Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

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I am going to buy a permanent copy of this book for my collection. I loved this. I don’t even know what else to say. You want a horror filled The Little Mermaid with a plague doctor? Well this is your book. I loved the first half that shows the aftermath of what was done to the kingdom that captured a mermaid and then the beginning of how the mermaid and the doctor first met and began to feel…well something. I don’t have anything to say except […]

“For the falling star and the rising ape to meet, the former must first be debased. No myth can remain terrifying when you’ve seen it broken and beaten, rendered as toothless as an old crone.”

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

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He was afraid one way or another of the voice that beats in your lungs. Your hurricane scream. You frightened him, how men fear things that can’t be quieted. I’m sorry this was just a novella, because I want more; this book was written like it’s just waiting for a Guillermo del Toro adaptation. (I will admit this opinion was heavily influenced by my having watched del Toro’s Frankenstein immediately after; still stand by it though.) The story is told in a lovely melange of […]

Happy Horror Days

Christmas and Other Horrors: A Winter Solstice Anthology by Ellen Datlow (Editor), Christopher Golden, Benjamin Percy, Alma Katsu, Terry Dowling, Nick Mamatas, Glen Hirshberg, Garth Nix, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Nadia Bulkin, Josh Malerman, Cassandra Khaw, Kaaron Warren

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I am a big fan of horror all year round, so I am going to be that person right now and be all “Ghost stories at Christmas are Victorian tradition!”  And they were, and I like to embrace this particular tradition.  There are 17 creepy seasonal horror stories in this book, so next year if I am on the ball I might even be able to set up a spooky reading advent-ish adventure for myself. This collection is not just about Christmas, other winter holidays […]

“There is nothing wrong with being a monster.”

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

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?????? It’s been weeks now and I still don’t know what to make of this one. A very dark and weird take on The Little Mermaid story, with a cheeky little nod to Hans Christian Andersen even; mostly this was an exercise in imagery and I didn’t connect to the characters, but I can’t deny it has style. The mermaid here was essentially stolen from the sea, forced to marry a prince, had her tongue cut out, and then gave birth to daughters who then […]

Her magic was as blunt as she was: like a nuke hidden in a birthday cake.

The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey

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I don’t know what prompted Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey to write a book together, but I am so glad they did. I’m also very excited that there will be another book from them. The Dead Take the A Train is the first in the Carrion City duology. I saw an ad for the book a couple of days ago, and John Langan blurbed the book as “compulsively readable.” I can’t think of a better description. It was hard to put down, and even when I […]

Some Shorts (Evelyn Waugh (1); Italo Calvino (1); Henry James (1); Stephen Graham Jones (1); Cassandra Khaw(1); John Grisham (1); CW Longbottom (1)

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Henry James by A Tragedy of Error

Midnight Caller by Stephen Graham Jones

Don't Turn on the Lights by Cassandra Khaw

The Tumor by John Grisham

Tears of the Anaren by CW Longbottom

Village of Islands by Jim Shepard

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The Loved One “All the day the heat had been barely supportable but at evening a breeze arose in the west, blowing from the heart of the setting sun and from the ocean” I rented the first disc of Six Feet Under from Blockbuster just as soon as the dvds of the first season came out. I remember that one of the first scenes of the show, and the first season of the show was weird, like the ways that the first season of Sex […]



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