Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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About stegolily

CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant
CBR18 Levels

Stego Lily is a mom, educator, and sci-fi/fantasy enthusiast. When she isn't reading, she enjoys playing the piano, gardening, and chasing after her two chaos gremlins.

stegolily's Reviews:

KKK Demon Hunters

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

May 7, 2026 by stegolily 1 Comment

Ring Shout is set in 1915 Georgia, where Maryse Boudreaux and her friends Chef and Sadie work as bootleggers by day, and demon hunters by night. But unlike their K-pop counterparts, this trio of demon hunters is after Ku Kluxes: terrifying, pointy-headed monsters that fill the ranks of the KKK alongside regular (also monstrous) Klansmen. Ku Kluxes feed on hate, and in Jim Crow-era Georgia, there is plenty of that to go around.  But with Chef’s explosives expertise, Sadie’s sharpshooting abilities, and Maryse’s magical sword, […]

Filed Under: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror Tagged With: P. Djèlí Clark

stegolily's CBR18 Review No:17 · Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror · Tags: P. Djèlí Clark ·
· 1 Comment

“He who learns must suffer.”

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

April 29, 2026 by stegolily Leave a Comment

Ordinary Grace is a coming-of-age-novel about a thirteen year-old boy named Frank living in a small town in Minnesota in 1961. It covers the events of a summer marked by tragedy, in the form of accidents, suicide, and (possibly) murder. Frank’s father is the local minister, so he gets a front row seat to all of the heartbreak and pain in the community. Throughout the book, Frank comes face-to-face with the realities of life and death, and that terrible understanding that maybe the adults in his […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: William Kent Krueger

stegolily's CBR18 Review No:16 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: William Kent Krueger ·
· 0 Comments

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches.”

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

April 29, 2026 by stegolily Leave a Comment

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work has been hit-or-miss for me in the past. I liked Gods of Jade and Shadow, loved Mexican Gothic, but didn’t much care for The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. I’m happy to report though, that I very much enjoyed The Bewitching. This is a gothic horror novel, following three young women across three different timelines. The main storyline follows Minerva, a graduate student in the 1990s, who is writing a graduate thesis about obscure horror novelist Beatrice Tremblay. The second timeline follows Minerva’s great-grandmother Alba as a young […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: silvia moreno-garcia

stegolily's CBR18 Review No:15 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: silvia moreno-garcia ·
· 0 Comments

Mid-April Review roundup

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

April 22, 2026 by stegolily 1 Comment

It’s time for another mega-post reviewing a bunch of books that have nothing in common with each other! Lousie Erdrich’s The Mighty Red was so achingly beautiful that when I finished it, I got genuinely worried that I would never find a book this good again. Set in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, it follows two farming families during the 2008 financial crisis. There’s a local tragedy, a love triangle, and a scandalous crime, but the centerpiece of the book is Erdrich’s prose. She […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Annalee Newitz, Louise Erdrich, qntm

stegolily's CBR18 Review No:14 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Annalee Newitz, Louise Erdrich, qntm ·
· 1 Comment

“Hell is a campus.”

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

April 17, 2026 by stegolily 2 Comments

What do you do when your graduate advisor dies, but you still need a letter of recommendation? Apparently, you travel to Hell to retrieve his soul and his recommendation along with it. Rivals Alice Law and Peter Murdoch are Cambridge graduate students studying Magick. When a spell gone awry kills their advisor, Professor Grimes, they decide they have no choice but to journey to the underworld to save their academic careers. What follows reads like an homage to Dante’s Inferno, if Dante had been a […]

Filed Under: Fantasy, Featured, Fiction, Religion Tagged With: R.F. Kuang

stegolily's CBR18 Review No:8 · Genres: Fantasy, Featured, Fiction, Religion · Tags: R.F. Kuang ·
· 2 Comments

Catching up with three very different books

Martyr by Kaveh Akbar

Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party by Edward Dolnick

Pony Confidential by Christina Lynch

March 22, 2026 by stegolily 6 Comments

I have fallen behind on my reviews over the last few weeks, so I’m cramming the last three books I read into one review in order to catch up. These books are about as tonally different from each other as it is possible to be, so expect some whiplash. Martyr tells the story of Cyrus, an Iranian-American poet and recovering addict. Decades ago, his mother died when the plane she was on was mistakenly shot down by the United States Army. Trying to find meaning […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Christina Lynch, Edward Dolnick, Kaveh Akbar

stegolily's CBR18 Review No:11 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Christina Lynch, Edward Dolnick, Kaveh Akbar ·
· 6 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Mrs. Julien
    on They go into the woods and do what?
    I enjoyed your review and the story it linked to! Thank you!
  • Fiat.Luxury
    on a pre-Covid novella that I thought was post-Covid
    Right?!
  • G.D. Giant
    on Three extremely different books about space
    I have Atmosphere on my list, so thank you for this encouraging review. Taylor Jenkins Reid is hit-or-miss for me,...
  • G.D. Giant
    on But did they try more cowbell?
    Great review! I just finished this book and while I enjoyed it more than you did (I gave it four...
  • G.D. Giant
    on a pre-Covid novella that I thought was post-Covid
    I just finished this! And had to keep checking the publication date because I couldn't believe it was written *before*...
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