Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Short stories in comic form.

The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman

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This is essentially a short story collection in comic form. The afterword notes that Gaiman needed a break from the main storyline after finishing up The Doll’s House arc, and had a few ideas he wanted to play around with. I found all of them to be satisfying enough, but none of them really knocked my socks off, either. The standout in the collection for me was the first one, “Calliope,” in which a novelist with a terrible case of writer’s block holds one of […]

A 700 page detour away from the main plot and characters of the series.

The Pillars of Creation (The Sword of Truth, #7) by Terry Goodkind

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For those of you who started following me because of my reviews of this series, I apologize in advance. I finished this book over three months ago now, so my initial impression of the book has faded. Also, despite this being overall not great, I have very little ire for it. These two stars aren’t a result of outrage or ickiness like usual; they’re more the result of this book seemingly have very little relevance to the main plot of the series. But, good news […]

Liked this one a lot except for one thing which is spoilery.

Hammered (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #3) by Kevin Hearne

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Well, firstly, me and this book started off in a bad place. It opens with Atticus keeping his promise to Laksha, that he would steal one of Idunn’s golden apples, so that she can be immortal. But in doing so, he does some dumb shit, and also most of it made me mad because SPOILERS he literally kills all but one of my favorite figures from Norse mythology. Let’s list them out: Ratatosk, the enormous squirrel that lives on Yggdrasil the World Tree (okay, well […]

It’s kind of a lot (but that’s ok)

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

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I liked this, but at the same time, I’m experiencing a potentially problematic personal issue where I’m getting pretty fatigued by multi-POV “but like, how are they all connected, man?” stories. Which is (reductively) David Mitchell’s main wheelhouse. Sorry Dave! The problem is that, inevitably, there are some stories/sections I care about a lot, and others where I don’t quite connect to the character and with their relation to the greater plot. This was definitely the case with Cloud Atlas, the only other Mitchell book […]

Great author forcing herself into the confines of a genre=middling book.

Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1) by Leigh Bardugo

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Two things: 1. Not really sure why this is called Shadow and Bone? Sounds very dramatic, but not super relevant to actual plot or theme. Things with “bone” in the title were very in in 2012, I guess? 2. Very glad this series wasn’t my first exposure to Bardugo’s writing. I said this in a Goodreads status update, but although it’s not badly written, it’s nothing special either. Pretty standard YA fantasy with attending tropes and such, with flairs here and there of interesting worldbuilding. […]

Finishing School Arya, the later years

Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence

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Once again I have fallen a couple of books behind so please bear with me. Grey Sister, the second in Mark Lawrence’s Book of the Ancestor trilogy, doesn’t hold up quite as well as its predecessor but that bar was so damn high my arms are shaking trying to hold it up. Being “less good” then Red Sister still puts it miles above a lot of the other dreck I’ve suffered through this year. Anyway, book two pulls us a little further outside the Convent of Sweet Mercy as […]



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