Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Killing people to save their lives

The Dispatcher by John Scalzi

Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi

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The Dispatcher (5 stars) This story holds up on re-read. I haven’t read my first review of this audiobook, so it’ll be interesting to see how it lines up, but I do remember liking it the first time I listened to it. First, I think Zachary Quinto needs to narrate more books. He has this marvelously dry voice that is both soothing and unobtrusive. It’s easy to listen to without being boring. And he has a great ear for voices. Second, I will read anything […]

I guess I have a Cannonball – even though most of my reviews are of short stories.

The Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle

Harrison Squared by Daryl Gregory

Apt Pupil by Stephen King

Morality by Stephen King

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Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle (3.5 stars) Pierre Boulle published two dozen novels in his lifetime – but he is most famous for the semi-autobiographical The Bridge over the River Kwai and this franchise creating science fiction story from 1963. We’re all familiar with the basic story, right? A group of scientists board a ship bound for Betelgeuse (the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion, after Rigel). Due to traveling near the speed of light, centuries pass on Earth. When they […]

Absolutely and wonderfully bonkers read

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Bolstered by all the delightful comments on my Gideon the Ninth review, I thought I should try to put my thoughts together about Harrow the Ninth, the sequel. SPOILERS FOR GIDEON THE NINTH FOLLOW! Really. It’s impossible to talk about Harrow without talking about the end of Gideon. It doesn’t just follow chronologically (sort of), but the impact of the ending on Harrow informs the entirety of her story. So… wow. I am so impressed by author Tamsyn Muir, who took her sure-fire hit–where one of the main things […]

The world is falling apart, but the magic is coming together

The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

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This felt like a post-apocalyptic story within a post-post-post-apocalyptic story. In the aftermath of the last Fifth Season (a catastrophic event that causes massive destruction and changes the face of the Earth for an unspecified amount of time; the last one started in the first book), Essun finds herself in a new community, with everyone learning how to live and work together. There are bandits and bad communities, internal strife, lack of food and resources, and the usual post-apocalyptic worries. Of course, this being an […]

The hegemony consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

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I had a very unclear understanding of what I thought this book was, not by reading about it or looking at reviews for it, but by looking at the original cover. It looks like a kind of sci-fi fantasy novel ala Dune or some other kind of adventure in space. And while there’s elements of that throughout, the book ended up being so much smarter, better written, and a number of other things as I started to understand what I was reading. We begin aboard […]



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