Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Hopefully It’s Almost Over

The Tyrant's Tomb (Trials of Apollo 4) by Rick Riordan

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Start with a zombie attack while transporting a fallen comrade home, using tattoos to decipher bits of prophecy, metal greyhounds (robot dogs seem a little out of place but it does kind of work), a bookstore cat, trying to figure out how to counter a massive attack/invasion on Camp Jupiter, and facing off against formerly dead (?) emperor of Rome (the nastier ones), and conclude with some of Lester’s godliness starting to come back in time for what hopefully is the final face off against […]

I’ll never get bored of reading of Troy

The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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Supposedly some other story is The Greatest Ever Told, but as far as I’m concerned it’s the story of the siege and fall of Troy that deserves that title. I’ll take my Troy tales in whatever form I can find them – The Firebrand gave it to me from the perspective of the women, Kassandra in particular, that made a refreshing change with Bradley weaving classic elements of the myth with her own inventions into a take that was mostly successful. Our titular Firebrand is […]

Maybe It’s the Timing

The Alchemist Who Survived Now Dreams of a Quiet City Life (Vol. 3) by Usata Nonhara, Ox (illustrator)

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I’m torn: I like the general premise and a lot of the potential in the various story threads, but I’m starting to get annoyed with some of the main characters and perspectives. The basic idea of The Alchemist Who Survived Now Dreams of a Quiet City Life (Vol. 3) is that Mariela, an alchemist puts herself in suspended animation to escape a monster attack and wakes up 200 years later alone in a changed world where her skills are highly valuable and rare. There’s an […]

Victorian Gothic and Lovecraft Mashup

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

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I liked Come Tumbling Down better than the previous installment of the Wayward Children series in terms of story, but I do think there was an over-emphasis on the concept of who’s the monster. Jack is back at the school but there’s something very wrong with her which if not fixed will definitely destroy her. This was the premise in the previews I’d seen and I have to admit I didn’t see that problem itself coming, although in hindsight it does suit their folkloric homeland […]

How do we write good stories about storytelling

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

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By happenstance, I wound up reading Alix Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January and Erin Morgenstern’s follow-up to The Night Circus, The Starless Sea, within just weeks of one another. Digital library loan hold lists just shake out like that sometimes. And I was struck by how both were, at their heart, doing much the same thing, which is to say, telling stories about the power of telling stories, and doing so through an apparatus of doors that lead into other worlds/stories, and how the encounters with the […]

Discover a familar book for the first time

Brightly Woven: The Graphic Novel by Alexandra Bracken

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Brightly Woven: The Graphic Novel is a refreshingly simple fantasy yet is not superficial. You know the characters and themes because you have read other stories with handsome, mysterious wizards and lovely, plucky heroines. The villains are bad (they even have the scar to prove it). There is magic, secrets and even a possible romance. There is intrigue and a war to be stopped. When Sydelle Mirabil meets Waylon North, she realizes he is not an ordinary wizard. And soon, she learns she is not […]



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