Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

What Is “The Apocalypse” Anyway But Another Series of Bad Days, Or Same As It Ever Was, Or It’s Irrelevant

You Feel It Just Below the Ribs by Jeffrey Cranor & Janina Matthewson

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I can’t really explain it, but You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is a near five star book. I rated it 4.5 stars on Storygraph and I’m not quite sure why I didn’t rate it a 5. I want to… there’s something… but I want to. But I won’t. Because there’s something on the tip of my tongue or on the cusp of catchable thoughts that maybe I can’t articulate. Or maybe I’m just that much of a hard ass. There are a few things […]

“Books spoke mind to mind, soul to soul across the abyss of time and distance.”

Paper and Fire (The Great Library, #2) by Rachel Caine

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 3 Book 16/30 Okay, wow, that was so good. Partly I’m so surprised by how into this I was because it was a bit of a struggle for me to get through the first book. I got sixty pages in and let it sit for months. Finally I just decided to switch it up and do the audio, and then I finished it in two days. But the laggy, weird kind-of-want-to-DNF feeling stuck around when I thought about book […]

“So this is merely romance,” she frowned disapprovingly. “I was hoping for an epic adventure, or a gothic mystery at the very least.” Ned laughed. “Darling, don’t worry, the story has just begun.”

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton

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Official book description, because I finished this book two months ago, and the plot is rather convoluted: Cecilia Bassingwaite is the ideal Victorian lady. She’s also a thief. Like the other members of the Wisteria Society crime sorority, she flies around England drinking tea, blackmailing friends, and acquiring treasure by interesting means. Sure, she has a dark and traumatic past and an overbearing aunt, but all things considered, it’s a pleasant existence. Until the men show up. Ned Lightbourne is a sometimes assassin who is […]

CBR15 Bingo: Sex (Bingo AND Cannonball)

Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey

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CBR15 Bingo: Sex (the protagonist is a god-touched masochist courtesan spy) Kushiel’s Dart is the first novel in the Kushiel’s Legacy series, which came to number six books in total. Jacqueline Carey also wrote an additional trilogy in her Terre D’Ange universe, and over the course of all of her books, pretty much explored every continent in her alternate-history fantasy world. This first book is set in an alternate historical version of Europe, set at about Renaissance times, or somewhat earlier, although the descriptions of […]

“Small talk with the dragon. How are you? Eaten any adventurers lately? Sure, just had one this morning. Look, I still got his femur stuck in my teeth. Is that upsetting to you?”

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Well, everyone was right. This was great, and the marketing/art department at Avon should be shamed heavily for the way they did this book and this entire series dirty*. I imagine there are many, many readers who would enjoy this book, and presumably the rest of the series, if the covers weren’t a) heinously misrepresenting the contents of the story, and b) butt ugly and embarrassing. I was one of those readers! And then people whose tastes I trust kept pushing them on me until […]

CBR15 Bingo: Dwelling

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

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CBR15 Bingo: Dwelling (the “haunted” house is pretty central to the story). This was my fantasy/sci-fi book club’s selection for May, and while I normally don’t like horror books, I read this mainly because I was so impressed with T. Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone, and also because it really was very short. It’s a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, which I have never read, and because I’m not a huge fan of Poe, I didn’t bother reading it […]



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