Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Slightly predictable for a reader without making the characters seem obtuse

The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig

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While I liked the author’s previous duology, The Shepherd King, I didn’t love it. It was one of those where I quite enjoyed the magic system and the plotting but thought the characters needed a little bit more, and that they were missing some fairly obvious clues. I really enjoyed The Knight and the Moth – the main character just felt so much more developed. While I predicted quite a few of the developments that happened later, I also don’t think they were to the […]

“Except, in this fairy tale, the maiden has blood on her hands.”

One Dark Window: Book One of the Shepherd King by Rachel Gillig

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“There once was a girl clever and good, who tarried in shadow in the depths of the wood. There also was a king – a shepherd by his crook, who reigned over magic and wrote the old book. The two were together, so the two were the same…The girl, the King…and the monster they became.” Elspeth Spindle, a young, fiery-tempered, average height for a Romantasy heroine, striking beauty with a complicated familial history, lives in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom of Blunders (no, I don’t understand […]

Gotta catch ’em all

The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig

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Last year, I read Rachel Gillig’s The Shepard King duology (consisting of One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crowns). While I found it somewhat overhyped, I did still enjoy it enough to want to read the author’s future works. The Knight and the Moth, the first in a new series, released last month, so I picked it up. Sybil is a Diviner, a young woman who is serving for 10 years at a cathedral, along with 5 others. The Diviners are referred to by number […]

Magic cards and trees

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig

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These books were a pretty quick read and entertaining enough. They’re right in the middle – perfectly adequate and satisfactory but ultimately disposable. Basically, would I recommend these books? Maybe, after a long list of other books first. Would I dissuade you from reading them? Not at all. They are perfectly fine. In fact, even the flaws aren’t interesting enough to make me want to go discuss them in a thread. And you have seen me nitpick Onyx Storm. While some of the plot points […]

A Highly Engaging Duology

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig

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One Dark Window I have seen and heard multiple people express that the sequel to One Dark Window is even better than One Dark Window, in which case the sequel is just going to blow me away because I thought this book was so good in itself. The book is set in the kingdom of Blunder, which is beset by a magical mist that is expanding year by year. Main character Elspeth was infected by the mist as a child and has to hide the […]

The Shepherd King duology: power through the first book, it’s all worth it for the second

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig

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One Dark Window: 3 stars Two Twisted Crowns: 4 stars Spoiler warning! Some minor spoilers for One Dark Window in this review. 20-year-old Elspeth Spindle (all the noble families have surnames taken from trees) lives in the kingdom of Blunder, most of which is now enveloped in a thick, sinister fog. Most people who venture out into the fog without a talisman (bones, feathers, animal feet, braided horsehair, etc) go mad and run off into the forest, never to be seen again. The only ones who seem […]



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