Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

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The first of the Southern Reach Trilogy is probably very familiar to most Cannonballers, so I won’t spend too long summarizing. A group of four women experts are sent in to investigate Area X, an environmental anomaly that has subsumed and remade a section of coast and wilderness and seems to be expanding. Theirs is the latest in a string of failed expeditions, after previous groups of men have either never returned, or come back changed. The women are given no names, only titles, and […]

Get lured in by the world-building, stay for the intersectional dissection of oppression

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

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“The point is what you do when you don’t have the details. Do you interrogate? Do you examine? Or do you settle for the obvious answer?” Most people don’t deeply question (cough, Kanye, cough) why enslaved people “allowed” themselves to remain enslaved. But most of us also don’t dwell deeply on what systematic physical and psychological trauma would be needed to keep a whole class of people oppressed and how that trauma may ripple out generationally. And why would we? Envisioning something like that is […]

“… these are the differences that determine the fate of the universe.”

Last Day on Mars by Kevin Emerson

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In the year 2213, Earth no longer exists. Mysteriously, the sun began expanding in size, approaching supernova phase far far earlier than it should.  Humanity was prepared, having developed the plans and ability to colonize Mars briefly, before regrouping on a distant star with Earth-like qualities. By now, most humans have begun the 150 year journey to this new star, and a select few remain behind on Mars to finish terraforming and collect data to ensure the trip to our new home goes smoothly.  Liam […]

Agony and Relief: Birth Order as Curse

Secondborn by Amy A. Bartol

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“It’s no good hating them. They can’t feel it, and it will only make you bitter.” — p. unknown  

What are you worth?

84K by Claire North

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Theo is an average citizen in a fairly average dystopia. You know the kind: human rights violations are normal, everyone is scared, and the government wields unilateral power with virtually no opposition; or, to be more accurate, The Company (a mega corp) runs the government, which wields power with virtually no opposition. Everyday, Theo gets up, goes to work, calculates the financial costs of crimes to society, slaps a bill on the perpetrator, bothers absolutely no one, stands up not even for himself (to the […]

Where have I seen this plot before?!?!

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

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Stop me if you’ve hear this before: mysterious giant metallic objects, robot/sculptures in this this case, suddenly appear all over the world and humanity at first freaks out, then adjusts. Upon further study, the unknowable objects, named Carls here, are revealed to have impossible properties, and thus maybe are not from Earth. Cue alien invasion debate/panic. A hero, April May in this case, who likely had something to do with the first contact believes that the Carls are not threatening, and works to figure out […]



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