Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sometimes a tiny bit of blood magic is fine, right?

A Queer Trade by K.J. Charles

Rag & Bone by K.J. Charles

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A Queer Trade is set in the same time period as A Case of Possession. Crispin Trederloe is having a bad week. Returning to London after visiting his ill mother, he learns that his mentor, Mr. Marleigh, was a dangerous warlock and is now dead. Marleigh’s possessions have already been sold or marked for auction, and this includes his boxes and boxes of research. Marleigh and Crispin practice blood magic, which is both extremely dangerous, unpredictable, and explicitly forbidden by England’s magical overseers. At fifteen, […]

“All I wanted to do was come home, because without you, I don’t have a home.”

Wolfsong: A Green Creek Novel (Book One) by TJ Klune

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Wolfsong is the fourth book by TJ Klune I’ve read (the others being Under the Whispering Door, The House in the Cerulean Sea, and Somewhere Beyond the Sea), and it’s the first that I’m not one hundred-percent sure what I think of it. It is also not exactly the book that was described on the back of the book; not really a bad thing, I just don’t quite understand why publishing companies have been doing this lately. The writing is a little staccato (though I […]

Talking Cats are Still Cats

The Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher

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My introduction to Jum Butcher was The Aeronaut’s Windlass (Cinder Spires 1) published in 2015 (the publication date will matter in a minute). It’s a sort of steampunk/fantasy/speculative adventure; I really enjoyed the characters (including the talking cats), world, and general story. I checked out his main series, the Dresden Files, but got tired of that after a few volumes. I have limited tolerance for the kind of story where things just keep going from bad to worse, and often the personal drama is avoidable. […]

Soft red petals using white sharp teeth

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VE Schwab

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V.E. Schwab is one of those authors whose books are always intriguing but sometimes I don’t quite get that emotional connection from them and feel slightly at a distance. This novel was one of the ones where I think I was more intellectually engaged than emotionally, especially in the later half. I’m sure I read the summary/synopsis when I ordered the book but all I really remembered/knew by the time I started this one was sapphic and vampires. The novel alternates view points and time […]

They Grow Up So Fast

Longshadow by Olivia Atwater

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The third novel in Atwater’s regency faerie tale trilogy is a sweet and sapphic delight perfect for Pride.  We had first met young Abigail in the novel Half A Soul– she is the adopted daughter of the Lord Sorcier Elias Wilder and his wife Theodora. The workhouse child has now grown into a mostly proper young lady who just wants to use her unusual magic. She sees the perfect opportunity to investigate the sudden deaths of several of her aristocratic peers. The most likely suspect […]

“No other bosses but mine and my opponents’ can have your soul jerked out of your body and sent to the deepest fiery pits to suffer for eternity. Unless you work for Walmart.”

The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams

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Not a big fan of this book. It was written like a mashup of the Johnny Dollar radio show (which is where I think Tad Williams got the idea to name the main character “Bobby Dollar”) and the Kolchak tv series. Very Sam Spade, hardboiled detective, old film noir, complete with gangsters, dames, booze, shoot-outs, and double crosses; heck, it even has a golden stand-in for the Maltese Falcon. The big change is that instead of detectives, cops, and gangsters, you have angels and demons, […]



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