Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Maybe humans aren’t the most deserving of a new planet

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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I read this book to get my brother to stop talking about alien *insert creepy animal here (I don’t want to spoil it)*. Every time I’d see him, he would ask if I read Children of Time and then proceed to explain the premise as if he hadn’t explained it to me the last time I saw him. After maybe the fourth or fifth time I decided to read the book to shut him up. Look, I’m not a big sci-fi reader, but this one […]

The philosophical adventures of Uncharles the robot.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. Okay, so, this book was not AT ALL what I was expecting going in, based on the blurb. If you are expecting emotional good times and characters to identify with ala Murderbot, stop expecting that. Our main character, Uncharles, goes on a sort of picaresque philosophical journey of What Does It Mean to Be Alive, with each section of the book being an ode/homage to a different […]

A strange little fantasy. I expected nothing less from this author.

City of Last Chances (The Tyrant Philosophers, #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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This is a tough book to sink your teeth into. It’s slow to start, and slow to catch your emotions (if it ever catches them all), but still, for the right reader this book could work very well. I always appreciate a well-executed attempt at a unique structure, and we have that here in abundance. Up front, though, the reason this is getting 3.5 stars is that though there were bits that caught my imagination in the first half of the book, it didn’t really […]

a thousand apologies and what feels like a thousand reviews (through November 2023)

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

Kindred by Octavia E Butler

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hinumegin er mars by Sólrun Michelsen

Trust by Hernan Diaz

How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't by Ian Dunt

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It by Owen Jones

In the Beginning was the Sea by Tomás González

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

The City & the City by China Miéville

A History of Burning by Janika Oza

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert

Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin

Passion Simple by Annie Ernaux

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain by Brett Christophers

The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Gray

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon

A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas

Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within by Rory Stewart

Rivals by Katherine McGee

Reign by Katherine McGee

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

The Iliad by Homer, Emily Wilson

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

10 Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

A Dangerous Kind of Lady by Mia Vincy

A Little Life by Hanya Yanighara

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

The Starting Over Game by girl_with_kaleidoscope_eyes

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Edinburg by Alexander Chee CBR15: Sex True fact, when someone British asked me what I was reading I pronounced this “Edin-BERG” and to their credit they didn’t laugh but instead asked, with some horrified sincerity, if that’s how Americans say it. It’s not! At least, not on purpose. It’s just how can the English language claim to have been invented in a country that seems to not have grasped even a shred of understanding of how the various letters in it work? I digress. This is […]

“If you were a thief in Loretz, then your fingers itched for the magic the place was famous for.”

Made Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Think Pinnochio and Toy Story meets Boxtrolls and you’re most of the way there. Plot: We have robots, they can be made of wood or metal and given life with a special sort of magic. Unsurprisingly, they aren’t treated with the utmost respect in the city of Loretz. Coppelia, a thief in her own right, has met a few of these small creatures and together, they have formed something of a thieving ring to survive, but the eye of the law is on them, and […]

“Not really caring about the names of other people was never one of her best qualities, but it was one of her most defining features and she clings to it.”

Children of Ruin (Book 2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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If you’ve read the first in the series, Children of Time, you’re in for a ride that is both familiar and brand spanking new. If you haven’t, don’t start here. Go back, and do it right. It’s so worth it. Disclaimer: do not even read this review if you haven’t read the first book. I will avoid spoilers for this book, but not the first one. Plot: We pick up with explorers from the Old Earth, Kern’s contemporaries are trying to terraform a world for […]



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