Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“A Victorian widow, a Canadian detective, and a preteen pickpocket walk into a bar …”

Cocktails & Chloroform (A Rip Through Time 2.5) by Kelley Armstrong

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This novella takes place between The Poisoner’s Ring and Disturbing The Dead and provides some adventure, as well as some backstory on one of the secondary characters of the series, Mallory’s fellow maid, Alice.  Alice is the preteen pickpocket of the quote used in the title of this review, although she’s given up the pickpocket life, as she’s been taken under the wing of Isla. In the before times of this series, when Mallory was living in 2019 and Catriona was living in 1869 and […]

“There are many skills I hoped to master in my professional career. Scrubbing chamber pots was not one of them, and yet here we are.”

The Posioners Ring by Kelley Armstrong

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This is the second book in the A Rip Through Time series, so the review ahead contains some minor spoilers for book one.   Having established how Mallory ended up in Victorian Scotland in the first book, and starting a crime-solving career in that era, this book is about her settling into her new life and dealing with yet more murder.  The story is a self-contained mystery that manages to resolve itself while filling in some characters’ backstories and introducing some new characters. Also, the slow-burn […]

“You try fighting crime as a nineteen-year-old Victorian housemaid.”

A Rip Through Time (A Rip Through Time #1) by Kelley Armstrong

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To be clear this (the first in a series) is a time travel, historical fiction with a light dusting of maybe implied possible romance.  It should not be confused with the author’s A Stitch In Time series which are time travel, historical fiction, and romance novels.   Am I putting that disclaimer here because I was confused about the similarity in the series name?  Yes.  Yes, I am. In this series, we start in Edinburgh on May 20, 2019.  Vancouver police detective Mallory Atkinson is […]

A fun read but current events in Crimea affected the reading

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

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My Mom has been trying to get me to read Jasper Fforde books for easily over a decade.  Not sure why I’ve resisted.  Though perhaps it’s due to our different reading preferences.  She only likes a small percentage of recommendations I make .  Naturally, The Murderbot Diaries was one success but mostly I miss.  With how long she’s been persistent I read “The Eyre Affair”, I have felt pressured to like it.  Which has made me drag my feet.  I borrowed it two years ago […]

A field trip for the ages

Lost In The Future V01: The Storm by Damian

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Lost In The Future V01: The Storm by Damian and illustrated by Alex Fuentes is a fun adventure story in a graphic novel format, that is short, (maybe not sweet) but has some interesting segments. It has the action and the friendship aspects that keep things moving without being “too much” adventure and no plot, or all plot and not enough action.  The art is the real drawback for me with the too Nickelodeon-like and/or Uncle Grandpa/Gravity Falls/Steven Universe/The Amazing World of Gumball/etc. images. From […]

Stephen King’s sprawling historical time-travel epic

11/22/63 by Stephen King

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At work I have a Book Friend who reads mostly horror. He gives me horror recommendations, and I give him sci-fi recommendations, and we both try to enjoy each other’s genre of choice, to varying success. At the other’s insistence, we have both read genre staples without being convinced of their universal relevance (though I have more right to feel aggrieved about this arrangement because Slaughterhouse Five was like 250 pages and It was fucking 1,200 pages, Dorian). It was not for me. I finished It, because I’m a […]



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