Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Home-Grown Monsters

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

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Who says all the fantasies with sword- wielding heroes and heroines have to be in Middle-earth, Westeros, or even our dreams of Africa past—what the Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen reminisced as “copper sun or scarlet sea”?…Fantasy stories often feature characters in medieval settings taking on monsters. I figured a young Black woman in 1920s Georgia could be that character too. Even gave her her own sword. The monsters she has to fight are plucked right out of our own history—perhaps made more terrifying because […]

Djinn. Ghuls. Sorcerers. Never had to worry about this in my grandfather’s day.

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

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A Dead Djinn in Cairo CBR 17 Bingo: Border This refers to the border between the earthly plane and what lies beyond. *cracks knuckles* Here we go. I’ve been procrastinating on writing book reviews because it’s always more appealing to just start a new book than to sit down and summarize the book I either devoured or endured. With the ones I devoured, I doubt whether or not I can be objective since I was so into it when I was reading and still felt […]

A Monster-Hunting Take on the KKK

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

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I enjoyed this literally monstrous take on the KKK. In this novella, there are members of the Klan, who are normal humans, and then there are the Ku Kluxes, who look like normal humans unless you have a special ability to see that they are actual monsters, and a Klansman can become a Ku Klux. Maryse, Chef, and Sadie are a trio of monster hunters who go after the Ku Kluxes in 1920s Macon, Georgia. While Maryse is given “chosen one” status and narrates the […]

I’m a djinni in a bottle, baby

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

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CBR Bingo: Work (the main character’s motivation is primarily just wanting to do her job as an investigator). I read P. Djèlí Clark’s The Dead Cat Tail Assassins earlier this year and enjoyed it enough that I wanted to read some of his other works, so I recently picked up A Master of Djinn. Set in an alternate-history (in the late 19th century, djinns were introduced into the world) Cairo in 1912, Agent Fatma works for a government agency that investigates supernatural occurrences. One evening, all […]

“Is it the whole cat that’s dead? Or just the tails?”

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark

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I’m continuing with my current M.O. of choosing the shortest unread books in my possession to read first. Clocking in at just over 200 pages, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark was a fun, breezy read. The story takes place over one night in the city of Tal Ibisi. It follows Eveen, an undead assassin who works for the titular Dead Cat Tail Assassins organization of hired killers. She accepts a contract where she is only given an address, but when she […]

The Right Read at the Right Time, almost

The Black God's Drums by P. Djeli Clark

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Bingo Free Space Yes, I know Bingo technically was supposed to end two days ago, but since this is the extra free space I never ended up using, I’m still going to finish that off. I’ve been struggling to find a novella that I wanted to assign to an intro to lit class this coming spring (for reference, I’m at a regional state school) because I didn’t want to re-use anything too recent and I wanted to avoid something easily findable on the internet (either […]



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