Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“And the system cannot survive the shock.”

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

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The reviews for this book have been so very mixed – people either really loved it (best book of the year!) or were really frustrated by it. I think a key distinction in the tone of reviews boils down to how much science fiction you were looking for when you cracked open these ambitious pages. If your heart is more invested in the science fiction / fantasy elements, you’re likely to be disappointed by this novel that chooses to focus much more on characters than […]

If you like Outlander but prefer no rape and more fantasy magic, this is for you!

Wyldwood: The Spiral Pathways series by Tava Baird

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This completes my first full cannonball since 2019!  A little while back Cannonballer Tava offered up a few free copies of her book Wyldwood.  The description caught my interest and I threw my hat into the ring to get one and I’m glad I did!  Part historical fiction, fantasy, and romance Wyldwood is set in Scotland of 1746, several months after the disaster that was Culloden. Saorsa Macdonald Stuart is the fictional niece of Bonnie Prince Charlie and is on her way to be married against […]

This Discworld book has been recommended for D&D players so I finally checked it out.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

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Nearly twenty years ago I gave Pratchett’s Discworld books a chance.  I had a long commute and been gifted audiobooks of the first few books in the series.  I listened to about the first three books and then decided they weren’t for me.  They felt gimmicky with a focus on clever ways of saying modern things without using current words.  For some reason, calling popcorn ‘banged grains’ sticks out in my memory as an example.  But over the years I kept seeing the devotion readers […]

Trudging through Drudgery

The Ritual by Mo Hayder

Magnus by Arjen Lubach

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The Ritual (Mo Hayder) ***½ When it comes to thrillers and crime fiction, I’m stuck in a quandary in the sense that I usually like the idea better than the execution. My main problem is that so many books within the genre seem so badly written: the characters are flat, the prose is hokey and the authors always seem to want to outdo each other by coming up with either the goriest or the most outlandish plots. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but […]

Farewell Katia, See You As Soon As You Publish The Next One

Just Might Work by Katia Rose

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And so, my journey through the sapphic romances of Katia Rose comes to an end. Originally this review of Just Might Work was going to be “Oh hey so this one has the best smut of the lot” but then I read Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner and frankly that blew everyone out of the water in the smut department, so with all due respect to the smut, I will be forced to talk about the way in which I liked the characters, very much […]

*slaps roof* This Thing Can Fit So Much Gay Sex In It

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner

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Somewhere midway through the chapter two “Oh no my friend brought me to breakfast with my one night stand from last night and it’s her mom” scene of Mistakes Were Made I realised that Meryl Wilsner had sucked me in for the ride. It was truly an outstanding entry in the awkward reunion genre, a little awkward, a little sexy, a little funny. It set the tone for the rest of the book, and it was enough to get me over my general mistrust of […]



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