Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Great SF/F in the Tradition of LeGuin

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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This was such a satisfying read! It was a perfect blend of fantasy and sci-fi, and packed a lot of plot into a relatively short book. This reminded me what reading a good book could be like and why I do love to read after struggling through my last pick. The book (which I think is being sold as a novella, but it’s 198 pages, so a long novella) uses alternating viewpoint chapters to good effect. Lynesse Fourth Daughter is a princess in a medieval […]

First it was spiders, then it was octopuses, now it’s . . . everything. Just wait for the bits with the rats.

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Adrian Tchaikovsky is obsessed with non-human, non-alien sentience. This book was not what I expected, and yet, makes perfect sense in retrospect. A lot of very similar themes to the Children of Time books. This one didn’t quite fire up my imagination the way the Children of Time books did, but I quite enjoyed it! So, not space opera (like I thought? for some reason???) but multiverse. But, a very unique take on the multiverse. The book starts on a more intimate level, with two […]

Space Spiders!

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Tchaikovsky has conducted a fascinating thought experiment in ‘Children of Time’ – what if spiders evolved rapidly and became the dominant species on a world bereft of humans? This is the first in a trilogy of books that takes place in the distant future. Humanity is on the brink of destroying our once hospitable planet, and so have reached out to the stars to terraform new worlds in case things continue to go south here at home. Never content to leave well enough alone, humanity […]

Angels of Punching You in the Face

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Earth’s crust and mantle have been peeled back by the Architects and shaped into a beautiful flower. A beautiful, uninhabitable flower. Maybe this is a reflection of my age, but I kept thinking about how clean spaceships were in science fiction when I started reading. The governments were huge global or galactic entities demonstrating how humans had unified, and often how they had integrated into a system of many alien species. There was an orderliness to science fiction worlds, even if the protagonists were rogues […]

Space Opera at its finest

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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This is the 4th book I’ve read by Tchaikovsky and I admit I’m now a total fan. Shards of Earth is probably the most fun, fast paced book of his I’ve read. As with his other books, there is extensive world building,  in depth alien biology and the threat of multiple worlds dying unless humanity gets its act together. I thought he was brilliant with Children of Time and its sequel, but he’s grown even better in this novel. A greater sense of character development and […]

What intelligence means to a human, spider and octopus

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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In this sequel, we jump back and forth across time and watch the beginnings of new sentience both planned and unplanned by humans and its inevitable fallout discovered aeons later by the first book’s descendents. And true to how things always go awry, nothing is ever what humans (or any sentient species) plan to begin with and that’s what saves us in the end. Tchaikovsky will ultimately assure us this inability to be totally in charge of our destiny is a good thing, though no […]



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