Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search this Site

A Great (and Chunky) Prequel

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

by Leave a Comment

My first 5-star read of the year! I liked The Priory of the Orange Tree a bit more because I was 100% engaged all the way through, and with this prequel my engagement dipped occasionally, but it was still excellent. In some ways it was easier to settle into the world because we already know the basics from Priory, though there will still a lot of names and titles to adjust to. One of the things I really loved was seeing the differences between the world now […]

This standalone fantasy goes incredibly hard.

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao

by 16 Comments

Sending up the Bat Signal on this book, my first use of it this year. (FYI the last time I used it was with The Raven Scholar, my best book of 2025, so you know it’s serious.) I wouldn’t recommend this book as widely or as often as I have The Raven Scholar, but for a certain type of reader, this thing will hit hard. (As it hit me. Last night, crying softly on my couch as I opined to myself, IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL.) First […]

An intricately woven tale

The Light of All That Falls by James Islington

An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington

by Leave a Comment

While I read the entire trilogy rather closely together, I reviewed the first novel much earlier in the year. These are large books so it seemed like they each deserved their own review rather than a series review but it was harder for me to articulate my thoughts about the second and third novel. And now, I’m having a hard time entirely distinguishing which parts happened in book 2 vs 3. I had seen some tag lines for this series that compared it to The […]

Are All of Robin Hobb’s Books a Masterclass in Writing?

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

by 3 Comments

While I don’t mind multiple POV books, I generally prefer single POV. This book, though, masterfully demonstrates just how useful multiple POV can be. It was so different from the Farseer trilogy in which we’re always in Fitz’s head, and the emotions are unrelenting. In Ship of Magic, when you need a break from the drama with one character, there’s a different character whose drama you can jump into! It’s written in the 3rd person, but don’t expect that to spare you from the author’s toying with your […]

what happens when you impulse murder a monarch

Anji Kills a King (The Rising Tide, #1) by Evan Leikam

by Leave a Comment

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. This was a really interesting debut fantasy, but it didn’t quiiiite do it for me. I thought it was more intellectually interesting than emotionally, but I am going to read the rest of the series because I’m super curious to see where this is going. We start out strong with the titular Anji killing the king and then going on the run. We don’t know who she […]

An impressive example of a first novel

The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington

by 4 Comments

I have had this on my TBR for a while but had ended up reading The Will of the Many, the first and only one in the author’s newer trilogy first because I didn’t want to get sucked into binging a trilogy. That’s always the question – go with something that will leave me waiting year to year for the next book, or something that will end up dictating my next few reads. I really enjoyed this one as well (and predictably got sucked into […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo