Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“He wasn’t grateful, he was homicidal. It wasn’t enough that they endanger his friends and servants, they had to attack his most valued enemy as well.”

The Book of Ile-Rien by Martha Wells

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The Book of Ile-Rien collects the first two books in Martha Wells’ Ile-Rien universe, which takes place in a fantasy world with a steampunk flavor. Though I have the much-lauded Murderbot series on my TBR, I have never read any of Wells’ work before. The Element of Fire is her debut, and when this book crossed my dashboard I thought it’d be a decent place to start. The Element of Fire – 3.5 stars The return of the king’s bastard sister to the court of […]

Holding out Hope for some intrigue

Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

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For the second book in the series, I’m not optimistic. It took me almost a month of picking it up and putting it back down to finally complete Crown of Midnight. Most of the story felt tired. The love triangle, the deceit, even the rebel storyline couldn’t keep my attention for very long. I fear this series may have just killed off the most interesting character so far. If it weren’t for Fleetfoot, I may have put it down right then. I can see the […]

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 […]

A new adult enemies to lovers fantasy romance that may hit harder for you than it did for me.

The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne, #1) by Sara Hashem

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I’m going to chalk this one up to being not the right book for me (maybe just not the right time?) because I really can’t think of anything this book did wrong. It just didn’t get me in my feels. In fact, it did a lot of things right that these fantasy romance new adult type books often don’t. The enemies to lovers thing was very real. They were DEFINITELY enemies. Like, in just a slightly different universe, the male MC could have murdered her […]

How to Train your Dragon, but with cursing

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

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I am a sucker for a good fantasy book in a school setting. I am sure a lot of that is due to Harry Potter, but I think an academic setting provides a good skeleton for a story. They almost always start shortly before a school year, and run all the way until a final exam. I am sure Fourth Wing will invite many comparisons to Harry Potter and the Hunger Games, but it reminded me quite a bit more of The Poppy War by […]

An Atmospheric Gothic Fantasy Novel That Tackles Trauma Deftly

A Study In Drowning by Ava Reid

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CW: Stalking Effy Sayre has always found escape in the works of Emrys Myrddin.  It’s been one of the few things that’s kept the architecture student going.  So when the family of the recently deceased Myrddin announces a contest to redesign the author’s family estate, Effy can’t help but enter.  And when her design is picked it seems like fate.  Once she arrives at Hiraeth Manor, she finds a crumbling disaster as well as an unwelcome companion in a literature student invited there by Myrddin’s […]



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