Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Classic space opera with sexy times

Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik

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Polaris Rising came on my radar thanks to Instagram Cannonballer Lanezabel recommending it.  I put it on my suggestion list for the Cannonball book exchange and special thank you to Bothari43 for gifting it! Polaris Rising has a classic space opera set up, three powerful ruling houses over see the Royal Consortium.  Each house is always on the hunt for ways to exploit the others and gain greater control of the galaxy.  House members are used as political pieces and accorded extraordinary protections due to the […]

Vital piece of an important literary legacy

Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks

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Iain (M) Banks is one, or should I say two, of my favourite authors.  It’s been a while since I read any of his Culture novels, so I went back to the beginning with Consider Phlebas, the first in a series of standalone novels in this shared setting.  If you are not familiar with Banks, this is a great place to start. The Culture is a galaxy spanning symbiotic civilisation of humans and sentient machines, living decadent post-scarcity lives.  Consider Phlebas is set during their war […]

Varied Love in Space

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

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Bingo Review 5: Cannonballer Says Still going totally out of order from the plan, and there is/was a written out plan, but this time it’s because of the timing of something coming into my local library. Anyways, I decided to request The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet because it had been an option for the June 2020 bookclub (also apparently in 2018) and some of the discussion comments made it sound interesting. It’s gotten somewhat mixed reviews by Cannonballers, but at least one […]

“We should be focused on saving the Interdependency from collapse. Instead we’re playing palace intrigues. It’s pointless. It’s wasteful. And it’s going to end in our ruin.”

The Last Emperox (The Interdependency, #3) by John Scalzi

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A good ending to the series. This hasn’t been my favorite of Scalzi’s series (I still hold a very fond place in my heart for Old Man’s War), but it was overall a great read. It also takes his usual smart-ass style and amps it up to a thousand. The tongue-in-cheek tone makes for a nice contrast with the serious subject matter, and makes it so that when a character is doing something serious, you feel it more than maybe you would otherwise. I’ve been […]

What It Is to Be Human

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

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I’m going to assume that the reader of this review has already read the first two books in Chambers’ Wayfarer series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit). While there’s nothing specifically barring you from starting with this book, you’ll get a much better idea of the larger world if you start at the beginning. Well, I did it. I finished the series, despite really not wanting to. I hear that a new book is possibly on the way […]

“A hero does not choose her trials. She steps into the darkness, then she faces what comes next.”

Starsight (Skyward, #2) by Brandon Sanderson

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Look, I don’t know how he keeps doing this! My first impulse upon finishing Starsight was to give it five stars, but I’m glad I held off just because I want to really preserve the sanctity of that five-star rating, so people know I mean business when I do use it. It’s been a month since I finished this book, and it’s faded a bit in my memory since, and now that the book high is gone, 4.5 stars rounded down to four does seem […]



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