Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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An Increasingly Unhinged Collection of Stream of Consciously Annotated Reviews Part 3

Witch King by Martha Wells

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby

The Searcher by Tana French

Beach Read by Emily Henry

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Book 11: Witch King by Martha Wells Rough Review: I really wanted to like this one. As yet another big fan of Murderbot, I trust Martha Wells’ character creation and storytelling abilities, and was looking forward to seeing what she could do with a fantasy world, but it was hard for me to connect to this one. Other than Bashasa, who is not a main character, I wasn’t particularly interested in anyone here. Despite the whole book being from his POV, I never felt like I got […]

“I know, I said, if the humans were dead, who would make the media?”

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

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Murderbot is back and we pick up the story not long after the end of the first. They are sort of on the lam, in that their new owners did expressly tell them they could do what they wanted, but they have also chosen not to go to a planetary system where they have personhood, so out here in these streets, they’re just a rogue security unit with a minor history of mass murder running around humans. Today’s plan is simple – figure out whether […]

“I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way more than I liked real ones, but you can’t have one without the other.”

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

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Murderbot, a beloved science fiction series, is now finally available at my local public library. So obviously, I started reading it and yes it makes perfect sense why everyone loves it so much. Plot: Our hero is a part mechanical, part organic machine owned by a company that leases it out as part of overpriced security packages for corporations interested in planetary surveying activities. They have no name, but have taken on the moniker of Murderbot, at least in their own head (motherboard?). They are […]

Who Doesn’t Love a Killer Robot?

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

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Despite having heard good things about Martha Wells’ award-winning Murderbot Diaries, I had never managed to pick up one of the books. Then Alexander Skarsgard decided to star as the aforementioned killer robot for the Apple TV show based on the series, and while desperately waiting each week for a new episode to drop decided I had to spoil myself a bit and read the first book. Oh. My. God. What a delightfully unhinged little story this was! SecUnit is a company-issued security robot that […]

Please, Re-read the Previous Book First

Queen Demon by Martha Wells

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So, I did mention I had more than one Martha Wells book to attend to today, and this is the tricker one to write about. I read Witch King  earlier this year, and while I very much liked it, there were, I thought, some notable flaws. Witch King had a dual narrative, with each of the two branches separated by over fifty years. And within these fifty years, there have been some significant political changes that are sometimes a little hard to grasp because of […]

A Fragment of Murderbot

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy by Martha Wells

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OK, I’m going for a Martha Wells two-fer today. And I’m going to start of with the shorter story. I have to give mu thanks to  faintingviolet here because if I hadn’t read their review, I would not have known this had been released.  And I thought I kept up pretty well with most things related to Murderbot But even though this short story is, well, short, (a fragment of a story even)  it made me very happy because it focuses of Peri/ART. Told from […]



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