Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Confusing, but fun

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

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Nowhere Book Bingo: Award Winner (Won the Hugo and Locus awards in 1998, plus a bunch of others) Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Scene on a boat or body of water (there’s a lot of rowing on the river) CBR16 Bingo: Tech (time travel requires pretty specific technology) This is the second book in the Oxford Time Travel series, but you really don’t need to have read the first one, Doomsday Book, to understand and enjoy this one. In the universe these books are set in, […]

Animal Prophecy? The Bird is the Word.

The Farseekers by Isobelle Carmody

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Well, that bingo card is keeping me motivated— ‘Part 2’ is sitting right there. And my need to procrastinate from packing and moving. That too. One of the more tricky things about reviewing books from a series is that I’m always wary about giving too much away. I think this will be a constant issue for the Obernewtyn Chronicles, since there are seven  books. So while I’ll try not to reveal too many big spoilers from the current book I’m going over, the previous ones […]

Something Skittering Just Out Of Frame

Dead Country by Max Gladstone

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Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence series is one of my favorite examples of fantasy world building. Gladstone took the core idea of ‘what if soul-stuff could be traded?’ and built a magical system—known as The Craft—out of it. He then expanded further and asked ‘So what if a world’s sole currency is well, the soul? What would this mean for the financial system? What kind of corporate world would develop around this? Imagine a metropolis or two arising out of this system? How would they operate?’ […]

Nostalgia. And My Favorite Cat.

Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody

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Obernewtyn, by Australian author Isobelle Carmody, is the first book in what was originally meant to be a five part series. However, this original plan didn’t quite pan out and The Obernewtyn Chronicles ended up pulling the same kind of seam-splitting expansion that would later be codified in popular culture by The Song of Ice and Fire by growing to a total of seven books. Which were published across nearly thirty years*. The series itself is as old as I am.  I’ve always had a […]

A new favorite book that could not fit better into this BINGO square if it tried. CBRBINGO – Bananas

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

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This is a ridiculous book that I loved very much. Also, because I have low spoons at the moment and also because I couldn’t do better, here is the blurb: Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she’s fallen in love. Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain […]

Is It Coming Home?

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

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Read as part of CBR16 Bingo: fanfic. This is Lev Grossman’s take on the King Arthur mythos.  I don’t really know how to write this review because I loved it and I really want to give it my full throated endorsement. But there are things I loved about the book itself and things as an Arthur fan that I both loved and hated. Let’s start here: it’s one of the best things I’ve read in 2024. I liked the first Magicians book, less so the other two. […]



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