Drew Hayes – Cannonball Read 17

Enter the Multiverse but Staying Cozy, at least for now

Chilling Reflections by Drew Hayes

August 3, 2025 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

Bingo 4: Favorite Drew Hayes in one of my favorite contemporary authors. He’s got the right level of geek, trope, and fun, while still managing to stay interesting. Chilling Reflections is book 3 in the Villain’s Code series, and while there have been signs in previous volumes, this one makes it pretty clear that this series is tilting into a Marvel-style multi-verse area. One thing that definitely surprised me is how directly the side story series (Villains Vignettes 1) is involved. I’ve read that, and […]

A Decade of Death and Decisions at Halloween All Together At Once

A Decade of Death and Decisions by Drew Hayes

November 27, 2024 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

I have always enjoyed Drew Hayes’ stuff. It’s usually entertaining and smart, and has a little fun with all the tropes of whatever pop culture/nerd genre might be involved. A Decade of Death and Decisions is most of these things but it’s also a little different. In 2013, Hayes started a narrative game on his website wherein he posted a short chapter of a Halloween story, and then a poll at the end concerning a choice about what should happen next, and based on reader […]

Supernatural Education Lite

Posthumous Education by Drew Hayes

February 25, 2024 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

I saw on the author’s social media somewhere that Drew Hayes’ Fred the Vampire Accountant series has one final volume due out after the one I had on my shelf, making Posthumous Education (Fred #8) the penultimate installation. It definitely shows; there is a lot of set up. Fred is called on a favor picked up about 5 volumes ago to a Fey queen, and all she wants him to do is take a temporary teaching job at the local parahuman institution of higher education, […]

Good old fashioned pop culture salutes

Villains' Vignettes Volume 1 by Drew Hayes

July 23, 2023 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

Bingo 4: Hold Steady Drew Hayes has been one of very few authors who has been both reasonably consistent and prolific without getting dull; he’s also a favorite of mine, so for all those reasons, he counts as Holding Steady. What’s new is that Villains’ Vignettes Vol 1 is a story without a connecting plot building; the three tales are a bit long to be short stories, so maybe we’ll call them novelettes. The style somehow manages to be straightforward but still have snappy dialogue […]

Which World is Really the Game?

Noble Roots by Drew Hayes

June 11, 2022 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

One of my least favorite fantasy adventure tropes is the tournament arc; often there’s virtually no plot, no character development, just a lot of fights with miraculous and/or unexpected power-ups. About half of Drew Haye’s Noble Roots, books 5 of the Spells, Swords, & Stealth series, goes here. I suppose it was kind of inevitable that this happen since the series is based on two premises: what happens when you focus on the NPCs in a D&D-style game and their lives when they aren’t interacting […]

If you thought they couldn’t reboot a book, you were wrong!

Super Powereds: Year One by Drew Hayes

October 31, 2021 by crystalclear Leave a Comment

Super Powereds: Year One By Drew Hayes So, Drew Hayes is my favorite author. My favorite series of his is his Super Powereds series (which I’ve reviewed twice already for Cannonball!) I am in love with Kyle McCarley as an audiobook reader (and I even follow him on Twitch to support him and to hear him talk!) So when I saw that they were rerecording the audiobooks, I was taken aback. Why mess with perfection? Kyle McCarley’s voices were the voices of the characters! How […]

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