Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Revisiting The Folk of the Air, with more Cardan and Jude

How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories by Holly Black

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Spoiler warning! Don’t read this book, or review unless you’ve finished the entire trilogy of The Folk of the Air. The Cruel Prince is the place to start. This companion book, which I suspect would clock in at novella-length if you removed all the beautiful full-colour illustrations throughout by Rovina Cai, works as part prequel and part sequel to The Folk of the Air trilogy, as well as an alternate POV to several of the series’ events, especially in The Cruel Prince, where Prince Cardan is possibly at his most loathsome. In […]

Jude Continues to Be Awesome

The Wicked King by Holly Black

The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black

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The last two books in Holly Black’s “Folk of the Air” trilogy were just as amazing, engaging, and sensually pleasurable as The Cruel Prince. In her quest for power, Jude Duarte is upping the ante as the right-hand to the high king of Faerie in book two, and then breaking her exile on pain of death in book three. There’s plotting, spying, backstabbing (both literal and figural), and Jude’s struggle to balance playing Faerie’s game without completely becoming the thing she hates. Jude continues to be […]

Clever and Cruel

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

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Why have I only just found Holly Black? I know she’s been around for a long time, I’ve seen the reviews go by on CBR, but somehow I never got around to reading any of her work. This is like my Rainbow Rowell experience all over again. I’m blown away. This book was perfect; an absolute dark delight. Jude Duarte is a human stolen away to the land of Faerie with her sisters. While Jude’s sisters find their own quiet ways to either assimilate or […]

Getting a FRESH START on my reviews with Bingo…

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

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I have been sorely lax with my reviews this spring (gee; I wonder why?) even though I have actually been reading up a STORM since May. The great thing about Bingo is that sense of competition (with myself) that inspires me to actually write up reviews. So to be on-topic, I decided to start with the Fresh Start square and The Cruel Prince–the first in a series that has been on my Twitter feed for a while, a YA trilogy by Holly Black. I’d actually […]

Video Games and the “Real World”

Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson, John Joseph Adams, Ernest Cline

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Bingo Review 2: Shelfie I honestly have no idea how long Press Start to Play has been on my literal TBR shelf, but it’s been a while. I figured this was as good a reason as any to finally pick it up, especially since I actually broke down and bought a Nintendo Switch Light a few weeks ago. I’ve never been much of a gamer; I didn’t grow up with it really, unless you count the educational stuff like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. I […]

Two Folk of the Air Stories

The Wicked King by Holly Black

The Lost Sisters by Holly Black

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My first introduction to Holly Black was The Coldest Girl in Cold Town, and I have definitely enjoyed all her novels I’ve read since then.  Considering how amazing her vampire novel was, I’m surprised she has stuck with faerie novels since then but they, too, are amazing. I loved the first novel in this trilogy, The Cruel Prince, and I can’t wait for November when the final novel comes out. About five months after placing Cardan on the throne, Jude is burning the candle at […]



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