Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A.I.: The Good, The Bad, The Monster

The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag

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History, CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge TITLE: The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag REVIEW: It is complex. It is different. It is familiar. It is sad. It is confusing. It is straight forward. It is something you have never read before. It is something you know. You will get something from it and everyone else will get their own thing, but everyone will experience it emotionally. Or not. Just read it already, alright  I cannot  tell you about this book as I am not really 100% […]

“He hated this place. He loved it.”

Babel by R F Kuang

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Bingo: History;  Passport: China Babel is historical fiction stirred with magic, the story of imperialism set in a world just a sidestep from our own told through the eyes of an outsider awakening to harsh realities. We meet Robin as a small boy who has survived a cholera outbreak that has killed his mother and ravaged his birthplace of Canton and is taken to England by his mentor.  His Chinese name is unimportant to Professor Lovell, so we never learn it.   Robin’s skill with language […]

Back from whence you came

The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner

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This was an airport bookstore grab on my birthday, one of those deals where if you bring it back within six months, you can get 50% of the cover price back. The London Séance Society will indeed be going back. It’s not a bad read or story, just not amazing enough to take up some of my limited shelf space. The alternating back and forth between two perspectives and narrators actually does some pretty cool stuff with unreliability; both narrators are but for very different […]

Old Magic in Not Too Old Times Past

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix

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The Left Handed Booksellers of London sounds like an interesting premise, and thankfully one that gets pulled off reasonably well. One thing I will say right off is that it’s a lot more interesting if you know a little bit about British or Celtic folklore; I also think the 1980s setting doesn’t get enough attention and that’s a totally missed opportunity. In a lot of ways the story is pretty standard: country child comes to the big city to pursue an education and find the […]

I don’t want to review this book, Part 2: The Remix

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My appetite for Nisi Shawl’s Everfair has gone up and down since I first heard of it. It came highly recommended by multiple sources and ticked off so many intriguing boxes: a speculative, steampunk alternative history of an African nation by a woman of color. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. After I bought it earlier this spring, I noticed the Goodreads collective rating was on the low-ish side, and I’m not always as immune to popular opinion as I like to think I am. It […]

Don’t Expect Logical Actions from Racists

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Thank you so much to caitycat! I doubt I would have stumbled across this novel without her review, and I thoroughly enjoyed it despite some minor complaints about potential red herrings or loose threads. The novel is set near Baltimore in 1880.  The North never won the Civil War because of the zombie outbreak that followed the Battle of Gettysburg, leading to a quick reconciliation between the two sides to face the common threat to the survival of humanity.  Slaves were declared free, but, for […]



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