Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Brutal yet often funny, Joe Abercrombie’s return to adult fantasy

A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie

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Savine dan Glotka – “One man’s mad is another’s perceptive” Isern-i-Phail – “One man’s mad is another’s remarkable” In the mid 2000’s I discovered Joe Abercrombie’s gritty and brutal “First Law Trilogy”.  It was unlike any fantasy I had read up to that point and I tore through it.  But for whatever reason I never picked up the standalone volumes that occurred afterwards.  A few years ago Abercrombie put out a YA fantasy series that I was overall disappointed with, excellent first book, second was […]

How I Met Your Monster

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club Book 1 by Theodora Goss

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This YA novel, the first in a trilogy, introduces the reader to the members of the Athena Club. It is their origin story. What is the Athena Club? It is a group of young women in London ca. 1900 who have one thing in common — a monstrous past! They are Mary Jekyll, Diana Hyde, Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein and Beatrice Rappaccini. A series of gruesome murders of prostitutes will bring these young women together with a little help from none other than Sherlock Holmes […]

“I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people.”

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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I wanted to love this novel. I fully expected to love this novel. At times, I verged on loving this novel. But then, as I got further into it and closer to the end, I gave up the fight. I simply did not like it. I’ve spent the last week pondering why Normal People didn’t work for me. I don’t object to stories about dysfunctional people, and I certainly don’t require a happy ending. But when a novel bums me out, I want it to […]

How Cannonball Read has given me permission to not finish a book

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

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I love how supportive the Cannonball community is with the constant reassurance one doesn’t have to review everything read and that it’s okay to not finish a book.  Historically, I have been a finisher of books.  Then I started reading Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James for Cannonball Bingo 2020. Thirty-six pages in I quit because I could not handle the near constant parade of sex, bodily fluids, violence, and disparaging remarks about boys who are actually girls and vice versa.  That was an […]

A Murderbot Murder Mystery

Fugitive Telemetry: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

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Fugitive Telemetry is the latest installment in the Murderbot Diaries but chronologically, its events take place before those of Book 5 (Network Effect) but after Book 4 (Exit Strategy). This is a “whodunnit” set on Preservation Station, where MB’s guardian Dr. Mensah, suffering from PTSD, is a respected Councilor. Preservation Station is a non-corporate entity with a proud history of independence and respect for individual rights, whether one is human, bot or augmented human (a human/bot hybrid). Anyone can come to Preservation Station for sanctuary […]

To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it…that’s the most important part.

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

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I blame Instagram. Over the summer, several influence-y women half my age screamed at me from my phone about how great Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) book series was. I was influenced. This is the fifth book in the Court of Thorns and Roses series, so proceed with caution if you haven’t read yet but want to. And you do want to read these if you are at all a fan of paranormal romances, sexy fairy shenanigans, and magic-y places. First, I need to confess […]



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