Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“Hell is a campus.”

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

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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 […]

The talk is had and the kitties get fed

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison

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I knew that The Tomb of Dragons was part 3 of a trilogy that was itself kind of a side series from a stand-alone novel The Goblin Emperor. Now all four are being framed as “Within the Chronicles of Osreth” (back cover), so I’m really hoping there’s going to be more of this world and characters. The Tomb of Dragons is a good ending with decent closure for Thara Celehar’s story, but there’s also plenty of room left open for more to come, including the […]

Might be time for a Hidden Legacy reread!

Beast Business by Ilona Andrews

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I knew Ilona Andrews had a new novel coming out very soon but this novella in the Hidden Legacy universe was a bit of a surprise (no, I still haven’t signed up for the newsletter). This focuses on two characters outside the family that we have seen pop up over the years – Augustine, an Illusion Prime, Head of House Montgomery and the agency Nevada once worked for, and Diana, animal mage, Head of House Harrison and ally to House Baylor through her brother and […]

I was hoping for more of Medusa smiting powerful men

I, Medusa by Ayana Gray

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Marketing and publishing trends can be interesting. For the longest time, it seemed like fantasy written by women ended up being forced into YA. Over the last year or two, there have been quite a few novels that have been marketed as the adult debuts of YA authors. That cross over has always existed (I remember R.L. Stine’s first adult book) but for some of the novels, it’s hard to say what actually makes them adult. The Alchemy of Secrets was one example like that, […]

Pretty much nothing like the movie

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

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Read the Rainbow – Red Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III may be the least intimidating Viking in several generations, which is a bit of a problem, since he’s the son of the Chief, and therefore meant to lead the Hairy Hooligans when he gets older. He’s skinny, puny, bookish and not even slightly intimidating, and when he has to compete in the traditional manhood trial of the tribe, and sneak into a cave to capture himself a dragon, he ends up with the smallest, least impressive […]

“Why is it I tell you all my secrets?” “Because you like the way I look draped over a tree branch?”

Beast Business by Ilona Andrews

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Augustine Montgomery is the head of a very successful investigative agency and a deeply private man. He is an illusion Prime, who can alter his appearance at will, and there are very few people alive who know what he actually looks like. Augustine presents himself to the world as calculated, efficient, ruthless and detached. He is never swayed by emotion and has very few friends as a result. Diana Harrison is the Head of House Harrison and a very powerful animal mage. Like Augustine, she […]



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