Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Great Potential, Lacking in Execution

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

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This book should have been right up my alley. A cozy fantasy with an introverted librarian and a sentient spider plant assistant? Sign me up! But it failed to live up to my expectations and ended up being kind of “meh.” For me, the problems started almost right at the beginning. Main character Kiela and the spider plant Caz flee the Great Library of Alyssium when rebels set fire to it, and they head to Caltrey, the island where Kiela was born and lived for […]

Prolonging my time in the Cold Magic world with short stories and essays

The World Begins in Ice by Kate Elliott

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I first learned about Kate Elliott’s Cold Magic series while reading John Scalzi’s website.  In the Big Idea section Elliott described what The History of the World Begins in Ice is all about.  It is a collection of short stories written in the “Spiritwalker Trilogy” as well as essays about the characters and aspects of the world.  The trilogy sounded fascinating, to quote Kate: When I began writing Cold Magic, my primary goal (besides making it shorter than Traitors’ Gate) was to tell a story that would […]

“Books are a weapon against lonliness. Putting them in the right hands lets people see one another. It makes us…better to one another”.

Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree

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Brigands and Breadknives returns us to Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy world.  While the first book, Legends and Lattes, and the second published book (that’s actually a prequel), Bookshops and Bonedust, are able to be read on their own, Breadknives and Brigands requires you to have read Bookshops and Bonedust, and it’s helpful if you’ve read Legends and Lattes. Foul mouthed rattkin bookseller, Fern, has been adrift in her own life.  Running her bookstore in Murk is no longer giving her the satisfaction it once did.  A change of […]

“There was, she thought, not very much difference in the behavior of a cat and a high-handed, chauvinistic Tudor autodidact in the body of a cat. The only thing to truly set them apart was the vocabulary.”

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner

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After solving her sixteenth murder in five years, small-town librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle is only just beginning to grow alarmed by the sheer number of death piling up in Winesap. But when her boyfriend is murdered and her cat gets possessed by a demon called himself Sir Thomas Cromwell, Sherry becomes sure there is something dark at work. This is the book for every person who has looked at how many books can pile up in a cozy mystery series and wondered what on earth is […]

A Mouthful of Dust: The Value of a Low-Stakes Read

A Mouthful of Dust: The Singing Hills Cycle #6 by Nghi Vo

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I have been reading through the Singing Hills Cycle series since 2022. They have served as bite-sized treats and motivation to return to reading usually during a lull. Given the time between reading each book, I would struggle to tell you what’s happened in previous stories at this point. I think I keep returning to the series because of Chih and Almost Brilliant. They are a lovely pair of characters to accompany from story to story. A Mouthful of Dust is the sixth installment of […]

Die Trying, Die Laughing

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

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One does not simply walk into 2026 without a good book to read. As luck would have it, I can recommend one straight out of the gate. Django Wexler’s  How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is the foul-mouthed, irreverent comedic fantasy novel that will set the tone for your own year of mischief and mayhem, should you choose to have one. And honestly, why wouldn’t you?  “The Dark Lord” by melbourneflower is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 . Davi has absolutely had it […]



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