Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Science Teacher Goes to Space

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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I read this in a family book club with my 10 year old and then watched the movie. I have thoughts on both!  If you don’t know, here’s the short summary: Dr. Ryland Grace wakes up alone in a spaceship. As he figures out what is going on around him, using science and math skills that he hasn’t forgotten, he gradually recalls memories of who/what/when/why he got up there in the first place. Turns out that he’s there on a mission to save Earth from […]

A Theory of Dinniman Sucess

Operation: Bounce House by Matt Dinniman

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I have read 7 of the 8 currently available Dungeon Crawl Carl books so far, but it took me until Operation: Bounce House to figure out how to describe what I’ve read of Matt Dinniman in terms of genre. Operation Bounce House is not part of the Carl series; it’s a stand-alone, with different cast and different universe, but also some distinct similarities including genre and general tone. The premise is still conventional sci-fi: human colonists of New Sonora are mostly farmers who, with the […]

Closing Some Doors, Some Still Open

This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman

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Capture the flag is now the name of the game in This Inevitable Ruin aka Dungeon Crawl Carl 7, or really more like capture the enemy castles and hold the throne rooms, and probably also kill all members of the enemy group. This is also the Faction Wars part, meaning that some of the other teams actually are from outside the dungeon, and are paying to participate. A lot of the outside groups are now eligible to directly participate, and several do. There’s an interesting […]

A Pokemon-Magic-Yugi-Oh Mishmash

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman

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The Eye of the Bedlam Bride one the one hand takes on the geek card game as its general dungeon challenge (it’s a cross between Magic the Gathering and Yugi-Oh, with a hint of morbid Pokemon, kinda), and on the other it’s set on sort of a ghost Earth, making it a chance for some significant backstory as well as possible foreshadowing. If it wasn’t clear already, the game-master AI is also becoming more of an element of the story, which could both be the […]

I don’t think I’d want to be trapped in a giant empanada

Shrunkation by Janine Amesta

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3.5 stars This was an ARC I received from the author, Janine Amesta. My opinions are my own. Catalina and Trey’s marriage is in trouble. Catalina is exhausted from her demanding work, nearing burnout, and incapable of forgetting some foolish and hurtful things Trey said to her months ago. She’s feeling unappreciated and ignored, not to mention misunderstood. Trey knows that he screwed up, but he thinks all they need is some quality time together. He won a weekend stay at a luxury resort in […]

Three sci-fi books making me think about robots and AI

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

Rose/House by Arkady Martine

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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The end of January to the very beginning of March has had the good fortune to have three excellent books looking at robots, AI, sentience, autonomy, finding meaning, and limitations on the flawed way humanity has programmed robots/AI.  While setting up this post, I just realized all the author’s first name start with A.  Huh, kind of interesting. First up was a novella by Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle.  This is the most fun and lighthearted of the bunch.  It is the year 2064, a few years […]



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