Cannonball Read 16

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A Disappointing End to the Trilogy

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi

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Children of Virtue and Vengeance Although the blurb on this book primarily references Zélie, Amari’s POV seems to be in this novel at least as much as Zélie’s, certainly more so than in the first book. She’s an important part of the novel and also a frustrating one. There is a lot of repetition of characters’ thoughts and behaviors in this book. Set a few weeks after the events of the last book, civil war has essentially broken out. Zélie’s ritual didn’t just return magic […]

Magical Teens on a Quest

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

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Although it follows the beats of typical quest novel, I really enjoyed reading Children of Blood and Bone. The story is set in the country of Orïsha and told from the POVs of 3 characters, but the one who gets the most attention is Zélie. Her maji mother was killed when Zélie was a child after King Saran decided to eliminate magic from the land. Saran now oppresses people known as divîners, meaning they would have eventually become maji if he hadn’t ended magic. One […]

All That Glitters

Hotel Magnifique by Emily J. Taylor

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This was a nicely structured fantasy novel with the kind of plucky heroine I enjoy.  Jani and her younger sister, Zosa, are living grimly in a port town called Durc.  They made the trip to Durc after their mother died so that Zosa could pursue a singing career but four years later, Zosa is no closer to becoming a singer than she was when they arrived and Jani is working at a tannery to try to earn their passage back home (a task that looks […]

Gothic Vibes in a Waterlogged Setting

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

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To start with, this is one of the most accurate and well-chosen titles I have seen for a book. It’s relevant on multiple levels, from the literal to the psychological to, we eventually find out, the medical. This stood out to me more than book titles typically do. Our psychologically drowning main character is Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at a university that wouldn’t accept her to the literature college, which was where she wanted to be, because “women dumb” basically. This reflects […]

Continuing the Grishaverse

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

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I enjoyed both of these books, especially Crooked Kingdom, though I didn’t think they were a drastic improvement over the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which surprised me a bit since so many people seem to prefer this duology. I think they’re almost equally good, with the duology slightly edging out the trilogy. In Six of Crows, we meet Kaz Brekker, who essentially runs a crew called the Dregs. He gets the opportunity of a lifetime when Jan Van Eck offers a lot of money for […]

Insert gif of Fred Willard saying ‘Wha’ Happened?’ here.

Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White (Song of the Last Kingdom, #2) by Amélie Wen Zhao

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Wow, what happened? I should probably say up front that I genuinely do not know how much of my negative experience reading this book was me, and how much was the book. I really liked the first book in this duology, but within about five pages of this one, I had completely turned on it. I really, really did not care what was happening, and trying to read it after that feeling appeared felt like I was torturing myself. FYI I did end up speed […]



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