Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Triple Cannonballing with The Sandman.

The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You by Neil Gaiman

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Most people seem to like this one more than I did, but I still liked it. I didn’t think I was going to have much to say about it because it just didn’t really vibrate on my level, plus—and I can’t believe more people haven’t brought this up in their reviews—it really hasn’t aged well. But then I wrote quite a bit. This book focuses on Barbie, a side character (formerly married to Ken, natch) who last showed up in The Doll’s House. She and the […]

One of the very few cases where I like the plot better than the romance.

A Case of Possession (A Charm of Magpies, #2) by K.J. Charles

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The first book did need a sequel, and this was a pretty good one! It addressed: the power imbalance between Stephen and Crane; the issue of their homosexuality and how it would affect them going forward if they were found out (Crane doesn’t care, but it would ruin Stephen’s life); the issue of Stephen’s newfound power, which comes from the relationship (coughcough) between Stephen and Crane, but which his colleagues presume is evidence of him becoming a warlock (a warlock is someone who drains life […]

I’m horrible

American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer

The Institute by Stephen King

Mountain Man by Keith C. Blackmore

In Distant Lands: A Short History of the Crusades by Lars Brownworth

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I’ve been bad the last couple months. I finished all these books by early October, and have probably started a dozen books since then without finishing anything. And I’ve been reading Brandon Sanderson’s Misborn for about three months. I’m liking it, but I just can’t finish it for whatever reason. This hasn’t been a good Cannonball for me. But, much like my first Cannonball in 2015, I have the birth of a child to blame. Anyway, I’ll still try and review these books the best […]

The spill spilled, spilling red…

Night Shift by Stephen King

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OK never mind, here’s one more review for the year. This is a collection of early Stephen King, and it’s his second collection. It’s also the collection that a) scared living hell out of me as a kid — maybe entirely from that creepy original mass market cover I put in this post, and b) was trawled for any imaginable movie they could make from it. While Skeleton Crew came out first, this is the one that has many many bad movies as a result. So, […]

Short reads to finish off my reading year (and help me to finally complete my double Cannonball)

Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen

The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus Sedgwick

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

A Second-Chance Road Trip for Christmas by Jackie Lau

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Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen Rating: 4 stars In this novella which concludes Kelly Bowen’s The Devils of Dover series, we finally find out more about the mysterious King, who has been popping up in Bowen’s books for a long time. A shadowy London crime lord with connections to smuggling, art forgery, theft and all sorts of other untoward business, he is not a man to cross. He discovers that a man he believed to be dead, a man who ruined his childhood and set him […]

Prepping for the next HBO show

The Outsider by Stephen King

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I missed this one when it originally came out because I had heard there was a connection to the Bill Hodges trilogy and I hadn’t read the final two yet.  The connection doesn’t happen until more than halfway through and involves one of the characters helping with an investigation while also alluding to the final fate of some of the other characters.  In other words, it doesn’t have major plot spoilers for the trilogy so it’s really just a personal preference thing for other readers. […]



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