Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A Favorite Author’s Beginnings

Guardians of Dreamdark: Windwitch by Laini Taylor

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Laini Taylor is one of my favorite authors, and I had been wanting to read her debut novel for a while, so I finally picked it up when it was re-released. As expected, I enjoyed the writing, and I loved the whimsical worldbuilding, such as cheroot-smoking, brandy-drinking crows. Those kinds of details are so specific and unexpected, and they create a strange but lived-in world. While the book is rated for middle grade, it could easily cross over into early YA due to the complexity […]

Some Carryovers from Last Year and Two from This Year

Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

The Cat Who Taught Zen by James Norbury

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow

This Fatal Kiss by Alicia Jasinska

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

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Muse of Nightmares I was not expecting that. I was not expecting the call-backs to the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, and that was so cool. This was already a book I was loving, and that bumped it right on up to 5 stars for me. This isn’t a spin-off or sequel, so you don’t have to have read that trilogy to enjoy this one, but I loved the sense of mild continuity. Muse of Nightmares picks up where Strange the Dreamer left off. Minya […]

Beautiful Prose and a Compelling Fantasy World

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

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This cements it – Laini Taylor is now an auto-buy (well, auto-read) author for me. I loved the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, and now I love Strange the Dreamer. My fondness for the author comes from both the stories she crafts and how beautiful her writing is. Something somewhat gruesome happens on the very first page of Strange the Dreamer, but even that is written poetically. Here are some of the descriptions in which her prose really stood out to me: “The old […]

“People With Destinies Shouldn’t Make Plans”

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

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Wow, what a great trilogy! The Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy is an older YA/NA fantasy set partly on earth and partly in a world called Eretz. Please note that the reviews for books 2 and 3 may contain spoilers for each preceding book. Daughter of Smoke & Bone starts out from the perspective of Karou, a 17-year-old art student in Prague. She lives two lives: in one she is a normal teenage girl dealing with school, friends, and an ex-boyfriend, but in her […]

Daughter of Smoke and Bone- Gives good reread

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

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Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real, she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”, she speaks […]

A happy revisit to an old fave

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

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Bingo square: Hold Steady On the Second Sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky. Lazlo Strange has been fascinated by the city of Weep since he was a boy. A far away place cut off from the world 200 years ago, even its name has been snuffed out of existence. Lazlo felt magic in the air when that happened, and has spent his life since learning all he can about Weep. An orphan raised by monks, he finds […]



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