Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Fresh Setting, Familiar Story

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

by 5 Comments

I was ready to absolutely love this book. Honest! Fantasy, based on Chinese mythology, super stunning cover: check, check, check. Xingyin lives on the moon with her mother, Chang’e, the Moon Goddess. Chang’e is loving, but sad, pining for her mortal husband. Xingyin leads a sheltered life, not realizing that her mother has hidden Xingyin’s very existence. When Xingyin reaches for her innate magic for the first time, it sets off a chain of events that lead her to flee from her home on the […]

An Old Favorite

Howl's Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones

by 1 Comment

  I don’t know how many times I’ve read Howl’s Moving Castle. At least three, but probably more. If books were comfort food, this one would be creamy mac-n-cheese in a ceramic bowl on a cold winter’s day. It never gets old, it never gets dated. It is always exactly what it needs to be; which is a romping good time. For those who’ve not yet indulged in this delight, Howl’s Moving Castle follows Sophie, a young woman who inadvertently angers Ingary’s resident bad-witch and gets herself […]

A (very strange but lovely) fantasy for book lovers.

Among Others by Jo Walton

by Leave a Comment

30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2 Book 3/30 “I didn’t ask to have my good leg replaced by a creaky rusty weathervane, but then I suppose nobody does. I would have made much greater sacrifices. I was prepared to die, and Mor *did* die. I should think of it as a war-wound, an old soldier’s scars. Frodo lost a finger, and all his own possibility of happiness. Tolkien understood about the things that happen after the end. Because this is after the end, this […]

Beats a very low bar – barely

Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford Simak

by 2 Comments

When I was complaining about old-school sci-fi written by old white men (darn you, library sci-fi book club!) a couple commenters suggested I try Clifford Simak. My mom had also recently suggested him, so when I found Enchanted Pilgrimage at a used bookstore, I figured it was a sign. Unfortunately, I didn’t love this one either. It had some lovely bits and passages, but overall it was very disjointed, with plot threads lost and picked up again (or not), characters doing stuff for no reason […]

The Red Devil Rides Again

Red Sonja Volume 3: The Forgiving of Monsters by Gail Simone

by Leave a Comment

This third volume of Gail Simone’s stories about the Hyrkanian warrior wraps up the author’s fantastic run on Red Sonja series. Simone brings adventure, heart, and humor to a character that could easily be one dimensional in the wrong hands. She is kind of like Gronk in a chainmail bikini. (Thankfully, a hardcover collection of Simone’s run recently came out. I think all three volumes are of equal quality, so if you read the first one and enjoy it, just get the hardcover.) Volume three […]

I hope you die, I hope we both die

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

by 7 Comments

This book surprised me. For about the first 100 pages or so, I was sure I wasn’t going to like it and may not even finish it. But eventually it pulled me in and I found myself pretty caught up in the story. The protagonist of The Cruel Prince is a teenager named Jude, a human who lives in Faerie with her human twin sister Taryn and their fairy half-sister, Vivi. They live with Vivi’s father, who is wrapped up in the various intrigues and violence of […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo