Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Talking cats are fun but give the dragon somethign to do as well

Warriorborn: A Cinder Spires Novella by Jim Butcher

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Warriorborn is indeed “A Cinder Spires Novella” (that’s actually the subtitle, hence the quotes). It probably wouldn’t work if you haven’t read both of the novels, or at least the first one, but really probably both. It feels kind of like a bit of backstory that gets cut from the main novel for length; it’s how Benedict ends up coming back to Spire Albion early in book 2 from a secret mission with a bunch of kittens (or at least small cats). The plot is […]

Talking Donuts Explode

The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman

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Dungeon Crawl Carl is still going pretty strong in book 4. Carl, along with Donut, and a few others are on floor 5, which seemingly requires a bit of teamwork or at least coordination between groups. It really takes a while for the story to get going, maybe a little too much time doing some scene setting that just doesn’t seem that necessary. The probably haunted buried temple thing likewise has some good potential that really doesn’t get developed. The flying gnomes and the camel […]

Not what I wanted from this concept :(

The Names by Florence Knapp

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To sum up, this was not for me! Move along if that’s enough for you. I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this book and why it didn’t work for me, but after the great first several chapters, I quickly found myself souring on it. The Names is literary fiction with a speculative twist: a woman named Cora has been tasked with registering her newborn son’s name, and the book splits off into parallel narratives with different stories created by her three different choices of […]

Finding out why it’s a bad idea to put your name in blood in a mysterious old book

The Last Soul Among Wolves by Melissa Caruso

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A reunion of old friends, a will and curse, and a locked-room murder mystery that escalates, featuring new-ish mom investigator Kembral Thorne jumping around the levels of reality to solve the mystery, stop the curse, and solve the murder(s), all while avoiding (mostly supernatural) enemies and a giant spectral wolf, and trying to keep things professional with girlfriend who is also on the job. That’s most of the things going on in The Last Soul Among Wolves. Since this is the second volume of the […]

“I have just drawn my weapon and killed a Coke machine, sir.” CBRBINGO – Green (BINGO!)

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

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According to many Constant Readers, this is Uncle Stevie’s worst book, but I don’t agree! It is extremely flawed, but I also found it very readable (it probably helped that Edward Herrmann narrates the audiobook, and he is a wonderful audiobook narrator). This is sci-fi horror. A woman named Bobbie, a writer of western novels, finds a buried object in the ground and becomes obsessed with unearthing it. Doing so changes her and the town she lives in forever, and in really really creepy ways. […]

The Dragon Revenant

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison

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A few weeks back, I wrote a review for Katherine Addison’s The Angel of the Crows. Reading this book was actually a bit of tangent for me; I had been meaning to hunt down the third book in her Cemeteries of Amalo series, The Tomb of Dragons. And then I got distracted by the book whose existence became as a surprise. And a massive library hold time. The Tomb of Dragons is the third book in the Cemeteries of Amalo set, which are, in turn, […]



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