Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Life has thrown a lot at me recently, so here are all the reviews I forgot to write!

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

The Miraculous by Jess Redman

The Tea Dragon Festival by K. O'Neill

An Exchange of Gifts by Anne McCaffrey

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

The Sandman: Act I by Neil Gaiman

The Princess Spy by Larry Loftis

by 2 Comments

The Bear and the Nightingale By Katherine Arden (Warning – the review of this book contains f-bombs!) I know this was supposed to be based on a fairy tale, and some parts seemed very fairy tale-like (especially the story the nanny told toward the beginning with the girls in the snow) but I did not correlate them to any story I already knew.  I appreciated the involvement of the Russian household spirits, and how the village did quite well combining their religion and their culture […]

Dragons in the Sky

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

by 3 Comments

There are two fantasy genre tropes that I could do without. First, the stagnation: the world has been in a rot for ages, even thousands of years with no progress at all. It was better then: the society of yore was wealthier, the people mightier, wiser, and had longer lifespans. (They probably had better dental hygiene, too, although this is pure speculation.) The current civilisation has lost a lot of the knowledge of magic and technology, especially the good guys; the bad ones seem to […]

If Wishes Were Dragons Some People Would Fly Between

by 5 Comments

  Dragonsdawn is the ninth book in the Dragonriders of Pern series but takes place approximately 2,500 years before Dragonflight, the first book in the series. I discovered Anne McCaffrey in an English textbook sample my dad brought home from school when I was about 13. There was an excerpt from Dragonsinger in there and I fell in love. I devoured every Pern book our local library had over the next few months and set out to collect the ones they didn’t have. I purchased […]

Khaleesi Wouldn’t Put Up With This

by 7 Comments

 I know this is a beloved series and McCaffrey is one of the most prolific writers science fiction writers of all time.  And I know that, for its time – a time before Ellen Ripley, Katniss Everdeen and Hermione Granger, it was revolutionary to have a story, a science fiction story no less, have a strong woman main character.  But…  I’m glad we’ve gotten better.  We deserve better. Lessa, the main character, herself isn’t the problem.  Lessa lives in a medieval like holding ruled by […]

Dragons!

by 8 Comments

Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series was one of the formative series of my life. In Junior High, I was in the advanced classes and was expected to read a lot of books I don’t remember. While on the bus going home one day, I saw one of my friends, who was in the regular English class, reading one of his assigned books. It was called Dragonsong. I was entranced and it was all I could do not to snatch it out of his hands. Fortunately, my […]



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