Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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I’m No Hero . . . I’m More of a Last Resort

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

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“But I’m no hero. I’m more of a last resort, a scorched-earth policy. I’m the person you hire when the heroes have already come home in body bags” (2). There’s nothing like the feeling when you discover the first book in a series and it hits all your readerly buttons.  I was pretty sure I was going to like Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse when I read about it—searching for women Native American authors to support (in the aftermath of the Sherman Alexie scandal.)  […]

Heckin’ Yes – The Power

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Post-apocalyptic fiction is my my favorite genre. I am also on a kick of reading rocking female authors. Also, I love Margaret Atwood, and she mentored Alderman and has mentioned this book as one to read. Soooo, post-apocalyptic fiction with Margaret Atwood’s seal of approval should be a slam dunk for my tastes, and oh, it certainly was. In Alderman’s world, “the power” is a muscle across the collarbone of young women that allows them to send out electric shocks to animal, vegetable, or mineral. […]

Classic King – not for the faint of heart

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I adore post-apocalyptic literature and have read many of the Stephen King biggies (The Shining, Misery, Carrie, Pet Cemetary, It, Salem’s Lot, Christine, Needful Things, Thinner) so not sure why I hadn’t read The Stand but I think the size of the volume probably had something to do with it. At 1153 pages The Stand is less a hobby and moreso a lifestyle choice. His fifth book, written in 1978, it was definitely a blast from the past. I snagged the copy held for me at […]

Promising Series Start with Some of the Usual First Book Challenges

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For Two Heads Are Better Than One, emmalita and Jen K chose to read and review Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning, the first in The Sixth World series.  In order to make this simpler, we are pulling the Amazon description for the plot summary, and then going into our thoughts below that!

It’s the end of the world as we know it….

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In Toronto, Ontario paramedic-in-training Jeevan Chaudhary is sitting in the audience watching a production of King Lear when the lead suddenly drops dead onstage. Unable to save him, Chaudhary comforts a young actress as the body is taken away. This is Year Zero. In Year Twenty, Kirsten Raymonde is a member of the Travelling Symphony – a group of actors and musicians who travel around the Great Lakes performing classical music and Shakespeare. The colonies they visit sprung up after the Georgia Flu wiped out […]

Like revisiting an (alarming, homicidal) old friend

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This isn’t exactly a sequel, but takes place at roughly the same time and in the same world as the phenomenal The Girl With All the Gifts. A terrible fungus has been released on the world, turning all who are exposed into “hungries” – basically zombies. The survivors have banded together, and a crew of scientists and soldiers sets out into the post-apocalyptic mayhem to gather samples, reconnoiter, and look for a solution. We follow this crew on their journey: a pregnant scientist (Rina Khan), […]



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