Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Prolonging my time in the Cold Magic world with short stories and essays

The World Begins in Ice by Kate Elliott

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I first learned about Kate Elliott’s Cold Magic series while reading John Scalzi’s website.  In the Big Idea section Elliott described what The History of the World Begins in Ice is all about.  It is a collection of short stories written in the “Spiritwalker Trilogy” as well as essays about the characters and aspects of the world.  The trilogy sounded fascinating, to quote Kate: When I began writing Cold Magic, my primary goal (besides making it shorter than Traitors’ Gate) was to tell a story that would […]

“Books are a weapon against lonliness. Putting them in the right hands lets people see one another. It makes us…better to one another”.

Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree

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Brigands and Breadknives returns us to Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy world.  While the first book, Legends and Lattes, and the second published book (that’s actually a prequel), Bookshops and Bonedust, are able to be read on their own, Breadknives and Brigands requires you to have read Bookshops and Bonedust, and it’s helpful if you’ve read Legends and Lattes. Foul mouthed rattkin bookseller, Fern, has been adrift in her own life.  Running her bookstore in Murk is no longer giving her the satisfaction it once did.  A change of […]

So Remember This for Spooky Season Next Year.

Ancirent Sorceries and Other Weird Stories by Algernon Blackwood

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Read this collection during the Spooky Season, a couple of months back, and it was perfect. One of the stories, Ancient Sorceries, has been included in many an anthology, and I read it for the first time at about the age of 12.  As a life-long cat owner, I heartily approve.  The fact that Egyptians considered them deity-adjacent is not at all surprising.  But two of the other stories intrigued me greatly.  In both cases, there was no being that was the antagonist, but rather […]

“There was, she thought, not very much difference in the behavior of a cat and a high-handed, chauvinistic Tudor autodidact in the body of a cat. The only thing to truly set them apart was the vocabulary.”

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner

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After solving her sixteenth murder in five years, small-town librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle is only just beginning to grow alarmed by the sheer number of death piling up in Winesap. But when her boyfriend is murdered and her cat gets possessed by a demon called himself Sir Thomas Cromwell, Sherry becomes sure there is something dark at work. This is the book for every person who has looked at how many books can pile up in a cozy mystery series and wondered what on earth is […]

A Mouthful of Dust: The Value of a Low-Stakes Read

A Mouthful of Dust: The Singing Hills Cycle #6 by Nghi Vo

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I have been reading through the Singing Hills Cycle series since 2022. They have served as bite-sized treats and motivation to return to reading usually during a lull. Given the time between reading each book, I would struggle to tell you what’s happened in previous stories at this point. I think I keep returning to the series because of Chih and Almost Brilliant. They are a lovely pair of characters to accompany from story to story. A Mouthful of Dust is the sixth installment of […]

Die Trying, Die Laughing

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

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One does not simply walk into 2026 without a good book to read. As luck would have it, I can recommend one straight out of the gate. Django Wexler’s  How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is the foul-mouthed, irreverent comedic fantasy novel that will set the tone for your own year of mischief and mayhem, should you choose to have one. And honestly, why wouldn’t you?  “The Dark Lord” by melbourneflower is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 . Davi has absolutely had it […]



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