Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“Impossible things are really rough to do, you know.”

The Shattered Lens: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

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Like give a positive review of this book. By the fourth book, you should really know how you feel about the characters, and be invested in the plot; I don’t, and I’m not. Alcatraz just gets smarmier and more annoying each page, and the rest of the characters seem like they’re just walking through their parts, reading off lines to move the plot along. Not that most of them really come off as fully fleshed out characters anymore; they’re mostly named clothes hangers to hang […]

Heist, But Make It Revolution

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

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Let’s set the scene: a dystopian world, where ash falls from the sky daily and the nights are full of thick mist and strange creatures. Society is divided into two castes who do not overlap: the nobility and the peasant skaa. Nobles have almost absolute power over the skaa that live and work on their land, and abuse that power frequently. Skaa live in beaten-down fear and despair, sure that nothing will ever change. And why are they so sure? Because the person who leads […]

A wise man once said, “Any story, no matter how good, will sound really, really dumb when you shorten it to a few sentences.”

The Knights of Crystallia: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

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Alcatraz Smedry (anti)hero of the series, finally makes it the Free Kingdoms, a place safe from the clutches of the evil Librarians. Once there, he discovers that against all common sense, the rulers of the Free Kingdoms are planning a treaty with the Librarians, one of which happens to be his mother. Alcatraz and his intrepid family, friends, and random people newly introduced, must thwart the treaty, uncover a traitor in their midst, and figure out why Alcatraz’s father is completely unlikable. Can they do […]

A very sweet adventure story, gorgeously packaged

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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4.5 stars Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Celestial (there is a big moon and several stars on the cover) What if in The Princess Bride, Buttercup didn’t sit at home and mourn for Westley when he was captured by pirates, but instead went off to try to rescue him? Of course, that would mean Buttercup had any agency at all in either the novel or the film, and she really doesn’t. But if Buttercup was a young woman named Tress, from a barren and fairly desolate […]

“But in his experience, being bad with names was like being bad with swords. Most people could learn if they tried hard enough.”

Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson

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original hot take Okay fine I’ll give it a 5 although I have to go back and rebase across the works. In other news, 3am reading indicates lessons of adulthood never learned. Longer review I don’t think this actually is a five star for me, I think if I had to go back and think through the books it would be: Way of Kings 4* Words of Radiance 5* Oathbringer 4* Rhythm of War 5* Wind and Truth 4* There’s too much that went on in this […]

“What, other than a person, could you build up merely by caring?”

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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Hey look, I read my very first Brandon Sanderson book! Even better, I really liked it. Very nearly 5-star loved it.   I have been intrigued by the writings of Brandon Sanderson for years, it’s hard to be a Cannonballer and not see many of the people whose opinions you generally agree with, and trust have incredibly complementary things to say about it. But the kind of massive, high fantasy volumes that Sanderson is infamous for have never been my thing. But then I kept […]



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