Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A Fresh Take on Magic, Mystery, and Love

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

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I’ve had my eye on this book for a while. A YA story with a school of magic, magicians, and vampires? I’m in. I had heard that the idea for the book started as Harry Potter fanfiction so I was curious to see how that turned out. Simon is the Chosen One who is being tutored by The Mage in order to be the best wizard the world of mages has ever seen (sound familiar?). His nemesis and roommate, Basilton “Baz” Grimm-Pitch is an undercover […]

“You have to pretend you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can’t carry on at all.”

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

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I’ve been working on this review for a while, and I was finally going to polish it and publish it, but I ended up deleting it, so I’m going to quickly do a new one. I read Carry On back when it first came out (I would normally link to my review, but I never actually reviewed it). I loved it back then, so now that the sequel was being released, and with a bit of time to kill waiting for my fancy copy to […]

I never actually wrote a review of this, so here are some thoughts I typed up to a Goodreads friend instead.

Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2) by Rainbow Rowell

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I just never got myself together enough to write more than “THOUGHTS” as a review on Goodreads, so here are some disjointed notes (edited for clarity) I sent over to a Goodreads friend instead: 1. In response to everyone going into this book assuming it was a duology: I thought about this, too, but ultimately it doesn’t bother me too much. I had been going in expecting this to be the end of the story as well, and it very much wasn’t. Maybe on a […]

It’s the same story on repeat but still pretty fun

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

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Apparently the multi-narrator thing is now a trend in certain types of fiction. I heard this a while ago, but hadn’t thought on it much until I picked up Carry On. I’ve read Fangirl, so I had a basic idea but what I hadn’t realized was that Carry On uses one of my least favorite narrative styles, first person present, and the multi-narrator story. Together these things drag down what would otherwise be a great fan fic/twist on the “Chosen One” brand of hero story. […]

3 Heads are Definitely Better Than 2

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

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Please enjoy our joint effort in unpacking the amazing Carry On! Ale: I very much enjoy that Rainbow Rowell did the most meta thing ever and basically wrote a fan-fic about her own characters that were characters in a fan-fic created by her own characters. I’m still wrapping my own brain around that sentence. But I think it’s a testament to her craft that she had characters that were so nuanced from Fangirl that she could expand them into another two books (note from faintingviolet – […]

Third time through, just as great. #CBRBingo – I Love This

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

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This book works on multiple levels for me: *It’s swoony and I love the characters. I find it comfortable and reassuring, like a big fluffy blanket. *It’s a smart take on Chosen One stories, upending tropes and challenging expectations. The first time through you think you know what’s going to happen, and then it doesn’t, and something much cooler happens instead. *It’s funny and incisive, and has good things to say about the human emotional cost of magic, of being caught inside a fantasy story. […]



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