Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A brave man helps. A coward just gives presents.”

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

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I’m a big King fan: I have seen a few movie adaptations, would put “The Stand” on my list of top 20 books, and this is the 15th book of his I have read. This new edition to his pantheon caught my eye at the library and was hesitantly recommended by a friend who was already shin-deep into this book, but on the fence about it. Having finished it, I give it a resounding fist shake for an excellent premise but meandering execution. It’s a […]

Kafka Goes Kaiju

Kaiju No.8 vol. 1 by Naoya Matsumoto

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It’s rare where you have a “I have a dream and I will win” under-dog protagonist who turns out to be special who has odds to overcome, starts towards that dream, and turns out to be in his 30s. Kafka (name might have suggestions I’ll get to) Hibino is 32, works in Kaiju disposal (someone has to clean up when the heroes take down the monsters), and has dreamed of working on the Japan Defense Force (the heroic monster killers led by Kafka’s childhood friend […]

The Neverending Battles Get Old

Black Clover vols. 28-31 by Yuki Tabata

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I hadn’t realized how long I’d kind of ignored the Black Clover manga series until I was in the library and saw that I was at least 4 volumes behind; this seems to happen with shonen fighting-based series an awful lot – the pattern of lots of fights with sudden power-ups that feel preprogrammed because the user automatically knows what and how to use the newly developed ability. I’ve gotten behind/bored with quite a few series where this happens; at least Yugi-Oh! had the sense […]

“My inner being is exceptionally cranky and I often don’t want her company myself.”

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

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CBR Passport Challenge: Books Recommended by Friends This is the second book in a trilogy. It doesn’t really make sense if you’ve not read the series from the beginning. So if you’re not caught up, go read A Deadly Education. It’s great, I’ll wait. El and Orion are now seniors in the Scholomance, and they have absolutely no way of knowing if their very dangerous mission just before graduation to fix the furnaces worked. Did they manage to clear the graduation hall of the majority […]

Cosplay jerk needs to get over herself

Dust and Grim by Chuck Wendig

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I’ve had Dust & Grim on my TBR for a little while, and when I was in the bookstore for one thing online said they had but they didn’t, I didn’t want to leave sans book, so I picked up this. Overall, it’s a decent spooky middle grade/YA tale about newly discovered siblings and the family business, a funeral home for the supernatural; don’t say “monster”, that’s offensive. The only real problem was that I did not ever really take a liking to the main […]

Turns out Tropes Can be Saved if Self Aware

Mission Yozakura Family vol. 1 by Hitsuji Gondaira

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So I read a preview chapter of this new mange last year, and later when I wanted some kind of mindless entertainment I went and got the published first volume of Mission: Yozakura Family. The premise is almost as goofy as the story: painfully shy and traumatized Taiyo can hardly function in school except with his childhood friend the pretty and popular Mutsumi Yozakura. It turns out she’s part of a family of spies and they end up “married” to save both of them from […]



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