Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Again with the Eðians!

My Contrary Mary (Mary, #1) by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows

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**30 Books in 30 Days** Book 15/30 Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the ARC! It has not affected the content of my review. I have just finished this and it was glorious. I didn’t know we’d be returning to the same world that their first book was set in! I’ve missed those Eðians. You can read this without having read My Lady Jane first, but I would reccomend doing it anyway because that book is wonderful. That makes this book an unofficial sequel. […]

I wish this version of Cairo really existed. #CBRBINGO – Cityscape

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 (Dead Djinn, #0.7) by P. Djèlí Clark

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**30 Books in 30 Days** Book 10/30 Like quite a few people at this point (enough that Tor published a full-length novel), I’m enchanted by the world Clark has created in this series, which so far consists of this novella and a short story, as well as the novel (that I’ll be getting to next month). There’s something special about the atmosphere Clark creates when he’s writing about 1912 alt-history Cairo, not to mention he’s pretty great with characters (I liked both Hamed and Fatma […]

“That had been a little more than forty years past. Fatma was born into the world al-Jahiz left behind: a world transformed by magic and the supernatural.”

A Dead Djinn in Cairo (Dead Djinn Universe, #0.5) by P. Djèlí Clark

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The highlight of this short story is definitely the world-building. I was immediately intrigued by the way Clark wrote about his alternate-history Cairo in 1912, populated with djinn and angels and steampunk machinery, and refreshingly devoid of colonialism. This takes place in a Cairo about fifty years after a curious man opened up a gateway through which djinn and other supernatural creatures, along with magic, entered the world. Egypt has become a world superpower, as the djinn helped them to kick the British out of […]

“And so I began my criminal career there in the house of God, with a leaky pen instead of a pistol and books instead of silver for my reward.”

Outlawed by Anna North

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I still don’t know how I feel about this one and it’s been over a month. It was a super fast read, read it only about three hours, and parts of it I really liked, I guess overall I just wasn’t in the mood for a story that wasn’t all HEAs all over the place. Or that at least didn’t kill the one character I liked the most. Thanks for that, by the way. Outlawed is an alternate history western set in 1894-5, in a […]

Reconstruction Reimagined

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

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I remember reading something about Nicole Glover’s novel before it came out and thinking, “That sounds funs.”  It did not disappoint.  The story is set in the Reconstruction of the 1870’s but this is a reimagining of historical events with magic as an important element.  Before the war, Hetty Rhodes, a former slave, was a conductor on the Underground Railroad using magic, smarts, and luck to bring other slaves north to freedom. Now that the Civil War has ended, Hetty and her husband, Benjy, are […]

ScoobyDoo for grown ups but not quite enough

Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega

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So I’ve been wondering for a while why it seems to be that there can’t be ghost stories for grown-ups that don’t involve detailed often gory horror and/or a lot of unnecessary personal (self-inflicted at least partially most often) angst or troubles. Seannan McGuire’s Ghost Roads series comes close, but that’s only 2 (as of right now) books. I fine with tension and spooky and supernatural, but so much of what’s out there right now is too far into the brands of horror that I […]



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