Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You make family where you can, and you make the best of a bad hand every time. That’s all you can do.”

By the Horns by Ruby Dixon

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CBR17 Bingo: B – Behold, the title. Gwenna is determined to join the Royal Artificer’s Guild, where she’ll be able to leave behind her past life as a maid – but between her budding necromantic powers and her growing attraction to Raptor, who suspects she may be a thief, her dream might be slipping out of reach. I utterly loved this book, which improves on the good points of the first book in the series (world-building, humor, and complex main and supporting characters) while improving […]

“The chief wrong which false prophets do to their following is not financial… but the real harm is on the mental and spiritual plane.”

Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age by Leah Sottile

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CBR17 Bingo: Borrow – Support your local library! Like many of my reads, I borrowed this book from my local public library. The story of cult leader Amy Carlson and Love Has Won burst onto the news due to the unusual circumstances surrounding her dead, but she and her group are just the latest incarnation of New Age new religious movements in the United States. I have a bit of a fascination with new religious movements (which are not always cults, though all cults are […]

Realistic shades of friendship

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

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CBR17 Bingo: “Culture” – this book is very much rooted in the culture of a small town near Naples, Italy. I had never heard of My Brilliant Friend (2016) until I saw the NYT’s “100 Best Books of the 21st Century.” I had read a good number of books from that list, but I was a little disappointed that I had missed number one. If nothing else, I am a sucker for a list, so it didn’t take me long before I got around to remedying my […]

Caught up with the X-Men… For now

Phoenix, vol. 1 by Stephanie Phillips, Alessandro Miracolo

Storm, vol. 1 by Murewa Ayodele, Lucas Werneck

Psylocke, vol. 1 by Alyssa Wong, Vincento Carraru

Magik, vol. 1 by Ashley Allen, German Peralta

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Bingo Row 2 – diaspora Earlier this year, I made an effort to get back into the X-Men. Then current events happened and I decided to abort the catch up. But not before I got a sampling of the first volumes from some solo titles. (I wrote most of this before Disney put Kimmel back.) One of my favorite things about the X-Men is that the characters came from everywhere. Retrospectively, it was the closest thing I saw to my own family being represented in […]

Dead gods, decapitated corpses and dastardly ex-husbands

Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher

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CBR17 Bingo: Purple (most of the cover, barring the cover image, is a lovely lavender purple) Stephen is one of the paladins of the Saint of Steel (who was a god, despite the name), who died very suddenly and unexpectedly a few years back. No one thought gods could die, and a lot of his paladins killed themselves and caused massive amounts of damage when it happened. Now, Stephen and the six other paladins who remain are housed at the Temple of the White Rat […]

Sometimes, scoundrels make the best partners

The Wedding Con by Janine Amesta

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Thank you to Janine Amesta and Tule Publishing for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This is the second book in the Love is in the Air series, but this book can be read as a standalone as well. If you prefer to start at the beginning, the first one is Love at First Flight (which I literally, just NOW, as I was writing this, realised is a pun on “love at first sight”. Now I feel stupid.) Naomi Moreno wants to help her stubborn and independent older […]



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