Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Not a time travel book, despite what the book description implies

Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken MacLeod

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Official book description: When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn’t know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited – and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations. This book was the March […]

Lost in space, above all drifting…

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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Official book description: Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission – and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses […]

“Dealing with a crisis, wrapped in a disaster, surrounded by a mystery”

Dark Horse by Michelle Diener

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I’m not usually a fan of alien abduction books, but I originally picked this up back in 2020 and it was absolute brain catnip. Watching these characters “dealing with a crisis, wrapped in a disaster, surrounded by a mystery” was ridiculously fun, so when I heard the final book in the series was coming out, I decided to dive back in and read the whole thing. Dav, captain of a Grih exploration ship, doesn’t know what to think when he encounters a Class 5 Tecran […]

Saving Grace

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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I’ve read all of Andy Weir’s books. He’s written three so that’s not exactly a major achievement, but it does give me the opportunity to compare and contrast them. Like most people I enjoyed The Martian but did not care very much for Artemis (which, well-intentioned though it may be, is a textbook example of how not to write a strong female character). I loved Project Hail Mary, though with a couple of caveats. But hey, that’s what reviews are for.  First up: it’s really […]

What would you do with a spaceship full of psychic cats?

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

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It might end up sounding like I didn’t like Chilling Effect, but I want to be clear from the beginning that this was a fun and mostly entertaining read. The basic premise might sound familiar: space-ship captain and rag-tag crew/found family go about their existence but then everything changes when they are faced with a seemingly impossible mission and chaos/adventure ensues. The same goes for most of the characters, including Eva Innocente, tough captain with some sort of tragic past who can’t seem to get […]

A city that comes alive

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

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The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin is a unique science fiction novel that brings cities to life. When a city becomes “great” a human inhabitant becomes its avatar. Except at the start of this novel, the homeless Black boy is chased into hiding. Enter the awakening of the human avatars of each of the five boroughs. The book follows each avatar as they discover their connection to the city. There is a mysterious entity that doesn’t want the city to fully become a great […]



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