Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A mystery on the moon.

The Relentless Moon (Lady Astronaut, #3) by Mary Robinette Kowal

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This is my favorite of these books so far, but I will admit that there is just something about Kowal’s writing that doesn’t perfectly gel with my tastes. I’m curious enough to keep going to see how this series turns out, but I may need to rethink reading any more of her books (I also was pretty unenthused about the first book in her fantasy-Austen-pastiche series). We switch narrators from Elma York (who is on her way to Mars during the course of this book) […]

For someone who said back in February they didn’t like sci-fi, I sure as hell am reading an awful lot of sci-fi

The Original by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal

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I have to confess I picked this book to read just because I was having a hard time finding a book with a cityscape on the cover. And this cityscape might be a little stylized, but there’s a reason for that and I’ll get into it, but let’s take a moment to celebrate Book Bingo incentivizing me to read. Hooray. The Original is a novella that was produced specifically to be launched as an audiobook, and I honestly love that concept. While I don’t think […]

The Relentless Moon- Otherwise Known As I Totally Get Why This Series Keeps Getting Nominated for Hugos

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

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The Lady Astronaut series is based around a very simple concept- Shortly after President Thomas Dewey leads the United States to victory in the space race in 1952, a meteorite strikes the Chesapeake Bay, obliterating most of the Eastern Seaboard. In the aftermath, mathematician and former WASP pilot Elma York calculates that the resulting climate change will make the planet uninhabitable within 50 years. This threat accelerates efforts to colonize space and leads to Elma joining the International Aerospace Coalition in its attempt to reach, first the Moon, then Mars. The rest of the series is about […]

An Alternate Space Race Timeline

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

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The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal My rating: 4 of 5 stars “The Calculating Stars” is set in an alternate 1950’s in which a meteor hits the Atlantic not far off the coast of D.C. this creates a set of events in which the space race is not just a mater of furthering science but of human survival. The planet is no longer stable and creating colonies on the Moon and Mars are necessary. This also means that women are also going to be […]

Two powerhouses of speculative fiction do not necessarily equal a great story.

The Original by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal

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I could’ve sworn I’d already reviewed this novel, but I apparently haven’t. I read it about a month ago, and I barely remember it. Because of that, I had to look up the plot write-up on Amazon: “In the near future, humans choose life – for a price. Injectable nanite technology is the lifeblood that flows through every individual wishing to experience the world through the lens of their own theme. While death from mortal wounds is still possible, life is made easier in a […]

I thought this one was better than the first.

The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut, #2) by Mary Robinette Kowal

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So I never actually wrote a review of the first book in this series. I review-amnestied it late last year, in the 40+ reviews I just gave up on because I let my review backlog get Out Of Control. We read this for my IRL book club, and we were all excited to read about lady astronauts doing science and winning against misogyny, but all of us had very mixed feelings about it. I flew through the book, but also had problems with it at […]



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