Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About ElCicco

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Married, mom of two, history PhD, feminist. I've been participating in Cannonball Read since CBR4. I love to read, and writing reviews keeps me from reading without thinking. I feel like I owe it to the authors who entertain me to savor their creations. It's like slowing down and enjoying a delicious meal instead of bolting your food. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ElCicco's Quick Questions interview.)

ElCicco's Reviews:

I don’t want it to be over

Blood of Dragons: Volume Four of the Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb

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Cbr18bingo Versus Blood of Dragons is the thrilling conclusion to The Rain Wilds Chronicles featuring the showdowns readers have been waiting for: men versus dragons, old ways versus new, and that nasty, greedy abuser Hest versus Alise and Sedric.  The traders of Bingtown and the people of the Rain Wilds made a pact with the dragon Tintaglia years ago: Tintaglia would protect them from the warlike Chalcedean Kingdom and in return, they would serve her and any fledgling dragons that emerged from their cocoons. But […]

“I think it’s when two people separate that the things they’ve learned through their friendship can really blossom.”

Hooked: A Novel of Obsession by Asako Yuzuki

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Cbr18bingo Friends I reviewed Asako Yuzuki’s novel Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder a few months ago and was very much struck by her portrayal of Japanese society — the sexism, the fat shaming, the anti-feminist sentiment — as well as by her riveting story-telling and characters. Hooked: A Novel of Obsession is even better, in my opinion. This is a novel about relationships amongst women, the difficulties of making friendships once you’ve moved beyond school, and the impact that patriarchy and sexism have […]

Man or dragon? Choose dragon

City of Dragons: Volume Three of the Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb

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Cbr18bingo steal In this third volume of The Rain Wilds Chronicles, a variety of forces working against the dragons and their survival come to the fore. Some of those forces are natural but the most deadly threats are human in nature: politics, economics, greed, and desperation.  In City of Dragons, the party of dragons, their keepers and the crew of the liveship barge Tarman have arrived at Kelsingra, the fabled Elderling city, but their problems are far from over and their future is uncertain. The […]

Road trip!

Dragon Haven: Volume Two of The Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb

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Cbr18bingo Wheels This is the second book in a four-book series. I reviewed Volume 1 Dragon Keeper here. In Dragon Haven, a group of Rain Wilds youth, outcasts due to their physical “deformities”, are now functioning as Dragon Keepers (or shepherds, if you need something for the sheep square). Their job is to guide the dragons, who emerged deformed from their cocoons, up river, away from people and civilization, on a quest to find the fabled lost city of Kelsingra. In an ancient past, when […]

Hobb-a-thon Part II

Dragon Keeper: The Rain Wilds Chronicles Book 1 by Robin Hobb

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cbr18bingo – One I have been holding off on starting this part of Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series. The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy and The Tawny Man Trilogy were all fantastic, but when I looked at Dragon Keeper, the first of the four novels in The Rain Wilds Chronicles, I was a little bummed out. It looked like the characters I knew and loved from her previous novels weren’t going to get much page time and a whole new set of […]

Ferrante did it better

The Book of Goose: A Novel by Yiyun Li

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Cbr18bingo – Bird Almost as soon as I started reading The Book of Goose, I was reminded of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. Both Ferrante’s series and Li’s The Book of Goose feature impoverished girls living in post-WWII Europe. Both feature a friendship that can be competitive and dysfunctional. And both focus on the creative process of writing as well as the strains on childhood friendships when people grow up and apart. I loved Ferrante’s series. I liked this novel, but I might have liked it […]



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