Set in Victorian times, The Paper Magician adds magic based on different materials. When Ceony Twill, our plucky heroine, graduates from magic school, she is placed in an apprenticeship with a paper magician, and is not happy about it. Emery Thane is her teacher, and he shows her some interesting things to do with paper, as well as bringing stories to life (which seems a bit of a stretch) and Ceony settles into her new life quickly. She starts cooking and cleaning for Emery, and explains […]
Re-imagined Fairy Tales Are My Catnip
This is a review of all four Lunar Chronicles books: Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter. When I saw Cinder, the first book in the Lunar Chronicles, I was turned off by the cover and description. I hadn’t yet delved into fantasy YA and so I didn’t buy the series. I had a “what the heck was I thinking” moment about a month ago and bought the book. And I inhaled it, and then bought the next book and so forth until I had rapidly inhaled […]
Reading People’s Emails
5 Stars Attachments is the second Rainbow Rowell book that I’ve read this year, and while I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as Fangirl, it hit closer to home for me because up until very recently, I used to read other people’s emails for a living too, just like Lincoln, and just like him, that’s not what the was in the job description. I worked on an email records system, but sometimes it didn’t work well, and sometimes I’d have to read emails to see […]
The Second Book in a Series is Usually Meh
I read the first book in the Red Queen trilogy earlier this year. The second book in a series is usually the poorest- you need to advance the plot to a point where you can deliver a knock out ending (hopefully) and new characters are introduced to get to the point where the finale can start. It often ends on a cliffhanger. Glass Sword introduces a lot of new characters. Some of them got very little introduction before they were killed. It was hard to […]
Help Me Save Myself
Brazen is the final book in the Gilded series. It combines Korean mythology, fantasy, and thriller. I thought the third book had some horror thrown in too. The heroine, Jae Hwa, does some really smart things, does some really stupid things, and in general handles her very difficult circumstances very well. At the start of the story, she has placed herself in the hands of Kud, the god of darkness, in order to protect her loved ones. Her situation looks pretty bleak, and she needs […]
AI with Feelings
4.5 stars My goal this Cannonball is to read a bunch of sci-fi fantasy and books in general not written by white dudes. I saw that Ancillary Justice had won many awards including the Hugo and Nebula awards. It was also highly recommended by NPR Books. It tells the story of Breq, formerly the Justice of Torren, a ship that is part of the Radch Empire. The ship is controlled by a sentient AI with physical bodies called ancillaries. The story alternates between the present […]