Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Forget superheroes; supervillains is where it’s at

Vengeful by V. E. Schwab

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Vengeful is the followup to V. E. Schwab’s delightful Vicious, which I quick-reviewed at the end of 2018 and gave 4.5 stars to (warning, spoilers ahead for Vicious.) Vengeful continues the story of Victor Vale and Eli Ever, two ‘superheroes’ who veer into supervillainy. Schwab neatly gets around the whole hero/villain dichotomy by just calling all her super-powered characters ‘ExtraOrdinaries’. EO’s, as they’re abbreviated, are given their powers when they are resurrected (usually by medical means) from death, and their power relates to the circumstances that killed […]

Next time, I’ll just read The Stand again.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

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This book had everything going for it, including multiple comparisons to The Stand, and a massive recommendation from the mothership. I started it back in August, thinking I could whip through it for the Pajiba Says bingo square, and well, I just finished it yesterday. I was…not a fan. I didn’t hate it, but I was incredibly let down by it. The story starts out strong: across the world, sleepwalkers start marching toward an unknown destination. Their numbers start off small, and as the group […]

That rare beast, a great final book.

The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, #3) by Neal Shusterman

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That was a really good ending. I am incredibly satisfied by it. It did what my favorite endings do, which is to manage to surprise me with things that feel inevitable. I am going to hold off on the five stars, after sleeping on it. I’m not quite sure why, though. Maybe when I do an eventual re-read (I most definitely need to, to see the whole arc), I’ll up it to five stars, which I will confess was my first instinct. I don’t really […]

Once I finished, I immediately wanted to read it again.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

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A short and to the point review, for a couple reasons. One, it’s the end of the year, and thus time for a flurry of review posting. I don’t have time for in depth. And two, more importantly, after finishing this book, I felt the need to sit down with someone and have them take me by the hand and explain the book to me bit by bit.  I’m giving this the good old five stars because of how enthralled I was while reading it. […]

This seems a little less fun everyday

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War by P.W. Singer and August Cole

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I attended graduate school at the Naval Postgraduate School, run by the U.S. Navy. This book was recommended by everyone I met there.  One of the authors, P.W. Singer, was a guest lecturer while I was a student. I’d already read his other book, Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media and I really liked it. Well, I really appreciated it but liking it might be a tad macabre as it detailed all the things that were happening on social media to influence our opinions. […]

This one has that Stephen King magic.

The Institute by Stephen King

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As readers, I think one thing we all have in common is that every time we pick up a book, we’re hoping it’ll be one of those times where what you’re reading is so absorbing that you forget entirely that you’re reading, your conscious self recedes into the background, and the story just takes over. Those are always the most magical reading experiences for me, at least, and this book, which calls to mind the beginnings of King’s writing career, absolutely did that for me. […]



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