Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Definitely Not Jack and Rose

The Deep by Alma Katsu

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I’ve been curious about The Hunger by Alma Katsu for ages now but horror isn’t always my go to genre so I was holding off on it.  And yet, when I saw her most recent novel revolved around the Titanic and supernatural connections between the Titanic and its sistership, the Britannica, I couldn’t resist. The novel begins with Annie Hebbley, a Titanic survivor and former crew member, who has spent the last four years in an asylum, recovering from her experiences of that night. However, […]

The Organ Trail

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

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I got sucked into buying this book by the pull quote from Stephen King, but it did not even slightly live up to the hype. The Hunger is a ‘historical fiction’ retelling of the doomed journey of The Donner Party across wild unsettled America which, as is widely known, ended in survival cannibalism. There is so much to tell in that story alone. Who were these people? Who crumbled first and why? How were those who were sacrificed to feed the others chosen? What happened […]

“The world was fragile. One day, growth; the next day, kindling.”

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

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The best horror stories are already frightening before the monsters even show up. The doomed Donner Party has always been the quintessential example of the harsh realities for pioneers trekking West to the promise of California, and most already know the tragedy awaiting the group at the center of The Hunger. While bringing their wagon train across the country to find new fortunes, the infamous Donner Party made many key mistakes, and found themselves staring down the barrel of the harshest conditions the West had […]

They already were trapped.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

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This is the case of a good idea already sort of perfected (or done so effectively) by a previous work that this one both feels derivative and cheap. It’s also the case where this one feels underserved by its brevity. So it’s a weird case of it’s not great and there’s not enough of it. The novel takes place on the wagon train of the Donner/Reed Party, famous for its mythic and mythologized end that may or may not have involved cannibalism after the party […]

When Uncle Stevie tells us that a book is scary, we should most definitely listen. #CBR10Bingo

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I’ve been away on vacation (or a series of vacations) for a little over a month, and have a large stack of books to review. But this one had to be first. The quiet horror of it will last with me for a long time. I first heard about The Hunger from Stephen King, who tweeted about it in March: THE HUNGER, by Alma Katsu: Deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to put down, not recommended reading after dark. Of course, that shot it up to the […]



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