Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Chaotic Orbits? Yes, Please!

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth Revis

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After seeing Beth Revis talk about mocking a particular billionaire in her new sci-fi heist series, I saw that the Audible sale made it very very affordable. So I bought it, listened to it, and then bought the second book on sale, too. Sadly, the third book, Last Chance to Save the World, isn’t out until April. The story is great. The primary narrator, Dara Rosenberg, is a delight. The secondary narrator, David Bendena perfectly expresses his character’s frustration in each book’s epilogue. I highly […]

A cozy sff mystery novella that is set in the future but feels like it’s set in the past.

The Mimicking of Known Successes (Mossa and Pleiti, #1) by Malka Older

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 4 Book 27/30 This was really good! I loved the vibes and the writing and the setting. Definitely reading book two. I’m honestly surprised how much I liked this. It’s really hard to find great, vibesy sci-fi these days. A lot of sff authors go for the colder, more depressing, gritty machine-like futures, I think forgetting that humans like to be COMFY. Even though this book is set after humans have colonized Jupiter (of all places); the humans here […]

Why have just one epilogue when you can have four sweet, silly, and sexy vignettes instead?

Green but for a Season (Captive Prince Short Stories, #1) by C.S. Pacat

The Summer Palace (Captive Prince Short Stories #2) by C.S. Pacat

The Adventures of Charls, the Veretian Cloth Merchant (Captive Prince Short Stories, #3) by C.S. Pacat

Pet (Captive Prince Short Stories, #4) by C.S. Pacat

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“Believe you’d make it back to Akielos? Yes. I did. You were a force of nature. It was infuriating to fight you. Frightening to have you on my side.’ ‘Frightening?’ ‘You didn’t know how afraid I was of you?’ ‘Of me? Or of yourself?’ ‘Of what was happening between us.” ― C.S. Pacat, The Summer Palace This is a collection of short stories that took place during and immediately after the conclusion of the Captive Prince trilogy. Green but for a Season (Captive Prince Short […]

“There is nothing wrong with being a monster.”

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

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?????? It’s been weeks now and I still don’t know what to make of this one. A very dark and weird take on The Little Mermaid story, with a cheeky little nod to Hans Christian Andersen even; mostly this was an exercise in imagery and I didn’t connect to the characters, but I can’t deny it has style. The mermaid here was essentially stolen from the sea, forced to marry a prince, had her tongue cut out, and then gave birth to daughters who then […]

A trippy, atmospheric sci-fi haunted house.

Rose/House by Arkady Martine

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“I am Rose House, entire, and have never been anything else. I am not lonely. I do not wish to be a companion of elsewheres.” This was so atmospheric and a pleasure to read, even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand half of what was going on. The main conceit here is that this is a sci-fi take on a haunted house, where the haunt is an A.I. that IS the house, not that inhabits the house or was installed there, but is in […]

“‘I’m all right,’ I told her. This is a lie, when you’re twelve. And all the other years, too.”

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

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A lot happened in this short book; it feels much larger in my brain than 108 pages. It’s always a challenge to talk about novellas without giving too much away, but I feel like that’s not going to be the case here. Mapping the Interior is pretty dense with both happenings and themes, despite the deceptively readable prose. Junior has moved away from the Blackfeet Reservation with his mother and younger brother Dino, after his father’s death. His mother wanted to give the boys a fresh start. […]



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