Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About Jen K

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I’ve been around off and on since the first year of CBR, and it and books have been a constant in my life through multiple moves and a major career change. I live with 3 cats, Dany, Jace and Jorah. Fantasy, specific types of sci-fi, historical fiction (especially mysteries) and romance tend to be my go to genres now a days. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Jen K's Quick Questions interview.)

Jen K's Reviews:

It’s Always the Husband, Right?

The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas

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I was in the minority of people that didn’t like the second novel in this series as much as the second. I thought it got a bit more convoluted than necessary, leaving me scratching my head rather than marveling at the way everything came together in the end.  I was pleasantly surprised with the third novel, and how much I enjoyed it, and I think it’s because it stayed focused on the core characters I already liked rather than introducing a series of new people […]

Wrapping Up the Girl of Fire and Thorns Trilogy

The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson

The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson

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After the events of The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Elisa is trying to rule her husband’s kingdom but even though she has grown much since she first entered the kingdom, she still faces doubts various political entities.  There is also still the concern about a looming war from the bordering kingdom even if she and her friends managed to delay it after the last novel.  It doesn’t take long before there are assassination attempts on Elisa’s life. Elisa is worried that she won’t be […]

Politics, Capitalism and Impending Doom

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

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This is the first full length Scalzi novel I’ve read, and I quite enjoyed it.  The prologue begins with a mutiny on board a space ship, though the mutiny is slightly disrupted when the space ship drops out of the Flow, one of the trails used for faster than light space travel between systems. After this, the novel leaves behind the crew who were only used to introduce the fact that the Flow might be unstable now.  The novel follows a few different characters and […]

Magic and War Collide

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

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I loved the first novel in this trilogy because for me it was the perfect mix of fairy tale magic with some real life politics mixed in.  By focusing on the story of a young girl in her village, the novel had a nice intimate setting even as it dealt with a figurative battle between good and evil, the old ways and the new.  The greater politics opened up the potential for a broader scale in the rest of the trilogy, and I think that […]

Questions about Modernity and Ways of Life – But in Space

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

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While Becky Chambers has already explained the circumstances of the descendants of Earth in broad strokes in her previous two Wayfarer novels, in this third novel, she shifts her attention to the remaining human fleet.  When Earth was on the brink of collapse, some people with resources started by colonizing planets and moons in the Solar System such as Mars.  Those left behind eventually had to deconstruct the cities and sky scrapers, and use those resources to create a fleet for the last of humanity […]

A Darker, Grittier Approach to YA Fantasy

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

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VC/Victoria Schwab is a weird author for me.  Everyone else seems to rave about her.  Intellectually, I am intrigued by what she does and the stories and themes she explores.  She is very creative, as seen in this novel where monsters are the external manifestations or results of violence humans do to each other. And yet. And yet. Something about her writing fails to grip me.  I was discussing this novel with a friend halfway through and told him, I wasn’t sure if I would […]



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