Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Holiday Roundup

A Short Stay in Hell by Stephen L. Peck

System Collapse (Murderbot #7) by Martha Wells

Tough Guy (Game Changers #4) by Rachel Reid

Flesh by David Szalay

The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

Last One Out by Jane Harper

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Here’s what I read while I was camping in France. It was very hot. I may have melted a few times. It was way too hot for complicated stuff, so for unrelated reasons: here’s a picture of a hotel that’s for sale in the charming, medieval town of Brancion in the Bourgogne for anyone contemplating a career change. Say hi to the former caretaker’s wife; she was very friendly.  Anyway, here’s what I read.  A Short Stay in Hell (Stephen L. Peck) **** A man, […]

“I’m done, I’m so done. I would rather fight a CombatBot than spend another hour on this fucking torus.”

Platform Decay: Murderbot Diaries Book 8 by Martha Wells

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Never have I wanted so much for someone to give an old lady a gun. One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve read my way through the newer Murderbot releases is that while there are some overreaching plot threads, the best thing about the series is watching SecUnit slowly improving how it interacts with others as it keeps on being thrown into new situations with new people. Note that I am reluctant to use the term social skills here; I would still not call […]

“For a being as sophisticated as you are, it is baffling how little understanding you have of the composition of your own mind.”

Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #5) by Martha Wells

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Reviewing a re-read is always a bit of a stumper for me, and even though I’ve been systematically making my way through re-reading the Murderbot books over the past couple of years the idea of trying to have something new to say about Network Effect is a bit daunting. Even though it has been over four and a half years (ouch) since I last read this book it was still fresh in my mind’s eye, there was very little that I didn’t remember from last time. But there were things that flowed much easier for […]

My Second Tove Jansson and the Newest Murderbot

Platform Decay by Martha Wells

Fair Play by Tove Jansson

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Platform Decay by Martha Wells At this point, the Murderbot books are basically comfort reads. If you’ve read enough of them, you have a general idea of what’s going to happen and how things will end up, always accompanied by a healthy dose of snark and sarcasm from Murderbot. In this one, we start off with Murderbot tagging along with Three, another “rogue” SecUnit, at the start of a rescue mission. Said rescue mission goes awry pretty quickly, because this is a Murderbot book. At this point […]

“Emotion check: Having someone else support your bad decisions feels kind of good”

Platform Decay: Murderbot Diaries Book 8 by Martha Wells

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This latest Murderbot installment is short (150 pages) but full of the snark and excitement one has come to expect from the series. It is missing the usual cast of characters (including my favorite ART) but it introduces some new ones and of course focuses on everyone’s favorite SecUnit. The action of Platform Decay occurs on a torus, that is, a space station ring surrounding a decaying planet. The torus is man-made and contains a variety of biomes, mining and farming zones, habitation areas and […]

“I didn’t need any help getting angry, I was great at that on my own.”

Platform Decay by Martha Wells

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Monthly Keyword 26: Decay Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on May 5th, 2026. Murderbot (who has installed a mental health module now, and keeps doing Emotion checks on itself) is on a rescue mission on a large artificial planet controlled mostly by Barish-Estranza. What starts out as needing to find and escort three people from the hostile territory becomes a lot more complicated when Murderbot is forced to agree to locate […]



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