Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“But the question I find myself asking is this: How can a man control your fate when he is not even the master of his own?”

A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen

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Freya is sick of being stuck in a loveless marriage, spending her days gutting fish and keeping house. But when she reveals her identity as a child of the goddess Hlin, she is swept up into the politics of the realm, for it has been prophesied that whoever controls her fate will become king of the land. Fantasy was always my first love when it came to books. Nowadays I have ranged far from that familiar region, but sometimes you just want to go back […]

how much is folklore and how much is just a mad ramble?

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

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Alan Garner is a titan of British literature, but it took two other lions of language and a slow day in the shop for me to finally crack open one of his tales. Why did I wait so long? Treacle Walker is exactly the kind of woodsy weirdness that calls to me from the gloam. It was a snowy evening and dead quiet in the bookstore. Every task was complete, everything that could be tidied was tidy beyond tidy, and I had some time to […]

Fantastic Fantasy!

Faebound by Saara El-Arifi

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Saara El-Arifi immediately place herself on my auto-buy list with her debut, and this new world she’s created just confirms why I love her storytelling. The book starts with a myth telling of the three gods: Asase, the Wheat, god of the earth and creator of humans; Ewia, the two-headed Bat, god of the sun and creator of fae: and Bosome, the Water, god of the moon and creator of the elves. As far as anyone is aware, all that remains in the world are […]

Lady Green Snake and the Golden One

Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim

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Vanna and Channi are sisters, but they couldn’t be more different – while Vanna is blessed with a strange glowing beauty, Channi has been cursed with the face of a snake and poisonous blood. As Vanna’s seventeenth birthday approaches, Channi grows desperate to prevent her promised death at the hands of the demon witch Angma. I did not realize until about halfway through this book that it is a prequel to Lim’s Six Crimson Cranes duology, an East Asian-influenced retelling of the Six Swans that’s […]

“This is a love story to its blade-dented bone.”

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

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I have made a beautiful mistake. I stayed up waaaaay past my bedtime to finish this and my middle-aged body is so mad rn, but this book was so very good. [4 months later] I’m REVIEW AMNESTYing a bunch of books right now, but I really want to write a review for this one, because a) I loved it so much, and b) I want more people to read it so I should say some stuff to convince them, and c) I think it will […]

Beware the . . .What? Were-Cat?

Other Worlds: Peasants, Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints by Teffi

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cbr15bingo strange worlds If, one fine morning in Old Mother Russia, you are out for a ramble through the countryside, and you happen upon a beautiful but sad young woman sitting in a steam looking piteously in your direction, do not attempt to render her aid. The tears are a device to lure you to her, the reason she is sitting in the stream is because her bottom half is a fish, and it will not go well for you at all. Water spirits are […]



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