Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An Anthology of Errors

Daggers Drawn by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

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Bingo – Reader’s Choice (replacing Sports Ball) My brother sometimes calls me Crankelina. In the privacy of my accepting family, I am known to occasionally exhibit pouty annoyance. And so it was with Daggers Drawn, a mystery anthology edited by Max Jakubowski. Some stories are riddled with typos. The mysteries are flaccid. Many characters are poorly sketched. I am a bit sorry I wasted my Reader’s Choice square on this unnotable collection. I could end the review there, I suppose, but I have a word […]

Toss a coin to your witcher

The Last Wish by Andzrej Sapkowski

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CBRBingo: Old series I’m a latecomer to Andzrej Sapkowski’s Witcher series, drawn in by the Netflix series and thoroughly earwormed by its ridiculously awesome theme song. I loved the series and was looking to learn more about Geralt of Rivia, Ciri, Yenifer, the Continent and its complex backstory of magic and political intrigue. I certainly learned some more about Geralt, the focus of this linked collection of short stories that tell of his work as a Witcher, a magic-shaped hunter, deperately needed by villages, towns and […]

The Dark Versus The Knight

Batman: Ego and Other Tails by Darwyn Cooke, et al.

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: person on the cover. Batman is on the cover! Like many, I rewound and watched the new trailer for The Batman several times since it came out. I’m a big fan of the Caped Crusader; he’s basically the only superhero I roll with on a consistent basis. When looking up reviews for the trailer (go ahead and laugh but I was curious how others would interpret the Easter Eggs), I saw that one of director Matt Reeves’ big inspirations for the movie […]

“For a being as sophisticated as you are, it is baffling how little understanding you have of the composition of your own mind.”

Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #5) by Martha Wells

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It has been almost three years since I last ventured into the land of Murderbot (January 2019) and while I had to wait like everyone else for Network Effect to publish, I also put it off a little while, over a year in fact. I blame Pandemic brain. Because the minute I picked this one up, I was back with Murderbot and it felt like almost no time at all since I last visited this part of fictional space. Murderbot is still working out this […]

“Love couldn’t solve everything, but without love, there was nothing to solve.” (Bingo #3!)

40-Love by Olivia Dade

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I think I laugh the most whenever I read an Olivia Dade romance, her humor hits all the right notes for me. Even when I’m not expecting a laugh, Dade delivers them through her characters who are achingly self-aware, or sometimes not. Following a meet-cute involving a runaway bikini top and the need to keep from flashing nearby children, we get the story of Tess and Lucas. Lucas, 26, a former top-level tennis pro now giving lessons at a Florida resort, fled there after the […]

“Whichever story you believe, my mother, Chang’e, became immortal. As did I.”

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

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A child of the Moon Goddess, and an immortal herself,  Xingyin grows up on the moon, with just her mother & their family servant/long time companion. For the most part, the three of them are happy, if isolated. Xingyin senses a grief in her mother that she can’t quite explain, and within herself she feels a growing sense to reach out … for something more. She can’t label it, and her mother has warned her against reaching for it, but the pull towards that other […]



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