Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Fallen highly advanced civilization, tech magic vs. bio magic, and two siblings on opposite sides of the divide.

Ashes of the Sun: Burningblade & Silvereye Book One by Django Wexler

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More than 400 years ago there were two powerful entities, the Chosen and those who are now called ghouls.  The Chosen wielded a magical power called deiat.  With deiat they powered technological marvels like sky fortresses and more mundane blaster pistols.  The ghouls channeled a biological magic called dhak.  With dhak they could do amazing feats of healing and creation of bio constructs for any application.  Dhak could also be twisted to create horrible monsters, plaguespawn, as creatures and humans could be hybridized.  400 hundreds […]

When You Literally Get Sucked Into a Story

The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler

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The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler My rating: 4 of 5 stars “The Forbidden Library” is a quasi-steampunk, fantasy novel. Alice discovers that her world isn’t what it seems when she happens to overhear and see her father talking with a fairy. This leads to some circumstances that throws her world upside down. She ends up living with her “uncle” Geryon who has a library that she’s not allowed to visit unless she accompanied by Geryon. Of course she wants to discover the place for […]

Django Wexler’s “The Shadow Campaigns” series took me on one heck of a ride

The Guns of Empire: Book 4 of The Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler

The Infernal Battalion: Book 5 of The Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler

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This review specifically covers the last two books in Djanjo Wexler’s “The Shadow Campaigns” series, book four, The Guns of Empire, and the conclusion in book five, The Infernal Battalion but also discusses the series as a whole.  Each book of The Shadow Campaigns gets a 4 star rating, however the strength of the series as a whole is 5 stars. With each book Wexler expands the scope of the story and fills in the world with greater detail.  The Thousand Names is a military […]

Genius military tactics, intriguing magic, a queen trying to save her people from threats internal and external, and LGBTQ characters

The Price of Valor: Book Three of The Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler

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As this is the third book in the series, perhaps you should check out my review of the first book The Thousand Names: Book One of the Shadow Campaigns, which is predominantly about a military campaign.  The second book, The Shadow Throne, switches gears and is about political intrigue and power struggles.  This third book, The Price of Valor, is combination of both and an excellent continuation of the series. Note about the cover art of the books: I originally found them off putting as […]

Ghost Ships and Magic

Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

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Ship of Smoke and Steel is an enjoyable fantasy that squeaks into the YA label because the protagonist is a teenager. The violence and sex in the book make it suitable for older teens at best, and boy do I feel like a prude saying that. I found out about this book thanks to John Scalzi’s wonderful segment on his blog “The Big Idea” where an author tells you about a book they have coming out and how they came up with it. I find […]

We go from military campaign to political intrigue in book two

The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaign by Django Wexler

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At the end of last year I finally got around to reading The Thousand Names: Book One of the Shadow Campaigns and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The Thousand Names is primarily about a Vordanai military campaign, in the foreign desert land of Khandar, told through a couple of perspectives.  The Shadow Throne completely switches gears and setting.  It keeps Winter Inhernglass (Lieutenant and female in disguise) and Marcus d’Ivoire’s (Senior Captain) narratives and adds two new ones; Raesinia Orboan (heir to the throne) and Duke Orlanko (Ministry of Information, spy […]



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