Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Fifth Season: Funny how oppression is never the answer that the oppressors hope it is.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

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A good friend gave me this book a few years ago as a very strong recommendation for the series. Intending to read it right away, I immediately purchased the rest of the trilogy. Then they sat on my shelf for a while. After reading Amina Al-Sirafi, I wanted to dig into Shannon Chakraborty’s trilogy. So, off I skipped to the local bookshop only to find that they had 1 and 3 in stock, but #2 would take a few weeks to arrive. Rather than be […]

One Flew Over A Magdalene Sister’s New Black

Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart

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  Nurse Ratched, George “Pornstache” Mendez, Sister Bridget. Institutional fiction relies on a specific archetype—the tyrannical gatekeeper—that can make or break the latest remix of the genre. In the case of Women of a Promiscuous Nature, Mrs. Maynard simply isn’t strong enough to enter that hall of villains. As a fictionalized account of the mass quarantine carried out against women during WWII, the novel focuses on a smaller ensemble than is typical for the genre. Our way in is through Ruth, who feels slightly anachronistic […]

Mostly Amusing, Sometimes Confusing

Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead, The Loyal Opposition Trilogy Book 1 by K.J. Parker

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As a product of the Catholic school system from second grade through university, I have sat through A LOT of religion and theology classes. Heresies, schisms, saints, martyrs, whatever, I feel pretty well versed in church history. While KJ Parker’s Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead is a fantasy novel, it leans hard into Christian church history and theology, setting up some good old fashioned good versus evil scenarios, but it’s not always clear who is good or evil. That’s intentional, but while Parker […]

Refreshingly good

Kingdom, vol. 1-2 by Yasuhisa Hara

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It felt good to read the first 2 volumes of Kingdom by Yasuhisa Hara after a lot of junk food books. It reminded me a lot of Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, so I was not surprised to see Hara worked as Inoue’s assistant in the past. In ancient China, two boys named Xin and Piao are best friends and slaves with ambitious goals to be great generals – the only path out of slavery* for them and their wives and children. Not that they have […]

Woo Pig Sooie

Come and Get It by Kiley Reid

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Come and Get It, by Kiley Reid takes place over one semester at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Most of the book takes place in the scholarship/transfer student dorm there. And the main cast of characters includes a few RAs and residents of the dorm, as well as a visiting professor/writer from the north. I know this book won’t be for everyone, but aside from a couple of issues, it was very much for me. One, I found much of the book to be […]

“In-Yo would say that the war was won by silenced and nameless women, and it would be hard to argue with her.”

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

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Nowhere Bingo 26: Novella Dark Corner Selection: January 2026 Chih is a young cleric from the Singing Hills monastery who travels around the country searching for stories and history. At the shores of Lake Scarlet, Chih finds the abandoned dwelling where the former Empress In-Yo (the titular Empress of Salt and Fortune) spent her many years in exile. Chih encounters the elderly Rabbit, one of the Empress’s former handmaidens, who tells Chih stories of her own past and how it intertwined with that of the […]



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