Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Dark Fairy Tale Vibes

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

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CBR18 BINGO: Justice for systemic oppression of women in The Girl in the Tower and Bird for The Winter of the Witch (firebird on the cover, firebird character in the book) I feel like this should go without saying, but each review may contain spoilers for the book(s) that came before. The Girl in the Tower This picks up very shortly after the first book ends, and we’re back to some politicking in Moscow. Meanwhile, Vasya has disguised herself as a boy because it’s dangerous to travel as a woman, and is […]

“Now I am beyond prophecy.”

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

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Everyone on this site who recommended the Winternight Trilogy: thank youuuuuuu! I devoured these books.  Like, ignore dinner, stay up til 3 am, read all lunch break.   Try to read slowly to savor, but can’t because it just is so good. Continue to recommend to everyone who would listen.  I think it’s so rare to find a trilogy that reads so well, for so long.  I can’t wait to read it again! So, back up, these are the second and third book of Katherine Arden’s […]

In which I rant about the heroine

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

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I was about the day I finished The Girl in the Tower-years old when I realized two things: one, this series is YA darkish fantasy romance; and two, I don’t especially care for YA darkish fantasy romance. The problem is that there are a few characters I do want to see what happens to and the setting is interesting, with its mix of Russian folklore and history. I also do like the conflict from the first novel, not so much present here, between the old […]

Great from beginning to end.

The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy, #3) by Katherine Arden

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Time to buckle down and once again go at my review backlog. Apologies in advance for the sloppy or haphazard reviews about to spew forth from my keyboard. This trilogy, to sum up, is worth it. It’s a bit of a slow burn in the first book as Arden really sets her stage, with amazingly detailed descriptions of what life was like in medieval Russia, but I think all that set-up is more than worth it for the end product, which was a coming of […]

But the Wind Goes Right Through You, It’s No Place for the Old

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

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Okay, I’m going to be upfront here that this was a book club pick (my book club pick, actually), and we broke a cardinal rule: never read the first in a series. It’s incredibly difficult to judge character arcs and abandoned plot lines, because you know that the story is only just beginning. That also makes it difficult to write a fair review, but I will try. Do you love whimsical stories rooted in complicated family dynamics? Apparently I do, because I adored reading this […]

The perfect ending to a spellbinding series

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For the first time in my life, it turns out that I know someone who knows someone, which is how I managed to get my eager little hands on a pre-release copy of The Winter of the Witch, the final instalment in Katherine Arden’s fantastic Winternight Trilogy. And what a treat it was. Taking everything I loved from The Bear and the Nightingale (and missed most in The Girl in the Tower, namely the chyerti of the forest and the homestead) and ramping it all […]



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