Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Three and a half Golden Pippins!

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier

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Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of my favourite historical novels, it’s extremely well researched and although it’s completely fictional, it could very plausibly have happened as told. Remarkable Creatures falls into the same category, I loved it as well, so I was ready to read/listen to another novel by Tracy Chevalier and see what world she would bring to life this time. In At the Edge of the Orchard, the historical background is the colonization of the American West, the Gold Rush, and […]

“Women seem wicked, when you’re unwanted”

Beware the Woman (2023) by Megan Abbott

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I haven’t read very much at all this year; distressing work news  in an absolute shitshow of a job market in my field has affected my concentration somewhat. So have I bought a lot of books? Yes. Do I read them? I try? Between finally watching Succession (Waystar Royco is starting to seem like a utopian haven right now) and familiarising myself with the entire catalogue of Kendrick Lamar (upper management? THEY NOT LIKE US). But I did read Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman (2023), […]

And all the world a savage garden

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

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One of my favourite releases last year was Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. Released last week, A Drop of Corruption continues the story of Ana Dolabra, brilliant-but-eccentric investigator, and Dinios Kol, her bisexual-disaster-with-a-photographic-memory assistant. Picking up about a year after the ending of The Tainted Cup, Ana and Din are called to the edge of the Empire to investigate a murder where the victim seemingly vanished into thin air. Further complicating matters is […]

Not Without My Dice.

A Conventional Boy by Charles Stross

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I’ve been a fan of Charlie Stross’ Laundry Files for over a decade now. This has given me plenty of time to watch the series evolve. Like many other works that began as satire aimed at government bureaucracy, it has grown increasingly cynical as real life has become harder and harder to parody.  In particular, there was a rough trilogy linked to the original Laundry Files stories under the title of Tales of the New Management that hit me as painfully cynical, to the point that it […]

2,650 Miles of Wilderness

Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail by Andrea Lankford

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There have been people attempting to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail since it was first established, and where people congregate there is also always some amount of tragedy. But when three young man vanish from the trail in a three-year period, former park ranger Andrea Lankford gets fascinated by the search for them. For a person who one day wants to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail (after a lot of preparation, mind you), I find myself reading a lot about wilderness disaster and crime stories. Maybe […]

The Haymitch behind the Capitol’s narrative

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

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Well fuck. That was so much more devastating than I expected. It’s been forever since I read the original trilogy but I rewatched the movies recently – which means I likely missed some details that didn’t quite make it into the movies (especially around Maysilee’s family and Merrilee). At least, I could truly appreciate appearances of the younger versions of some of the characters from Catching Fire who appeared as mentors (and the amount of tragic backstory we learned about some of them was wrecking). […]



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