Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Cosmere Re-Read Strikes Again #CBRBingo – Gateway

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

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One of Brandon Sanderson’s few standalones (for now), Warbreaker very much holds up on re-read. It takes place on a planet whose Investiture (sorry, Cosmere term) means that every person born has one Breath. The existence of Breaths has become a mostly spiritual issue, and one also about power. Breaths can be sold or given away, and the more Breaths one person holds, the more power they have. People with more Breath experience the world with heightened senses, and have the power to Awaken inanimate […]

Over and over and over and over…

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

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Imaginative and insanely readable, Seanan McGuire has become one of those authors who I now pick up whenever I need a little reading pick-me-up, and she hasn’t let me down yet. In Middlegame we meet Roger and Dodger, twins created by an alchemist bent on distilling The Doctrine (essentially what makes the world go round) into human form and making him the most powerful alchemist in the world. Roger and Dodger aren’t his first set of twins on this rodeo, but they are the most […]

This could have been so much better…

Pay the Piper by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple

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Callie is a reporter for her school newspaper, and has landed a backstage pass to interview the band that’s playing in town, Brass Rat.  This is a big deal for Callie, who is only 14 and has wildly over-protective parents, which is strange given the names they saddled their children with.  These paranoid adults have given their children names that guarantee they will have difficulties in life.  I present to you: Marsepolus, Calcephony, and Nickelodeon.  In an era with cell phones, they named their youngest […]

I feel like this should be a YA novel, but it’s not

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Gods of Jade and Shadow is a book where fairy tales and myths collide.  The book begins in a 1920’s version of “Cinderella,” but in Mexico.  Casiopea is a poor cousin of the richest family in their town, and she is given the role of maidservant while her mother is the cook.  Casiopea does as she’s told, but not necessarily as subserviently as her cousin Martín would wish.  One day while the family is away, she gets a chance to open up the forbidden chest […]

Hogwarts, but even MORE racist!

The Black Mage by Daniel Barnes, D.J. Kirkland

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I was intrigued when I saw this book come up on NetGalley, so I picked it up, but then forgot to read it, and then I was sad.  And I met the author and illustrator at the New York Comic Con, and they were really nice!  And then the library I work at got a copy, so I was the first one to check it out! Anyway…   On first glance, this looks like Harry Potter, but if Harry Potter was the only black kid.  […]

When the Internet called, this author answered!

Mrs. Perivale and the Blue Fire Crystal by Dash Hoffman

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Is this a great masterpiece of a novel?  No.  Is it the next great fantasy epic?  Also no.  Should you read it?  Yeah!  If not for the story itself, at least to support the way it came to be.  I’m going to put exactly what the text says:   @broodingYAhero said, “It’s amazing how many prophecies involve teens. You’d think they’d pick more emotionally stable people, with more free time. Like grandmas.” To which @Dinuriel replied, “…I would read the hell out of a series […]



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