Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sea monsters, demons, and fae magic

A Witch With No Name by Kim Harrison

One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire

The Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert

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No half-cannonball for me, but I’ve managed to squeeze in reviews for everything I’ve read in 2024. I’ve been savoring The Hollows series by Kim Harrison like a fine wine. I finally finished her OG urban fantasy and paranormal romance with A Witch With No Name. You have to read these in order, but it’s worth it. The close of the series finds Rachel Morgan once again in hot water with the magical beings of the world. A demon witch who shouldn’t exist will have to […]

“He wasn’t grateful, he was homicidal. It wasn’t enough that they endanger his friends and servants, they had to attack his most valued enemy as well.”

The Book of Ile-Rien by Martha Wells

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The Book of Ile-Rien collects the first two books in Martha Wells’ Ile-Rien universe, which takes place in a fantasy world with a steampunk flavor. Though I have the much-lauded Murderbot series on my TBR, I have never read any of Wells’ work before. The Element of Fire is her debut, and when this book crossed my dashboard I thought it’d be a decent place to start. The Element of Fire – 3.5 stars The return of the king’s bastard sister to the court of […]

Fantastic Fantasy!

Faebound by Saara El-Arifi

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Saara El-Arifi immediately place herself on my auto-buy list with her debut, and this new world she’s created just confirms why I love her storytelling. The book starts with a myth telling of the three gods: Asase, the Wheat, god of the earth and creator of humans; Ewia, the two-headed Bat, god of the sun and creator of fae: and Bosome, the Water, god of the moon and creator of the elves. As far as anyone is aware, all that remains in the world are […]

The Limits of a Good Metaphor

King of Immortal Tithe by Ben Alderson

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Listen: it’s fundamentally really tricky to pull off a romance when the premise for their connection is that this is the ONLY person who can physically touch you and not die. Our basics here are fairly simple: our ingenue protagonist is abducted in a kind of marriage trade to a fae prince whose touch drains people’s life force, causing instant death. Except it doesn’t work on our hero. Possibly because he’s already dying. And that creates an instant connection. But that premise only goes so far, right? […]

Series Conclusion but Maybe Not the End

The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman

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The Untold Story is kind of the end of the Invisible Library series, but in the post-script there is the suggestion that maybe that’s not quite right; maybe there will be an Act 2 of sorts at some point in the future. For most of the series, there’s been a couple of major questions that do get answered as well as several others brought up in more recent volumes, including why was Alberich trying to destroy the Library, who are Irene’s birth parents (and why […]

Ice Queen

The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

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I absolutely adored The Folk of Air trilogy so naturally, I’ve also been reading all the additional novellas and follow on novels associated with the series. That is, however, also where I went wrong with this one because I thought it was another stand alone novel in the world, like How the King of Elfhame learned to Hate Stories and as a result, I think my expectations were a bit off vs what I got. This is the first of a duology so there is a bit more […]



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