Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

What have we learned in the past 80 years? (from publisher description)

Barbed Wire Between Us by Mia Wenjen

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Barbed Wire Between Us by Mia Wenjen and illustrated by Violeta Encarnación was a WOW book. It was not necessarily the story itself (though that is pretty wild) it was the way it was formatted that really made it work for me. It is a fantastic circular story that shows how history can repeat. But not only that, the text is repeated. We start with a young girl who is behind a fence in the 1940s. How she gets there, the thoughts and feelings she […]

A Spooky Read for Spooky Season

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

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It’s October, and while I might not read *solely* spooky books this season, it seemed appropriate to kick off the month with a master of the genre. I have never read anything by Shirley Jackson (no, not even The Lottery) and I was most familiar with her work via Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House. Which is an excellent show (highly recommend!) but by all accounts not a great adaption of the source material. More like, inspired by. So I went into We Have […]

A Two Week Vacation with Everyone who Hates You at Murder House

All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles

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Zeb Wykham doesn’t much care for his family, but when a cousin says he wants to get to know him, Zeb accepts an invitation to spend two weeks at Lackaday House on Dartmore. Zeb is distressed to find that his brother, sister-in-law, another cousin, a fourth older relative, and his ex are all there too. His host has lied about the purpose of the visit. Instead of a cozy getting to know you visit, Wynn Wykham has decided he will make the man who marries […]

Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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Reviews of The Handmaid’s Tale almost invariably start like a collective trauma memory: where were you when it happened? I was twenty-ish, an English major at a nearby university. I was taught how to analyse literature, but not how to consume it, how to distinguish it, and I don’t think we ever read this one for class. Needless to say, most of my professors were middle-aged men. I did read it, though, and it stuck with me; I read it again a few years later. […]

I struggled, but it’s still a Martha Wells book

Queen Demon by Martha Wells

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When I read and reviewed Witch King in 2023, I was hoping there would be more books in Kaiisteron’s story. I got my wish, but I flailed around for a while before I was able to sink into it. First, I realized that I needed to reread Witch King. Next, I needed to recalibrate. In a lot of fantasy series, there’s a person or entity that is the ultimate antagonist. In The Rising World series, I think the antagonist is a kind of power. I […]

The only gift we can give humans is not absolute victory, but instead a world with less fear

The Night Eaters, vols. 2-3 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

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Bingo Row 3 – N Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda are probably best known as the writer and artist for Monstress – an ongoing gorgeous and overwhelming fantasy comic series. Their collaboration on the Night Eaters is different enough to not be another Monstress, but similar enough that it’s clearly the same creative team: The art is dreamy and fantasy-conducive, even when it’s set in modern day North America and not a high fantasy world; the characters are mean and unlikeable, which makes them oddly […]



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