Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Fools and Mortals

Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell

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Bernard Cornwell is the sort of author (like Crichton long ago) responsible for my flirtation with both writing and archaeology as a profession. He does an excellent job of weaving in historical goodies and details of the time, making quite a bit of the work educational in that excellent way where you don’t realize you’re learning anything until someone brings up Elizabethan persuivants and you’re like, “ah ha, the dudes prosecuting catholics who threatened to rip tongues out like they’re shopping dinner spots.” Our main […]

Matter of Fact, It’s All Dark

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

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This is a collection of four shorter works, three of them novella length and one short story. While they are unconnected, they each feature people in extreme and trying circumstances. King is pushing his characters to see how far they’ll go, and exploring their capacity for evil. 1922 focuses on a farmer whose wife wants to sell the land she’s inherited and move into the city, while her husband would rather expand the family farm. When his wife refuses to reconsider, the farmer convinces his […]

Getting caught up on reviews

Frankenstein, or: The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy

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Frankenstein, or: The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (5 stars) As I slowly make way through books most of you read in grade school, I’m learning that these books have staying power for a reason. I’ve liked the vast majority of them. Sometimes, I don’t know how I made it through school without having read them before, but my ability to avoid school work should never be underestimated. This book was phenomenal. Melodramatic, and the prose, though beautiful, was a bit antiquated and florid, but […]

A fun read in the run-up to Halloween

The Ex-Hex by Erin Stirling

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Heartbroken after discovering that the gorgeous young man she’d spent all summer with may in fact have a “betrothed” back in Wales, Vivienne “Vivi” Jones gets very drunk and weepy and she and her cousin light some candles and throw together a curse, to make Vivi feel better. They think nothing of it, until nine years later, when Rhys Penhallow, Vivi’s ex, and descendant of Graves Glen’s founding father returns to charge the ley lines. Suddenly there are murderous plastic toy skulls, a talking cat, […]

Yeah, I Don’t Know

Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg

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There was a lot I liked about this, but somehow, it kept falling into Uncanny Valley territory for me. Hulda Larkin, a very self-possessed young woman, is in the employment of BIKER (Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms – an acronym that consistently threw me off). It is her job to subdue enchanted homes into domesticity, in order to preserve their historical magical properties.  In the year 1846, she has been sent to an isolated mansion on a remote island in Rhode Island.  […]

Beauty and the Beast meets Groundhog Day, but with more murder

A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

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A very long time ago, Prince Rhen, the crown prince of Emberfall, made a very foolish mistake and slept with the wrong woman. He’s been paying for said mistake for centuries. Forced to relive the autumn of his eighteenth year over and over, he has to get a woman to fall in love with him in a few months, or he turns into a murderous beast and slaughters anyone he can find. If the curse remains unbroken, the season resets and Rhen is back on […]



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