Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Almost 400 words for a book that might not have a 3rd of that!

The Book No One Wants to Read by Beth Bacon

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One of the biggest challenges I have about writing reviews is writing a 250-word review for a book that might not even have 125 words! The Book No One Wants to Read is one of those books. There is hardly any text and what is there is physically large on the page. The only reason it might even come close to 125 words is because there are two pages with just one (well actually two words, but you need to read why that is) repeated […]

Have sword, will slay dragons

How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch

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How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch feels like a translation due to a few bumps in the flow of wording. However, that is the only real major bump in this modern folktale. Ages 10 to 14 probably will not see anything with that. The art helps fill in a few of those spots as will the readers imagination.  The lack of color and the mix of busy and minimal details also give the feeling of a classic, but contemporary too, folk tale. Words in […]

Weird and wonderful

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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Piranesi is an odd and engrossing little book that feels both similar and entirely different to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (especially in terms of page numbers). Our titular character (although he’s not sure that’s really his name) lives in the House, a labyrinthine structure with waves thundering through its statue filled halls. Piranesi spends his time exploring, fishing, foraging and calculating the tides while recording everything that happens in his journals, ready for his meetings with the Other. The Other is the only other […]

When a Bot has feelings

Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson

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Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson is a hard book to explain.  Partly because it defies genre and partly because it isn’t really about what it appears to be about.  Let’s start with the genre, my library copy had three stickers on the spine – Science Fiction, Humor, and Social Issues.  Besides these categories, it is written in an interesting style with regular prose sections and then sections written as if part of a screenplay.  Moving on to the plot, it may appear […]

Back in Ilona Andrews’ Atlanta, this time with a new protagonist

Blood Heir by Ilona Andrews

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Info to new readers – while this is the first book in a new series, and as such, should be perfectly accessible to readers completely unaware of Ilona Andrews’ previous books, it references A LOT of stuff that happened in the ten-book Kate Daniels series, as well as in Iron and Magic, a spin-off book of that series. I would highly recommend that you start there. Aurelia Ryder arrives back in Atlanta after an eight-year absence, trying to keep her presence mostly under the radar. The last time […]

Blackwell, a town where all the girls are witches

Grimoire Noir by Vera Greentea

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I have wanted to read Grimoire Noir from probably since I started reading graphic novels seriously. I wanted to open to page one and sink my eye-teeth right into Vera Greentea’s creation. The cover was a tasty looking treat and wanted to see what Yana Bogatch could come up with. And while I cannot say I was disappointed; I think I built it up a smidgen too much. I liked this fantasy mystery that is both modern and classic in its style. The feeling of something […]



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