Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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How many Beauty and the Beast retellings can I get through? Many

When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James

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I enjoy these fairy tale retellings quite a bit! There’s something very Georgette Heyer about the way that Eloisa James writes dialogue, in the exact vein of my favorite works of hers (The Grand Sophy*, Cotillion). All heroines are sparkling wits (and may or may not be beauties) who clash verbal swords with broody male leads and/or secondary characters (conservative ladies who hold the keys to Almack’s, clearly unsuited secondary male leads). Not everything is the same, of course–both of these novels take place in foreboding castles far […]

I found this dull, and won’t be continuing the series.

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns (Rise of the Empress, #1) by Julie C. Dao

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Honestly not sure I can milk 250 words out of this one. Forest of a Thousand Lanterns didn’t really spark my attention back when it first came out, but when Read Harder wanted me to read a retelling by an author of color, this was on one of the lists I looked at, and picking YA fantasy seemed a good idea at the time. And honestly, it wasn’t bad, I just didn’t find it interesting, at all. It doesn’t help that I didn’t realize this […]

I liked this more on re-read in some ways, and a lot less in others.

Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman

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The first time I read this I wasn’t very well-versed in comics, in the Marvel universe in particular, or in Gaiman’s work. There was barely an MCU in 2011. The First Avenger would be released three months later. 1602 was an okay read for me at the time, but I remembered almost nothing about it before picking it up again. I definitely liked it more this time, and got more out of it, but there was some stuff that was sort of perplexing and things […]

Third time through liked this just as much.

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi

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It was interesting to read this after finally having read Little Fuzzy, the original novel Scalzi reimagined, that forms the basis of the story of this book. They were essentially the same story, but had key differences that made them entirely different reading experiences. Scalzi’s version of the story is much less sweet, for one. It’s much more anti-capitalist, though I wouldn’t quite say anti-colonial, and it’s less about answering the central question of “What is sapience?” and more about how the Fuzzys find a […]

“Gully Foyle is my name, and Terra is my nation. Deep space is my dwelling place, and death’s my destination.”

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

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I did a little mini-binge of classic sf books at the end of February, and this one (which I’ve owned in audio for ages) was the first up. It’s also the one I’m the least sure about. The Stars My Destination is considered one of the most important works of sf, and Bester is nearly always mentioned in talks about the masters of the genre. This was the first book I’ve read by him, and his most well-known (although his other well-known book, The Demolished […]

Needed to be More Twisted

A Whole New World by Liz Braswell

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Well this one was a letdown. I read the twisted tales about Beauty and the Beast and loved how that was set up. This one takes a look at Aladdin and Jasmine and what would have happened if Jafar got to use the lamp and have Genie grant him wishes. I think the biggest problem is that none of the characters feels very developed. There seems to be a side plot with the introduction of two characters (Duban and Morgiana) that held more promise than […]



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