Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Beauty & Cruelty

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

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After the herculean doorstop that was Brandon Sanderson’s Way of Kings, I needed a fast, fun, and gripping read. So I turned to Holly Black, whose Folk of the Air trilogy I gobbled up in about 72 hours over Thanksgiving break. The Darkest Part of the Forest did not disappoint, and I blew through it in a day. Written a few years before Folk of the Air, it was fun to see how Black was playing around with the themes and premises that she later expanded […]

Getting Back in the High Fantasy Game

The Way of Kings: Book One of the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson

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I will preface this review by saying this kind of writing used to be my jam. I inhaled massive high fantasy series in high school and college, exclusively reading Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, Mark Lawrence, Patrick Rothfuss,  and GRR Martin. But then I joined CBR and started reading more widely. I fell out of love with the war-heavy, white male centric doorstops and found a new home in magical realism and the glory of a one-book wonder. Aside from rereading Tolkien, I’ve had a hard […]

all ABOARD!

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

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Mysterious and melancholy adventure awaits! Otto and Xavier, legally paired but not traditionally wed, receive a lavish not-honeymoon gift from a fabulously wealthy aunt: a trip on a strange and fabulous train. They don’t know where they are going, why they have been invited, or who is truly pulling the strings behind this event. They don’t know if the reclusive woman who lives full-time on the train (what a dream!) held up a sign that said “HELP” or “HELLO”, and they don’t know if they […]

“Language is not so transparent, but we are sometimes known, even so.”

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

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A Memory Called Empire absolutely blew me away, and this book is no different. It continues the first book’s exploration of identify, memory and society, with the addition of a completely alien species and the need to avert total war. So, you know, no pressure, Mahit. “She thought of Eleven Lathe, her poetic model, her hero, writing Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier out alone amongst his aliens, the Ebrekti. Could she do worse? Certainly, but perhaps not much worse—and then, gleeful and bitter, she thought, Fuck you, […]

Unhappy Meal

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

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Imagine a world ravaged by diseased animals, where humanity collectively agrees to cull all animals and, in their place, breed humans for consumption. That is the terrifying premise at the centre of Tender is the Flesh, a dystopian novel by Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica (translated to English by Sarah Moses). This book disturbed me to my very core and motivated me to cancel my recent butcher-box delivery subscription. The novel describes, in great detail, the process of slaughtering humans for meat. Though never explicitly said, […]

Familiar and New Sci Fi

Binti: the Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

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I have a bit of a confession to make: I assigned my students a novella that I hadn’t read the conclusion of. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. Binti is a trilogy, and I’d read the first installment, assigned it, started the full trilogy, put it down, forgot about it, then picked it back up with about 2 weeks left in the semester. Here follows a review of the full trilogy. Reasons I picked this for an intro to lit/composition 2 type class: […]



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