Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A tale of two parallel expeditions

Queen Demon by Martha Wells

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Bingo Square: Culture (it’s a fictional culture but so much of what drives and explains Kai is his cultural background and his status as one of the last remainders of his culture after they were victims of genocide/mass murder – he is the one who remembers the traditions and beliefs that have been lost) – also, 2nd Bingo (5th column). I absolutely adored Witch King when I read it two years ago and was excited to read this sequel. While I remembered the broad strokes […]

I struggled, but it’s still a Martha Wells book

Queen Demon by Martha Wells

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When I read and reviewed Witch King in 2023, I was hoping there would be more books in Kaiisteron’s story. I got my wish, but I flailed around for a while before I was able to sink into it. First, I realized that I needed to reread Witch King. Next, I needed to recalibrate. In a lot of fantasy series, there’s a person or entity that is the ultimate antagonist. In The Rising World series, I think the antagonist is a kind of power. I […]

Scuttlebut

Network Effect (Murderbot #5) by Martha Wells

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Murderbot is at it again. Once more, he is keeping his favourite humans (or at the very least, humans that it doesn’t hate) safe as they do exploration work. On the return, though, their ship is hijacked and dragged into a wormhole by none other than ART (short for Asshole Research Transport), Murderbot’s erstwhile friend and companion. ART is a research transport with massive computational capabilities, able to outsmart virtually everyone – so why has it been hijacked by a strange lifeform? Once again, Murderbot’s […]

Murderbot takes on a murder mystery

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

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CBR 17 BINGO: Black (see cover) I’d taken a short hiatus from reading Murderbot, but watching the Apple series put me in the mood again. Apparently it did the same for many fans, and probably generated a bunch of new ones, because when I went to my local library almost every Martha Wells novel had been checked out. Fortunately, I had plenty of other BINGO books to read while I waited for my turn to borrow Fugitive Telemetry. This time around, SecUnit is brought in […]

Sometimes I’d like to send murderbot into other books just to spice things up and see what would happen. 

Rogue Protocol (Murderbot #3) by Martha Wells

Exit Strategy (Murderbot #4) by Martha Wells

Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot #6) by Martha Wells

No One Was Supposed to Die at this Wedding by Catherine Mack

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Rogue Protocol (Murderbot #3) Exit Strategy (Murderbot #4) Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot #6) I never know what to say about these books. I like them. Are they all the same? Yeah, kind of. Is that a bad thing? No, not really. Murderbot goes places, Murderbot investigates, Murderbot is awkward around humans. It’s like a cozy mystery set in space. I liked Fugitive Telemetry most, because it’s where we get the most interaction between Murderbot, the people who know him, and those who meet him for the […]

System Collapse by Martha Wells

System Collapse by Martha Wells

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“System Collapse” picks right up with the events from “Network Effect” and Murderbot, the ART crew, and others, working together to try to figure out how to keep the Barish-Estranza corporation from trying to “own” the planet and the colonists that have been living there. This was not a bad book by any stretch, but to me there was way too much going on that I just after a while stopped trying to track what was happening to who and why. The first portion of […]



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