Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“Emotion check: Having someone else support your bad decisions feels kind of good”

Platform Decay: Murderbot Diaries Book 8 by Martha Wells

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This latest Murderbot installment is short (150 pages) but full of the snark and excitement one has come to expect from the series. It is missing the usual cast of characters (including my favorite ART) but it introduces some new ones and of course focuses on everyone’s favorite SecUnit. The action of Platform Decay occurs on a torus, that is, a space station ring surrounding a decaying planet. The torus is man-made and contains a variety of biomes, mining and farming zones, habitation areas and […]

A strange book that went too long

The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard

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Note: I read this book in English, but I thought this (Russian?) cover was cool. So I swear I read this book because somewhere it was recommended as an interesting take on climate change, but it wasn’t actually about climate change. I borrowed the ebook from the library, so I can’t go back and confirm, but I SWEAR the intro specifically says that the book is NOT about climate change. Something bad happened to the sun I think (I’m having trouble remembering because once I […]

Amal El-Mohtar Excels at Writing Fairy Tales

Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar

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I really enjoyed this collection of short stories and poems, most of which are based in science fiction and fantasy and heavily influenced by themes of oppression and freedom. Some of them hit more than others, as was expected, with my clear favorites being the ones that had the most fairy tale-like feel. I loved that sort of “tip of my tongue” feeling for one of them because El-Mohtar was drawing from existing tales, and I appreciated the way she could make them feel like […]

I don’t know who wandered more: the book or me writing this review

Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen

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Tongues, Vol. 1 by Anders Nilsen   I have NO idea what was read. The stories all bounce all over the place. The images are busy, the text mixes and gets lost in the illustrations. The images are colorless but are not black and white. The characters are unlikable, even Astrid, who might be the one that will save the world. Or destroy it. It’s still up in the air. There is nothing good and positive. Even The Prisoner has faults and he seems to […]

Life, uhh, finds a way. – The Divine Jeff

Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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I requested Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Green City Wars because I was intrigued by the premise – Philip Marlow meets Redwall with a raccoon private investigator. This is not an inaccurate description. BUT! It’s Phillip Marlow meets Redwall written by Adrian Tchaikovsky. When I understood the premise of the world in Green City Wars, I had to lie down for a bit. It is so deeply dystopian. The humans have created what may be a utopia for themselves, and to achieve it, they’ve bio-engineered small animals, amphibians, […]

a metaphor for the defeat of the terrible tech/political men but make it scifi with spiders

Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Already we are very behind, but this time it is became I am back in the clutches of AO3, the Heated Rivalry edition, and there are many thousands of words I have eaten in that vein. But here has muscled in a book that absolutely grabbed my attention and clung tight, much like the squelching, squirming, scavenging Life of the Hartland. To get it out of the way: is this five star book in that it is a perfect book? No, but you should know […]



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