Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Once upon a time I didn’t think I could write short stories.

How Long Til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin

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I was a little leery of this one for two distinct reasons. One, when an author tells us in the first pages that they don’t like or know how to write short stories…uh oh. And two, I might be one of the few people who didn’t particularly enjoy The Broken Earth (first) book(s). I might go back to them now, because I did enjoy this one. I was worried of getting my time wasted with what I misperceived as a possible dilettante attitude about short […]

Everything changes in a Season

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

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Sometimes the weight of expectation is enough to keep me from reading a book I truly want to read. Case in point: I’ve had NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season on my shelf for almost a year, even though I was sooo excited when I bought my copy. The timing was right, though, since I needed a win after a bit of a streak of so-so reads, and for the most part, this book delivered. The Fifth Season begins with a prologue that introduces the world […]

Glad I Didn’t Have to Wait After the Way Book 1 Ended!

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Bingo Square: Award Winner It’s kind of convenient when every novel in a trilogy is an award winner since it means I can keep reading the series and fill multiple squares without taking a break from Bingo! There are going to be a quite a few big spoilers for the first novel in this one since it would be a bit difficult to discuss this one too much without revealing some major plots point, and twists and turns from the earlier novel. So you know, […]

It’s All About Timing

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Bingo Square: White Whale I attempted to read this last year because it had so many rave reviews and I also felt like it was something I should read to explore more diversity in sci-fi/fantasy.  I think I put it down a few times too often because I kept losing the thread, and combined with the portions in second person, I simply couldn’t get into it. As a result, it seemed like the perfect fit for the White Whale category. It still took me a […]

There’s more than one way to be human

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A year ago at this time, in the wake of our devastating presidential election, I reviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, two treatises on racism and oppression in America. As I read N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy, it occurred to me that her novels present a perfect fictional account of the same topic. These Hugo-Award-winning stories take place in a world where racial difference leads to oppression, exploitation, and genocide. As a result of this […]

Cataclysm without, cataclysm within.

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Where I summarily review N.K. Jemisin’s excellent fantasy, The fifth season. (Read the review here)



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