Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A really good premise ruined by casual racism and poor characterization

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

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The Scholomance is not your typical school. And not just because it’s a school for magic. No, this school is not your average school because it will straight up try to kill you. Students have to stay alert constantly and travel in packs everywhere lest one of the evil creatures, or malefecaria, who live in the school try to kill them. Galadriel, or El, is a student at the Scholomance determined to survive all the way through graduation and do so on her own terms. […]

Hogwarts, but even MORE racist!

The Black Mage by Daniel Barnes, D.J. Kirkland

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I was intrigued when I saw this book come up on NetGalley, so I picked it up, but then forgot to read it, and then I was sad.  And I met the author and illustrator at the New York Comic Con, and they were really nice!  And then the library I work at got a copy, so I was the first one to check it out! Anyway…   On first glance, this looks like Harry Potter, but if Harry Potter was the only black kid.  […]

Imagine if high school graduation was a Hunger Games competition

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

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Bingo Review #25 Reader’s Choice in place of Gateway, and Blackout! I was rather hoping to use A Deadly Education for the Gateway square as the introduction to Naomi Novik. I have changed my mind upon completing the novel, but thankfully I still had the Reader’s Choice square open. I was kind of hoping to not use it, but oh well. The premise of this novel and apparently series is brilliant; think Harry Potter’s Hogwarts crossed with Hunger Games. That’s what this is. El is […]

For a fantasy novel, these characters are a little too real

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

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The Magicians by Lev Grossman follows Quentin Coldwater through his education at Brakebills, a college for magic, and his post-graduation life. Quentin is a depressed, maladjusted jerk. He is not a wholly good person. No one at Brakebills or any magician seems to be a good person. Not Quentin’s best friend Alice and her family trauma that weighs her down to the point of never standing out, not Eliot and his ostentatious proclivity to exclude, not Janet and her razor-sharp tongue that inflicts lashes wherever […]

Murder at the Magic School

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

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I’ve not had a lot of luck with things highly recommended and hyped by authors whose works I’ve enjoyed.  V.E. Schwab might be an exception. I found out about the impending publication of Magic For Liars from her social media, and picked it up as soon as it came out. The descriptions of the premise as something between Harry Potter and The Magicians is also reasonably accurate; another point for the book, since I frequently don’t quite agree with the blurbs either. The basic idea […]



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