Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The President has an Academy Award and Who’s the Prime Minister of England?

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

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So it turns out that you can have a decent Laundry Files novel without Bob Howard as central figure; The Labyrinth Index follows Bob’s colleague Mhari Murphy who was turned into a vampire in a previous novel (one I haven’t read) thanks to a computer program/advanced math/parasite infection thing. It turns out that England is now under the control of new Prime Minister N’yar Lat-Hotep, although he doesn’t use that name with the general public. Mhari though being formerly of the Laundry which now goes […]

If you need an entire glossary of acronyms and jargon, you may have a little problem

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

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The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files 1) is one of those titles that just kept popping up on my radar, and then when it went on Kindle sale I figured, that was the time. The premise is a cross between Office Space and X-Files, kind of like a supernatural NCIS kind of way. Our protagonist is Bob Howard, an IT done of the corporate variety on the surface, but who in reality works for a secret government agency specializing in protection against magic and the supernatural […]

They would have gotten away with it too…

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

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CBR13 Bingo: Book Club (the July selection of my fantasy/sci-fi book club here in Oslo. I read it in early June) Official book description: The surviving members of a forgotten teenage detective club (and their dog) must reunite as broken adults to finally solve the terrifying case that ruined them all and sent the wrong man to prison. Scooby Doo and the gang never had to do this! 1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small […]

Delightfully unsettling, Lovecraftian adventure

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

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What a journey this book was… This year, I’m trying to branch out and read in different genres and modes, and this book is definitely something that I wouldn’t have picked up before.  The Hollow Places follows Kara (sometimes called Carrot) who moves in with her uncle to help him run his Museum of Wonders after her divorce. It’s a convenient arrangement for each of them as Kara avoids moving in with her mother – whom she loves, but wouldn’t love living with – and […]

Using Lovecraft Against Himself

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

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I have to admit: I tried to read N. K. Jemisin’s Fifth Season but had to put it down. The world and premise was good, but something about the style bothered me. I then picked up The City We Became which has an equally interesting premise. I still had some issues with the style, but I did manage to finish it. The City We Became is set in a world where major cities eventually develop avatars, people who represent the spirit of that place incarnate. […]

Now that’s how you reclaim a narrative

Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

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You can’t escape Lovecraft’s influence if you, like I, read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/horror. But until now, I had never read any of Lovecraft’s works directly just interpretations of them by authors like Neil Gaiman. I was aware that he is considered problematic due to racist beliefs that even for his time were extreme but I wasn’t sure how much of that bled into his actual work. Well, thanks to my book club I got to find out firsthand. Our assignment this month was to […]



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