Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Are we cake? Are those cake versions? Of us?

How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole

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I enjoyed How to Find a Princess. Alyssa Cole is such a good writer that even the parts I struggled with were really good. In fact, the anxiety and frustration I felt about Bez and Makeda was largely because of how real Cole made them to me. I think some people are going to find How to Find a Princess a challenge to get into, and it definitely benefits from a second read. Once I was comfortable with the story, I could appreciate how Bez […]

Field Guide to Queendom

How to Catch a Queen by Alyssa Cole

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I think Alyssa Cole is really up there with Courtney Milan (5 steps ahead of me for sure), in thinking about and wringing all the juice out of romance tropes. How to Catch a Queen uses the arranged marriage trope to dive into toxic masculinity, patriarchy as governance, and recovering from the harms of Colonialism. I can always count on Cole for excellent mental health rep, and she brings it here. Shanti Mohapti might be my very favorite character created by Alyssa Cole, and that says […]

Assorted Short Fiction II

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell

Yard Work by David Koepp

Anonymous by Uzodinma Iweala

There's a Giant Trapdoor Spider Under Your Bed by Edgar Cantero

The Remedy by Adam Haslett

Falls the Shadow by Skip Horack

Screwball by Simon Rich

The Beckoning Fair One by Dan Chaon

Q&A by Ben Winters

Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry

Decorum at the Deathbed by Josh Malerman

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Night of the Mannequins – 3/5 Stars – Stephen Graham Jones This is a newish novella from Stephen Graham Jones that you’ll have to roll with the bad title and go with it because it does some very interesting things. It has a significant flaw by the end, and the way I will describe that is that it either doesn’t trust the audience or trust itself to make the more interesting choice. The plot involves a group of teenagers, friends and frenemies, who friend works […]

“We are not your ornaments, we are your backbone.”

How to Catch a Queen by Alyssa Cole

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Do you love the Big Dumb Sadboy Fixed By Perfect Woman trope? Have you read and liked every retelling of Beauty and the Beast you’ve ever encountered? You’re going to love this book. Plot: Ever since she was a little girl, and saw the powerful, wise queen of Thabiso, commoner Shanti has had only one goal in life – to be a queen, but that is much easier said than done. Still, having unbendable determination and the support of her parents helps. Neighbouring country Njaza […]

Sadly, yet another Alyssa Cole hero kind of unworthy of his heroine

How to Catch a Queen by Alyssa Cole

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3.5 stars Official book description: When Shanti Mohapi weds the king of Njaza, her dream of becoming a queen finally comes true. But it’s nothing like she imagined. Shanti and her husband may share an immediate and powerful attraction, but her subjects see her as an outsider, and everything she was taught about being the perfect wife goes disastrously wrong.   A king must rule with an iron fist, and newly crowned King Sanyu was born perfectly fitted for the gauntlet, even if he wishes […]



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