Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

This would have been better as a YA fantasy

Dominion by Jean Kwok

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CBR18 Bingo: 26 (published this year. This month, in fact) Thank you to G.P. Putnam’s Sons and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is on sale now. Rubi is an azure, a group of displaced and badly treated refugees. In this fantasy world, there are four dominions, each with its own specialities. There is the Azure Dragon dominion, which can control plants and all things growing, and many of their people can shapeshift into animals; the Scarlet Phoenix dominion, which […]

Get Off My Island!

Eden Undone by Abbott Kahler

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CBR18 Bingo: Sheep – The doctor and Dore, and later the Wittmers, all come to Floreana hoping to live simpler, more rustic lives, growing their own food and tending to their own animals. When Friedrich, a German doctor, and his former patient and lover Dore decide to move to an uninhabited Galapagos island in search of a pastoral setting for their self-improvement, they did not know the publicity and violence that would follow. I had a vague recollection of this bizarre story from hearing about […]

A promising start to a new series

Witch Season by Julia Bianco

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CBR18 Bingo: Refuge (The Aestas coven works hard to be a safe haven and refuge for young witches who have snapped and would normally be ostracised by other witches) Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC. This book is on sale now. There are two types of witches (in this world, all magic users are called witches, regardless of gender). The ones who are born from families with established magic, who grew up as part of a coven, and who are […]

“I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder; the sun the needle, laid on the land and drawing out the day’s music—the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting. And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people, washing across the Earth like static.”

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck

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In a “hook-and-chain” couplet structure, Shattuck meanders back and forth across three centuries in New England with six pairs of stories exploring themes that rhyme. This collection starts off pretty slow and gentle, and for the most part stays that way, telling the stories of ordinary people and mostly ordinary happenings. As such, I found myself quite surprised about halfway through about how thoroughly I had been sucked in, and how much I was enjoying myself. Part of what sets this collection of stories apart […]

When Your In-Laws are Forever

My Big Fat Vampire Wedding by Jessica Gadziala

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Pandora needs to get married in three months to secure her family inheritance, and Victor needs money to finish his PhD studies. A fake marriage would solve both their problems, and soon sparks are flying between the pair. The only trouble is that Victor has no idea that Pandora is a vampire. I loved the premise of this book, but the execution let me down a bit. I waffled between a two- and three-star rating for a while, but ended up going with the former […]

Three Heads Are Better Than One

The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell

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In this cozy-ish fantasy, cynical three-headed wild dragon Garrodigh pretends to be a downed “tamed” war dragon from Kardosa so he can get food and medical attention. This results in his acquiring the eternally cheerful rider Rania. Garrodigh is not a fan of humanity, primarily because he was formerly a four-headed dragon until human wars took the head named Lefty. The remaining heads are dealing with that trauma in different ways, with Centerhead being the POV character. The first half of the book was a […]



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