Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Its Time for Me to Say Goodbye to Dahl

The Witches by Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake (Illustrator)

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Roald Dahl was one of the authors who dominated my childhood reading which makes sense as he is one of the most celebrated children’s authors of the 20th century. I spent a lot of time deep in a few of his books, seeing bits of myself in his protagonists. But this is my goodbye to him. Dahl was an unrepentant bigot. He was profoundly anti-Semitic, perpetuating harmful tropes and falsehoods for years in his public statements and books. Dahl is also easily read as a […]

A very cool pantheon of gods ruined by lackluster writing and anti-Semitism

Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan

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BINGO – NEW SERIES Originally published in 2019, Wicked Saints is the first novel in a young adult, fantasy series that follows a young cleric named Nadya from a downtrodden land Kalyazi. She is able to commune with the entire pantheon of gods and petition them for assistance and magic. The people of Kalyazi are in a century-long war against Tranavia primarily led by a young mage named Serefin who is also the prince of Tranavia. The people of Tranavia reject the gods and instead […]

Sex, Murder and Political Intrigue in war-time Paris

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This is the latest in the series by Paul Grossman about the famous and highly respected German homicide detective Willi Kraus. Over the course of Grossman’s several earlier books which I’ve reviewed, the thuggish fringe National Socialist movement grows into the terrifying Nazi juggernaut which destroys the Germany Kraus has known and loved, and soon drives German Jews—himself and his family included—into exile. As one of the last to flee before all escape hatches were slammed shut, the widowed Kraus arrives in Paris without belongings, […]

Horror Story on the Eve of Hitler’s Takeover

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Grossman returns with a prequel to his horrifying The Sleepwalkers, which I’ve reviewed earlier. In Children of Wrath, the respected Berlin homicide detective and decorated WWI veteran Willi Kraus is just starting to feel the effects of the rising tide of anti-Semitism. It is 1929, and Hitler is still largely viewed as a vulgar upstart by the self-absorbed political aristocracy, but his power is nonetheless growing as the Great Depression begins to ravage the war-weary German economy. The Kripo, the bureau of criminal investigation where […]



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