Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Ale

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I'm TAing in creative writing, and I'm in the midst of editing my first novel. Along with CBR, I have book reviews published with "The Literary Review," short essay with "Fiction Southeast" and a forthcoming publication with "The Book Smuggler's Den." CBR has definitely helped my writing skills since now I know what readers are looking for for in their works. So, thank you, CBR! Hopefully someday, we'll be able to review my novel on this blog. :) (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Ale's Quick Questions interview.)

Ale's Reviews:

This Is How You Break Your Readers

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

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I don’t think Faintingviolet had even finished this book before promising to hand it off to me. And at this point in our friendship, I don’t question her if she’s recommending a book. I just accept, and this book…..holy moly, this book….. Before we get to why I was utterly destroyed at the hands of This is How You Lose the Time War, we have to go back to my first book recommendation to Faintingviolet. I had read a book called The Illuminator that wrecked […]

Annual Short Story Collection Round-up

New York Fantastic: Fantasy Stories from the City that Never Sleeps by Paula Guran & Others

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Because I’d never ask my students to do something I wouldn’t do, and also because NK Jemisin highly suggests reading short stories to get better at writing long stories, I try to read a short story collection every year. For whatever reason, no matter how good the writing is, short story collections take me EONS to finish, and New York Fantastic was no exception. With twenty stories by different speculative authors, New York Fantastic offers a wide variety of story types and a nice selection of award […]

“The Only Currency More Powerful than Money in this World is the Violence of Man.”

Library of the Dead by T.L. Huchu

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I found the Library of the Dead when searching online for books that were like The Starless Sea.  As always, I got it (for free) out of the library to do a cursory read before committing to purchasing. And while there weren’t that many similarities between Morgenstern’s book and this one, Huchu’s first foray into speculative fiction is a great success. I’d never heard of Huchu before, but I will definitely be checking out his other publications based on how much I enjoyed this read. Edinburgh has […]

Nothings Need to Be Heard

Real by Carol Cujec & Peyton Goddard

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It’s not often these days that I read a book and sit with it afterwards wishing there was a way to force every person on the planet to read it, but Real is that book for me. We follow Charity Woods, a non-verbal teenager with Autism who struggles to get people to believe that she is intelligent and can hack it in a mainstream classroom. From the very first paragraph of the book,  “My name is Charity. I am thirteen years old. Actually, thirteen years […]

Listener, Singer, Human

Rhythm of War: Book 4 of the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson

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Continuing in the Stormlight Archives, Rhythm of War focuses on Venli, the Listener turned Voidbringer, whose mostly at fault for causing all the calamities befalling our heroes. As always, we hear from all the characters as the book progresses, but Venili is front and center. While it was awesome to finally have the perspective of the non-human characters, and to understand the full weight of human destruction on Roshar’s native peoples, going back through Venli’s past retreads a lot of material already covered in the previous […]

The Evolution of the Soldier

Oathbringer: Book 3 of the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson

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Oathbringer continues Sanderson’s epic tale, and while we hear from all the characters,  Dalinar Kholin takes center stage and much of the backstory that’s been hinted in books 1 and 2 comes to light. We are able to understand the depth of Dalinar’s past and how the Blackthorn became the legend he’s purported to be in the first two installments. Even though Sanderson uses this plot formula for both Kaladin in book 1 (who’s been my favorite character throughout the series), and Shallan in book […]



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