Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Dawn – An intriguing take on human-alien interactions

Dawn by Octavia Butler

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I first read the Xenogenesis saga of Octavia Butler when I was a teenager and it arrived with a ton of other books I ordered from some science fiction book club (I had just gotten a job and was a dumb kid, don’t judge). What I remembered most from the initial read was the use of cancer cells by the alien race, the Oankali, to reshape their own bodies which I thought was a brilliant concept (actually still think it is brilliant). Maybe I did […]

Almost right, but not quite…

Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis

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Axiom’s End is the debut novel of one of my favourite YouTube video essayists, Lindsay Ellis. Ellis is known for her retrospective analyses of classic Disney movies, her undying passion for Phantom of the Opera, and her obsession with dissecting the Transformers movies. She’s full of quips, insights, and feminist musings. I am a big fan of hers. But, as with Roxanne Gay’s ‘Bad Feminist’, my love of the author did not translate to love of the book. Axiom’s End, taking place in the year […]

Magnificat – an incredible ending to this series

Magnificat by Julian May

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It has been a lot of fun re-reading all 9 books in this series but it finally comes to an end with Magnificat. Julian May truly has crafted a series that is extraordinary in scope and with characters who are vibrant. And that series does come full circle in this final installation. One of my favorite TV shows is Firefly and a quote from that show that I love is “It’s not about the destination, it is about the journey.” We have know from the […]

Diamond Mask – well, no one bats 1.000

Diamond Mask by Julian May

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It had to happen eventually, I did not care for this book, the first one in the series that I would describe in this manner. Why? The titular character, Dorothea MacDonald. All of the previous books, including the ones set in the Pliocene, are focused on the Remillard family. The abrupt shift to another character, and one who is not terribly sympathetic early on, is jarring. Diamond Mask is placed in danger from an early age by Hydra and Fury, and it honestly does not […]

Jack the Bodiless – a worthy addition to the series

Jack the Bodiless by Julian May

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This book kicks off the last part of Julian May’s Galactic Milieu series and does so with aplomb. References to Jack Remillard had been numerous in previous books but always vague. It had been stated that he was, arguably, the most powerful psychic ever born but why he did not have a body and how he died was never fully explained. The story begins with a death, that of Denis Remillard’s brother Victor, who had been the main antagonist in the earlier books. As Victor […]

A book more relevant now than when it was first written

Intervention by Julian May

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I admit it, this is the books I have been looking forward to the most when I decided to re-read this series and it did not disappoint. This chapter of May’s Galactic Millieu saga starts shortly after WW2 with the first births of humans with mind powers (as far as we know, there could have been isolated incidents earlier in human history, but this is the first time a small number were born around the same period).  While there are several families in whom these […]



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