Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Immense beauty and infinite kindness

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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I first read Susanna Clarke in my senior year of undergrad. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was a new release, and I decided I could not wait for the paperback edition to read it: I lugged that fat hardback around for two weeks as I slowly worked my way through it, savoring it, never wanting it to end, which I suspect is how many of us who read it felt. Clarke created a world that felt so real, right down to the prose style, that the […]

Fantastic start to what I’m sure will become my new obsession

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

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An absolute delight from start to finish, as a huge fan of both the diaries of Victorian explorers and fantasy, A Natural History of Dragons felt perfectly tailored for me and I adored it so much I’ve already gone ahead and bought a bunch more of the series. Lady Trent has always been fascinated by dragons, but in her day a lady’s place is most definitely meant to be sitting prettily in a drawing room, making sure to not tax her thoughts with anything more […]

Double Bingo! (CBR12Bingo 2: Violet)

The Binding by Bridget Collins

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 It was hard for me to make this my Violet square since I bought this on Ale’s recommendation (and their review photo shows the purple in the cover much better than mine – VS Ramachandran’s The Telltale Brain would have made a prettier rainbow, but we’re getting down to the wire and I can read fiction faster than nonfiction in most cases, so needs must). I was almost as charmed by the book as Ale, but I have to admit it was a slower burn for […]

Imagine if high school graduation was a Hunger Games competition

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

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Bingo Review #25 Reader’s Choice in place of Gateway, and Blackout! I was rather hoping to use A Deadly Education for the Gateway square as the introduction to Naomi Novik. I have changed my mind upon completing the novel, but thankfully I still had the Reader’s Choice square open. I was kind of hoping to not use it, but oh well. The premise of this novel and apparently series is brilliant; think Harry Potter’s Hogwarts crossed with Hunger Games. That’s what this is. El is […]

“People shouldn’t have everything they want. No one is entitled to their every desire. To live in balance, we must willingly decide not to take all that we can from the world, and from others.”

The Shadow of Kyoshi (The Kyoshi Novels, #2) by F.C. Yee

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Super quick review on this one, because I read this and the first one back to back, so they’re a bit blurred in my memory. I do remember I liked the first one just a bit more. Yee continues Avatar Kyoshi’s story as she claims her Avatarhood. She doesn’t have advisors or mentors like most Avatars, and she has to figure it out all on her own. Like we saw of Kyoshi in A:TLA, she is hyper-focused on the concept of justice. But what is […]

“The latest graphic novel by William Shakespeare”

Yorick and Bones by Jeremy Tankard

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You must have a certain type of humor to understand some of Yorick and Bones. The Shakespearian references can be amusing, but not always easy to read. I have a very basic knowledge on the subject; therefore, I was able to see the humor/joke and able to read the parts that are more “Shakespearian language” in nature. Yorick themselves only speaks in that “old English/Shakespearian” (to a point) which is where the humor comes from. However, it is modern enough to keep today’s reader not […]



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