Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I Finally Got There—I Finally Read Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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Caution, mild spoilers ahead. I have tried not to explain too much beyond the blurb in this review, but I don’t think I can talk about Project Hail Mary properly without pulling back the curtain—just a little—on one of the major plot points. It probably won’t be a huge deal as this book has been out a while, and I suspect most people are probably already conscious of the little point I want to reveal, even if they haven’t read the book. But I just […]

But the Habits of Memory Created All Kinds of False Harbours.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

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Good Lord, I got all excited over the bingo thing, and wouldn’t you know it, I get hammered by work commitments! So it looks like this year I’ll be posting bingo-reviews late, and my reviews for the Hugo Best Novel noms after I voted   Oh well, oh well.   A Desolation Called Peace was one of those books up for the Hugo Award for Best Novel this year. And just like A Memory Called Empire before it, I think it’ll take home the top gong. […]

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 […]

“We’re both exiles, she’d thought, right then, and had hated herself for thinking it. She’d been gone a few months. She had no right to the name. She was home. She wasn’t, and she knew it. (There was no such place any longer.)”

A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2) by Arkady Martine

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What a great series, top to bottom. I don’t even want to talk about it. (Or, I want to talk about it for five hours straight.) I kind of already want to re-read. If you like science fiction, this is a must read. It’s so self-assured, so smart, so well put together, so full of heart and yet also full of thinking. It’s so hard to find an author who can stimulate both my thinking brain and my feeling brain, and Arkady Martine is a […]

A lot of characters to follow, three plots, and wondering if or when it will all make sense

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

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It took me way longer to really get into A Desolation Called Peace than it did A Memory Called Empire. Part of the problem in A Desolation Called Peace is that there are too many different groups and places that take almost ¾ of the novel to really come together. I get that that is a technique for suspense, but it doesn’t work terribly well here, especially when Mahit’s thread has so little to do with everything else which actually does eventually connect. It feels […]

An intriguing but ultimately disappointing take on aliens coming to Earth

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

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This was such a cool idea! Aliens land in the ocean outside Lagos, and basically start granting wishes to sea creatures. This swordfish wants to be enormous? Done. This eel thing wants to be able to fly? Done. Then the aliens come ashore and are basically like “Yo, earthlings, we’re here, we plan to stay, there’s nothing you can do about it, hi!” No nefarious plots, no interstellar war, no kidnapping humans for experiments. The main alien ambassador chooses three humans to be her representatives, […]



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