Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Be warned, then: the collected volumes of this series will contain frozen mountains, foetid swamps, hostile foreigners, hostile fellow countrymen, the occasional hostile family member, bad decisions, misadventures in orienteering, diseases of an unromantic sort, and a plenitude of mud.”

A Natural History of Dragons (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #1) by Marie Brennan

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I finally started this series! I put book one on my TBR back when it was first published and then never got around to it, not even after I met the author at a book festival and got a signed copy of book three (I did not yet own books one or two, but it was the only one available for signing). Maybe I would have gotten to it sooner if I would have realized one of my favorite audiobook narrators, Kate Reading, does the […]

might not be the book you think it is, but it might be the book you need

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang

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Man oh man do people dislike this book! And when they do, they seem to dislike it for all sorts of suspicious reasons. Oh, white/western person, do you think the main characters in this book, the majority of whom are from colonies, spend a little bit too much time griping about the evils of the British colonial empire? Well then, boy do I have some news that’s going to REALLY disturb you about non-fictional humans in the real world who were once subjugated by the […]

again, perhaps not quite as enjoyable as the first outing but things are set up very well for the finale

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske

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I have to say midway through I wasn’t liking this as much as I liked the previous installment. Something about the timeline, probably, because I’m always of the notion that characters should fall in love over an extended period of time instead of something artificial like a week. There’s also a lot of exposition and context in this one, to get us from the barest outlines of a conspiracy to a full blown catastrophe. The main point isn’t that complicated–Maud, Robin’s brother, has been sent […]

less successful but still amusing second entry in series

Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell

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In this iteration, Maxwell takes us back to her general universe but in an entirely different quadrant (?), with a new set of main characters, motivations, et al. It’s a gutsy move, given how invested the audience was in the world of Taam and Jainan from Winter’s Orbit. As a result, you can clearly tell that there’s a vague formula that Maxwell is trying to reapply in this iteration. We’ve got the damaged one (in this case Tennal, the royal/connected one) and the less obviously damaged […]

I would read ten more of these.

The Grief of Stones (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #2) by Katherine Addison

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These books are sad, contemplative, and lovely. I had a bit of a hard time getting in to the first one because the tone and pacing are pretty unique, but once I sank into it I really enjoyed myself. Right away with The Grief of Stones I was able to get back into the right mindset and I enjoyed it even more. I know there will be at least one more book following Celahar, but I find myself hoping there will be more than that. We need, […]

and now for something a bit different

The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais

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What a quirky book, but one that I found lovely in its own way. The focus is on the friendship between four old women who have, over time, created a home together in a eccentric manor where they can be themselves. There’s a lot of messaging around identity and found family which was well done, coupled with some more heavy handed messaging around, like, MRAs or anti-female energy which I felt was a bit 2D. The plot seems a lot more confusing from the blurb […]



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