Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


I expected too much from this one.

Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron, #1) by Alexander Freed

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I was disappointed in this one, considering how much I’ve enjoyed Freed’s other Star Wars stuff. Up until I read this book, I might have even told you he was the most talented Star Wars writer working today (Claudia Gray being a very close second). His Rogue One novelization was a piece of art. The short story he wrote for A Certain Point of View was extremely poignant. But Alphabet Squadron was just okay. There was really nothing special about it at all. Maybe I […]

Poetry and Politics Can Be Interesting

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

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I am starting to wonder if my local library hasn’t hired someone new in charge of new purchases who might not be my reading twin. The library has suddenly started getting in new books that I personally want to read not long after they are published. A Memory Called Empire is among those titles. The premise is pretty normal sounding: a new ambassador to the capital of the Teixcalaanli Empire (which spans planets and systems) arrives at her new job to discover that her predecessor […]

A place to belong

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

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You guys, these books. I really, really liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. It made me deliriously happy with the intricate character profiles, the worldbuilding, the way I felt like I was among friends almost from the start of the story. I didn’t want to leave the Wayfarer. And I knew the second book — this book — was going to do that, leave the Wayfarer, and journey off with Pepper and Blue to Port Coriol. And I’d met them already and […]

After I finished this book, I needed a nap, a hug, and a warm plate of brownies.

Death's End (Remembrance of Earth's Past, #3) by Cixin Liu, transl. by Ken Liu

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Whoa, Nelly, I have such mixed feelings about this book. Part of me wants to give it five stars for sheer scope and ballsiness, and the magnitude of the ideas he’s working with here. (Also, Ken Liu is back as the English translator, and I vastly prefer his work to the guy who did book two.) The other part of me wants to plant my feet in the middle of the room, cross my arms, and just bellow the word “NO” into the air so […]

This only made me want book nine more. But still no release date.

Auberon (The Expanse, #8.5) by James S.A. Corey

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As with all of these Expanse novellas, I had a bit of a hard time getting into it (new characters, new setting, very discombobulating), but it had me by the end. Auberon was published after the eighth book, but it takes place right after book seven, when Duarte’s empire is just getting started. The Laconians have installed a brand new Governor on Auberon, one of the many colonized worlds of the gate system that will be instrumental in feeding the empire, and he’s our main POV […]

Space Opera Done Fantastic

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

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You guys, I really, really liked this book. Let’s start off there. It combines what I loved in the first parts of The Expanse series with Star Trek, stirs in the best bits of Firefly, and then adds a bunch of its own stuff. It’s very good. If that’s all you need to get you started, then go forthwith and devour at the next available opportunity. But I can’t get away with that little of a review, and I don’t really want to anyway, so […]



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