Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“A good man is made through a lifetime of work. Great men are made by their monsters.”

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

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I’ll admit, while I’d seen Lisa Bee’s review of this earlier this year, the book didn’t really land on my radar until I watched Black Sails over the summer and it was mentioned that Luke Arnold who plays John Silver had written this as well as a sequel that came out this year, and that he did the audio version himself. I was suitably lured in by this info and many thanks to crystalclear for getting me the audio version. The book tells the story […]

The Magic is Gone. Now What?

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

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Perhaps it’s unfair that I’m reviewing The Last Smile of Sunder City only days after finishing Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. A Hugo award winning series is always going to be an unreachable pinnacle, especially by a debut author, and I’m probably doing an unrealistic comparison to expect Sunder City to feed the depth of my expectations after spending three books in Jemisin’s incredible craft. But I did expect more from Sunder City. This isn’t to say Arnold is a bad writer; he’s not. He’s a very […]

An Urban Fantasy Noir with an Intriguing World, but with a Slow Burn Pace that Doesn’t Sizzle Quite Enough

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

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Unintentionally, this is the second novel I have ended up reading so far this year that takes place in a setting where magic used to exist freely, but has since disappeared, causing major changes to society in its wake. But despite this seeming similarity, both novels are very different from one another. While the first used the concept of returning magic in a YA quest, using the injustices of the class structure to create a direct allegory to the violence committed against black communities in […]



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