Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

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I’m a librarian, and I feel like I’m living in resistance to a patriarchal dystopia, so when I came across UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED, a book that touts itself as a story of librarians working in resistance to a patriarchal dystopia but IN AN OLD WEST REVIVAL (derogatory), I decided it was both close enough and far away enough to merit a read. Esther is the daughter of a powerful political man, and has been raised to be a proper daughter of one: she’s betrothed to […]

Red for Murder

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

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When She Woke, by Hillary Jordan, is a work of speculative fiction, that I imagine feels far less speculative today than when it was published in 2011. The author doesn’t specify the year of our Lord in which this novel takes place, but it’s definitely in the future. Los Angeles has been nuked to filth. There are water wars in Northern Africa. There are “National Identity Cards” which allow the government to monitor and track citizenry. And there was a “superclap” pandemic which did nothing […]

Life, uhh, finds a way. – The Divine Jeff

Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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I requested Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Green City Wars because I was intrigued by the premise – Philip Marlow meets Redwall with a raccoon private investigator. This is not an inaccurate description. BUT! It’s Phillip Marlow meets Redwall written by Adrian Tchaikovsky. When I understood the premise of the world in Green City Wars, I had to lie down for a bit. It is so deeply dystopian. The humans have created what may be a utopia for themselves, and to achieve it, they’ve bio-engineered small animals, amphibians, […]

Apocalypse (S)now – The End of the World at the end of the world

Moon on the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

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There’s a moment in the ’90s movie Independence Day where the Americans lead the charge against the alien invaders by rallying the various nations of the world together. In its rally-raising way, you can almost see the cultural change that came in the following decades. The move away from the centering of Western perspectives to a blend of voices which better represent the world as it is that’s still happening. This book feels like it’s sitting in that ’90s apocalypse window, where the enemy was […]

“It was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them.”

Shift (Silo #2) by Hugh Howey

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It has been a few years since I read the first book of this series, Wool, but I was very excited to return to Howey’s dystopian world, of people living in a silo, with many unanswered quesitons about how humanity got to this point, and what exactly is wrong with the world outside. I was ready to pick back up where book one ended, but was in for a bit of a surprise. In fact, I was quite disappointed, because I DESPERATELY wanted to see […]

I think I’m done with dystopian fiction for a while

Julia by Sandra Newman

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Dystopian fiction feels very much of the zeitgeist. It’s certainly understandable as some corners of the world get darker and even the brighter ones seem dimmer. Dominant systems are pushing back on the shrinking of their legitimacy, attempting to put the top back on the Pandora’s box of equality and fairer economic systems. This retelling of Orwell’s 1984 from Julia’s perspective is very much in that vein, a misogytopia. Like a lot of men, I like Orwell. Well, more correct to say liked than like. In […]



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