Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

No Brothers Left, and There’ll Be No More After Me

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

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I’m going to write this review as though it’s three separate reviews, because I can’t figure out how to review Books 2 and 3 in this series without completely spoiling Book 1. So if you don’t want to read spoilers, you can stop reading after Book 1. Book 1: Daughter of Smoke and Bone is the story of Karou, an art student living in Prague. She has a best friend, Zuzana, an annoying ex-boyfriend named Kaz, and a double life, wherein she works for a […]

“He read while he walked. He read while he ate. The other librarians suspected he somehow read while he slept, or perhaps didn’t sleep at all.”

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I love Laini Taylor. I adored Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and I really liked Days of Blood and Starlight. (I admit, I was not 100% enthusiastic about Dreams of Gods and Monsters. But as a whole, the trilogy was top-notch.) So I was ready to love this. And I did. Until the very last page.** Super quick overview here: Like the Smoke & Bone trilogy, Strange the Dreamer takes place in a fantasy world at an unknown time in history. Our hero, Lazlo Strange, […]

Angels and Demons

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A few years ago I tried to read this and gave up in the first 20 pages because I was just not in the mood. I’m so glad I gave this a second try because it was a delight. Once the story got going, I could not stop listening (I opted for the audiobook version). Let’s just say there were some late nights involved and I seriously considered calling in sick to work. Karou is a teenager going to art school in Prague. At least, […]

“Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.”

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I try to read a little bit of many different genres throughout the course of any given year. However, like most people, I lean more heavily on some genres than others. Fantasy, while one of our most read genres (over 150 pages of reviews!), has been a slowly growing genre for me. It took some in depth discussions with Ale for me to nail down my problems: I have a very difficult time getting my brain around non-Earth settings, and the tropes, particularly the Quest, […]

Yay for more books for CBR9!

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Thanks alwaysanswerb! I am already reading Issa Rae’s book and gearing up for CBR9. 🙂

Dreams of more Laini Taylor to read

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Though not really reflected in my earlier (rather superficial, in retrospect) review, I have had a whirlwind of emotions with this series. I wrote said prior review as one piece for both of the preceding novels, Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight probably to avoid spoilers but also because I read them literally back-to-back: I finished Smoke and Bone and began Blood and Starlight with the same breath. As such, it became difficult to separate them for the purposes of thematic or ‘first impression’ review […]



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