Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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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

Everfair by Nisi Shawl

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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

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

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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 […]

Napoleon’s Last Gambit

League of Dragons by Naomi Novik

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The concluding volume of the Temeraire series starts where the previous novel ended, with the Russians and their allies in pursuit of Napoleon as he and his armies withdraw back to the safety of France.  While certainly weakened, Napoleon is not done, and still has the ability to wreak havoc, especially by using dragons and politics against his enemies. The whole series has demonstrated the vast differences in the status of dragons in countries, and focused on the inequality of their status in Europe compared […]

From the East to the West

Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik

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While the novels are all divided into three parts, in some the breaking points between the parts are much more obvious than others – for example, His Majesty’s Dragon basically divided as the initial time between Laurence and Temeraire, their military training, and their time on active combat duty.  For others, it was less clear and the stories bled over between parts a lot.  This novel almost feels like three novellas united in one book, but in a good way. After the mostly successful mission […]



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