Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A defiant girl in a man’s world

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

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4.5 stars Spoiler warning! This is book 2 in a trilogy, and the story pretty much follows on directly from the ending of the previous book. This book, while very good, doesn’t really stand on its own, you would do much better to start at the beginning, with The Bear and the Nightingale.  There are roving gangs of bandits travelling the countryside around Moscow, pillaging and burning the villages and abducting young girls. Prince Dimitri sends his cousin, brother Alexandr, affectionately known to his family as Sasha, to investigate. Sasha has been out travelling the land, and brings an injured and exhausted […]

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We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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1/27/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:3 |

you will falsely remember being told about Melmoth by your grandmother’s mother when you were very small

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

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There is something immediately nauseating – hear me out- about this book. You can be nauseous when you feel ill, when you ride a roller coaster, when you are nervous, or when you eat too many sweets. There is a feeling of hopeful dread that climbs over you (and all of the characters within) before you have finished reading the first page. There is a feeling that you have been here – in a cafe in Prague, under an overpass in Manila, in a field on a river on the edges of Bohemia- and that you have heard these stories […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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1/2/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:1 |

And now the end is near…

Always Forever by Mark Chadbourn

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After slogging through its predecessor over a matter of weeks, I tore through Always Forever (the last in the Age of Misrule trilogy) in just two days, although this had more to do with wanting to read the tower of books I got for Crimbo than with how much I was enjoying it. To be fair, I did enjoy this one more than the Darkest Hour, but it never quite got back to the same level as the opener, World’s End. We left Darkest Hour with everything having gone pretty wrong. With the deaths of two of its members, our five […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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12/31/2018 's CBR10 Review No:82 |

Not only is it the Darkest, it’s also the slowest…

Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) by Mark Chadbourn

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Having taken a couple of weeks to slog through Darkest Hour, I’m starting to see where my rating knocked off a couple of stars in my first read through, as the breakneck pace of World’s End came almost to a complete halt, and our ‘heroes’ screwed up yet more things in their fight to save humanity. World’s End saw Church, Veitch, Shavi, Ruth and Laura summon the Tuatha De Danaan to help them to defeat the Fomorii, only to discover that once the Tuatha were here, they really didn’t want to leave again, and nor did they feel like adjusting […]

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12/28/2018 's CBR10 Review No:81 |

Well worth the re-read

World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1) by Mark Chadbourn

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I first read The Age of Misrule trilogy decades ago and seem to remember thinking it was only OK, but since then I’ve found my mind often returning to some of its scenes and ideas and so decided it was high time for a re-read. Based on the first book, so far my re-read has discovered that, while it has its flaws, my younger self was far too scathing in my initial assessment. In World’s End, we meet five strangers drawn together to try and avert an apocalypse. The Age of Reason is over, and creatures from legend are starting […]

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12/6/2018 's CBR10 Review No:80 |

The perfect ending to a spellbinding series

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

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For the first time in my life, it turns out that I know someone who knows someone, which is how I managed to get my eager little hands on a pre-release copy of The Winter of the Witch, the final instalment in Katherine Arden’s fantastic Winternight Trilogy. And what a treat it was. Taking everything I loved from The Bear and the Nightingale (and missed most in The Girl in the Tower, namely the chyerti of the forest and the homestead) and ramping it all the way up to 11, The Winter of the Witch was a superlative ending to […]

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12/3/2018 's CBR10 Review No:79 |

Naomi Novik is two for two in my book (I still need to read Temeraire!!)

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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I read most of this book in a day. It was so charming and lovely. In the vein of Uprooted, Spinning Silver is another loosely inspired retelling of a fairytale, this time Rumplestiltskin. I’m honestly not sure which book I liked better. It’s been a while since I read Uprooted, and this book is one of those that gets better in your head the longer you sit with it after you finish. Our Rumplestiltskin is actually one of our heroines, Miryem, the daughter of a moneylender (a historically Jewish profession, as usury was against Christian beliefs, though that didn’t stop them from borrowing […]

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8/27/2018 's CBR10 Review No:101 |

Why is it always the deal breakers that end up the hero in fairy tales?

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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While I definitely grew up with all the normal fairy tales that inspired Disney movies, I also remember Rumpelstilzchen (German version) leaving a deep impression.  I can’t remember if it was because the story creeped me out (I mean, he tears himself in two when he loses the deal) or if I thought there was something unjust about the treatment of either him or the spinner’s daughter but I certainly thought it was an interesting choice when he became such a central figure in Once Upon a Time’s spin on fairy tales. At its most basic, Spinning Silver is a […]

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7/30/2018 's CBR10 Review No:135 |


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