Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Oh Catskins, why aren’t you dead yet?”

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi

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I first became aware of Roshani Chokshi when my kiddo discovered her Aru Shah middle grade series, the Pandava Quintet.  Printed in the “Rick Riordan Presents” line it focuses on Hindu mythology as Aru Shah embarks on adventures with her friends.  We even went to one of the Aru Shah book signings.  Chokshi was witty, charming, and engaging.  I left wanting to read the books but never got around to it.  In the past year I became aware of her fiction for older readers, particularly […]

The Art of the Meal

Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen

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Babette’s Feast is only 45 pages long (does that make it a novella or a short story?), and while you can easily finish it in one sitting, it is the kind of story that makes one go back and re-read and ponder the message Dinesen is imparting. I remember when this story was made into an award-winning film back in the 1980s, many religious communities identified with its communal/eucharistic imagery. While that is undeniably there, what strikes me reading it today is its message about […]

If you like wildly imaginative and clever sci-fantasy this series is the one for you

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook by Matt Dinniman

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The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook is the third book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Review for book one Dungeon Crawler Carl Review for book two Carl’s Doomsday Scenario Carl and Princess Donut have descended to the fourth level of the dungeon and into the Iron Tangle.  An entire level that exists exclusively in subways but has trains of all types from steam engines to monorails.  There is no map, there are colored lines (yes, zomp actually is a color) and named lines (like the Nightmare Express), trains […]

An auspicious start to CBR17

Tea With Mr. Rochester by Frances Towers

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This is a collection of short stories that I picked up last month from a great little bookstore in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Book Bus Depot is the only bookstore in the US to sell Persephone Books, which, as per their website, “reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly dating from the mid-twentieth century.” The title of this one, Tea With Mr Rochester, is what caught my attention, and it was a surprising and delightful find. Frances Towers did not live to […]

Not a single clue to these murders is found in a fjord

Hildur (The Clues in the Fjord) by Satu Rämö

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Nowhere Books 2025 Bingo: A book in translation Hildur Rúnarsdóttir is a police investigator on Iceland’s harsh and rather sparsely populated west coast. When she was only a child, her two younger sisters disappeared without a trace, and now she’s the head of the division for missing children in her part of the country. Her only remaining relative is her aunt, who she eats dinner with every Monday. Her aunt raised her after her parents died in a car accident about a year after her […]

Silly gags abound but questions are building faster than goblins on meth

Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

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You know how sometimes the next book in the series isn’t as good as the one before it? Carl’s Doomsday Device does not fit in that category.  It continues to be uproariously fun ala Carl having to remove all magic items and running around naked because even his boxers are magic.  However, the questions continue to build.  Why are some NPCs aware and others not?  How mentally stable are the previous crawlers that become NPCs? What is going on in the broader universe that is impacting […]



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