Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“It just goes round and round, one big circle. We’re trapped. All trapped’

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

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Warning, this review contains mild spoilers for the early parts of this book. Do you ever start reading a book and get the feeling that the author showed their hand too early? I was feeling that way when I started Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade. I had just gotten to the end of chapter two when I put the book down and thought. “Right, I think I know where we’re heading here. Hurley’s pulling a Paul Verhoeven on me. This book is going to be […]

A murder mystery in the heart of a space opera

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

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I brought this book home in March 2019.  It was Mysterious Galaxy’s featured speculative fiction hardcover pick for the month.  Over the past year this book kept getting recommended; by fellow Cannonballers, articles, and it is nominated for a Hugo award.  That nomination finally pushed A Memory Called Empire to the top of my TBR. In a normal timeline, I would have torn through this book in a matter of days.  Instead it took a few weeks.  This book pushed all the right buttons; excellent sci-fi world […]

Fascinating Premise, Frustrating Execution

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

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I’ll start with the setup: This book has a really fascinating premise. Humans have figured out cloning technology and its use is now fairly widespread. There has been unceasing civil unrest over the idea, and there are now certain rules that clones (or those looking to become clones) have to abide by, but human clones are now more or less ubiquitous. Basically when you die, a new you, at the peak of your physical form, is woken up and downloads all the memories of your […]

Sacrifices understanding for looking real smart. Mistakes complexity for depth.

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What it comes down to with this book is that the barriers to entry were too high. (I shouldn’t have to add the “for me” to that statement, but I will because other people are losing their mind over this book and it was nominated for a bunch of awards, so clearly SOMEONE gets it.) With science fiction and fantasy as a genre, certain barriers to entry are expected, even looked forward to. I always relish that feeling of confusion and displacement I get when […]

Meh, At Least It’s Short!

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I read this both because my book club assigned it for the month of April and also because I am a Hugo voter and got a free copy of it in the voting packet.  I was familiar with Anders’ work, mostly essays and some short stories, and thought this book sounded really interesting from the description.  It was a combination of magic and science, takes place in the SF Bay Area, about modern life with fantastical elements.  Sign me up! But this book kind of […]



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