Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A boy, his canoe, and the beginning

The Book of Dust Vol. 1 : La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

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I quickly and deeply fell in love with Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy.  The ending of the third book has me in tears each time I read it.  However, when I heard that he was writing a prequel with Lyra “at the centre of the story”,  I rolled my eyes.  We already have three books where she is a main character.  How much could have happened to her before the start of The Golden Compass?  Then last year a fellow Cannonballer warmly reviewed it (apologies, […]

Wonderful mental health discussion in super hero comic aimed at young girls

DC Super Hero Girls: Out of the Bottle by Shea Fontana (author), Marchelo DiChiara (illustrator), Agnes Garbowska (illustrator)

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For those unfamiliar with the DC Super Hero Girls franchise the concept is that many classic DC comics characters are teenagers attending Super Hero High School, focusing on the female supers.  Another neat twist is that villains aren’t villains yet, they might be morally flexible but they are still overall more good than bad.  My eleven and seven year old daughters have been fans for several years now.  They have watched the animated shows and movies, and read two of the chapter books, but only […]

Still has exciting steampunk aerial combat but doesn’t recapture the joy of the first book

Arabella the Traitor of Mars: The Adventures of Arabella Ashby by David D. Levine

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“The Adventures of Arabella Ashby” series starts off with a bang in Arabella of Mars. The second book, Arabella and the Battle of Venus, was not as ‘romantic and dashing’ as the first.  The third, Arabella the Traitor of Mars, is a good conclusion to Arabella’s story but it doesn’t have the spark of the first book. I mentally groaned when the book started with Arabella and Captain Singh on Earth but then Arabella, once again, needs to race to the other side of the solar system, in as […]

How long ’til black future month?

How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin

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I picked this book up purely on the strength of my love for N.K. Jemisin.  I’m generally not a fan of the short story format.  The only short story collections I’ve read cover to cover are the ones written by Neil Gaiman, who is very high on my favorite author list.  N.K. Jemisin is an incredible author who creates fantastic worlds so I anticipated enjoying the book, but I was blown away at how her short fiction thoroughly engaged me in a way that the […]

Just as outstanding as the first book, now I need to seek out The Lady Astronaut short stories

The Fated Sky: A Lady Astronaut Novel by Mary Robinette Kowal

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Fun fact, Robinette is not part of her last name and while it sits in the middle of her name it isn’t technically a middle name either.  She is Mary Robinette, and that is how she prefers to be called.  Both Mary and Robinette are in honor of her grandmothers.  It is not uncommon to find her books misshelved due to this misunderstanding.   The Fated Sky is the second book in the Lady Astronaut duolgy that started with The Calculating Stars.  The alternate timeline Kowal created has […]

Overall an amazing alternate history but what I really appreciated was the portrayal of the main character’s anxiety

The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel by Mary Robinette Kowal

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Mary Robinette Kowal seems to lean towards alternate history in her speculative fiction writing.  The Glamourist Histories re-imagines the regency era with illusion magic.  Ghost Talkers creates a WWII in which spiritual mediums talk to recently dead soldiers to get information on battles.  In The Lady Astronaut novels, Kowal has dreamed up an alternate timeline where a gigantic meteorite strikes the Atlantic just off the East coast of the United States in 1952, destroying much of the Eastern seaboard and annihilating most of the US government.  Recovering from […]



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