The joke’s got to have legs enough for a series, or it will run thin quickly. Luckily, this is not the case with The Yakuza’s Bias. Ken might be a serious, tough-talking yakuza member, but he finds […]

Everyone should read this, it should be obligatory

Babel by R. F. Kuang

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This book was recommended to me, and so I picked it up. After an… Engaging beginning, (It just jumps right into everyone being racist to the main character) I decided this wasn’t going to be a light read. It wasn’t. This book is something everyone should read, not because it’s good, but because it provides a lens through which you can view imperialism and racism and sexism and general problems with today’s world, and focuses it. It focuses not simply on the individual level, but […]

This is a classic, and deserves to be

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

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This book is a wonderful book, a classic, I have deemed it. I don’t actually know its status on whether it’s actually a classic, but that’s not important. I love the premise of this book, and I love the puzzles and the characters. The solutions to issues are just fun, and mostly whimsical. When they get caught, it’s for a good reason, a well explained one. The character dynamics are fun, and the way they clash and mesh is just perfection. To list a few […]

Childhood memories

Magyk by Angie Sage

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I read this book when I was younger, and it deserves to be a classic in my eyes. It’s got all the elements of a good fantasy story, most of which I don’t even know how to word, but this book has it! The world it’s set in is built really well, and just breathes with life. The little details sprinkled throughout the book are just so fun to scour. Not to mention the plot twist(s), which are not necessarily predictable, but make sense completely […]



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