Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Intriguing Beginning, Lukewarm Follow-Through

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

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I don’t have much to say about this book. It was fine. I liked it enough to finish reading it but probably not enough to bother with the sequels, especially since it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. The pacing is too slow and there isn’t enough character development to justify that pace. Spoilers ahead. We follow Ceony, a new graduate of a magic school. Magicians bond to specific man-made elements and she wanted metal, but due to a lack of paper magicians, that’s what she […]

Yeah, I Don’t Know

Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg

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There was a lot I liked about this, but somehow, it kept falling into Uncanny Valley territory for me. Hulda Larkin, a very self-possessed young woman, is in the employment of BIKER (Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms – an acronym that consistently threw me off). It is her job to subdue enchanted homes into domesticity, in order to preserve their historical magical properties.  In the year 1846, she has been sent to an isolated mansion on a remote island in Rhode Island.  […]

Another solid work from Charlie N Holmberg

Spellbreaker by Charlie N. Holmberg

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In Victorian England, magic leaves traces: runes, smells, and even sounds, and Elsie Camden has the rare ability to not only perceive these vestiges of magic but to undo the magic behind them, though she cannot perform any magic herself. Elsie is employed by two people: a stonemason who can perform only the most basic spells and a mysterious cadre of people trying to equalize the world. It is with this group, The Cowls, that Elsie uses her unregistered and illegal skills to undo unjust […]

Maybe Don’t Bind Your Fate to First Hottie You Meet

Smoke & Summons (The Numina Series, Book 1) by Charlie N. Holmberg

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I’m choosy in my reading–unless of course the book is free (as this one is, for Amazon Prime members through January). The pretty flaming horse on the cover is Ireth, a powerful being from another plane that can be temporarily summoned into a human vessel. You can probably guess the requirements: good health, no piercings to mar one’s wholeness, a summoning tattoo in an extinct language, and…virginity. (Because it’s YA!) Our human vessel is eighteen year old Sandis, the favorite slave of an underworld kingpin whose gun-toting grafters […]

I was not embarrassed to read these on the train

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The Paper Magician, The Glass Magician, The Master Magician It is the early 1900s, that much is apparent, with the use of telegraphs transitioning into the telephone and automobiles on the roads.  Or is it apparent? There is magic here, so things may have developed at different rates. The premise is that there is magic in man-made materials, but in order to wield it you have to bond to it, so people can only use one kind of magic.  That part I get, but that […]

So Glad to be Done

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So…. I’m done with this series. In case you were wondering, the quality doesn’t pick up at all. Everything that irritated me in the first book is still present here. I’m just… so disappointed in this series. I think the idea is pretty cool, and in the hands of someone willing to actually challenge her characters this could be an interesting series. But that just doesn’t happen. Oh, there are villains, evil mustache twirling villains, but at no point in the book, or series, did […]



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