Full disclosure: I’m already a fan of John Birmingham, and I talk to him occasionally on Twitter; so I read A Girl in Time with some preconceptions, and more than a little positive spin on my bias. Birmo is a big fan of manipulating both time and history in his recent fiction; his very excellent Axis of Time series (three full-length novels and three novellas) plays hard and fast with 21st Century military forces being inadvertently sent back to WWII and the massive fallout from […]
The Rook Files: Revisiting the Supernatural MI5
I have been reading a lot this year, and nearly all the books I have read have had me thinking about being used and being of use. Daniel O’Malley’s excellent Stiletto, which revisits the Checquy and it’s collection of supernatural government servants, fits right into this pattern. For those who have not read The Rook, the background here is that Britain has a entire government agency made up of agents with mysterious powers, ranging from people who increase the fertility of those who surround them […]
Harry Potter and the Curse of Expectation
I own twenty-one Harry Potter books: a set in Dutch, a set in English, and a set of e-books. This is excluding my copies of Quidditch through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I own three sets of Harry Potter related clothing and all eight films on DVD. I’ve gone to midnight screenings. I’ve braved my irrational yet powerful loathing of Eddie Redmayne and gone to see Fantastic Beasts. I used to moderate subsections of a thriving a Harry Potter internet […]
You can keep my future, it will probably do you more good than me
A few days ago I read J’s review of Memories of Ash, the second book in a new, on-going series of YA fantasy novels. J wants Cannonballers to read it, so I picked up the first book, Sunbolt. After I finished Sunbolt, I saw there was a free short story, The Bone Knife, so I scooped that up too. Sunbolt is a very fast read. I enjoyed it. Khanani keeps the action focused on her protagonist Hitomi and mostly leaves the world building for the reader to glean […]
There is nothing wrong with being scared. It only means that something important is at stake
Spoiler warning! This is book two in a duology and it will be absolutely impossible for me to review this book without giving away some spoilers for book one, Of Metal and Wishes. Neither book stands well on its own, and they are clearly meant to be read as a whole. If you like going into books completely unspoiled, skip this review until you’ve finished book one. It’s been a year since the dramatic events that brought down the entire slaughterhouse where Wen and her […]
Known in your neck of the woods as ‘Midnight Riot’
I’ve been unsuccessfully casting about for a new urban fantasy series to sink my teeth into ever since I devoured every Dresden Files and Women of the Otherworld book I could find. Having tried (and failed miserably) to get into Laurell K. Hamilton, JR Ward, Alexandra Ivy and many others who made my shit itch, it’s taken a little while but, filled as this is with fun characters and a brilliant (and very British) sense of humour, I think this may be The One. DC […]