Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A complex, beautiful fantasy sequel

The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri

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[Review contains potential spoilers for Jasmine Throne, book 1 of The Burning Kingdoms trilogy] I finished Oleander Sword and now I don’t know what to do with myself. How dare it end there?! Where’s the next book?! I need to know what’s going to happen next!! Oleander Sword picks up a year after the events of Jasmine Throne. Bhumika and Priya are Elders of Ahiranya and trying to lead their country into a prosperous future, but are having to deal with the politics of the […]

A Great First (Long) Book in a (Long) Series

City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams

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After carrying this book around from apartment to apartment for thirteen years, I finally made it beyond the first hundred pages and have finished the first book in the quartet. At this pace, I should be done in about 39 more years, so there’s hope! I think this really is a case of a book needing to be read at the right time. With a long train commute and a sudden urge to read Tad Williams, the stars aligned. City of Golden Shadow is set in […]

“Now, it’s finally time to reveal some secrets.”

Secret History (Mistborn, #3.5) by Brandon Sanderson

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2 Book 29/30 I liked this even better this time. But Sanderson is right that it’s disjointed so I can’t give it five stars. I teared up a little though! I don’t actually have much to say about this, now that it comes time to write the review. It’s hard to talk about any of it without spoiling way too much for this entire series, including major stuff from both the first and second Mistborn series. It’s definitely best […]

Allergic to an audiobook.

Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2) by Rebecca Roanhorse

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2 Book 26/30 I’m sad that I’m rating this three stars, but it’s representative of my experience listening to the audiobook. If/when I re-read, I think I will like it better. Also, when I see where the story is going in book three. Sad face. My biggest takeaway from this book is that I found it extremely difficult to make everything that was happening cohere into a story in my mind. Everything felt so disconnected, and so I was […]

This series should have been two big books instead of four smaller ones.

City of Dragons (The Rain Wild Chronicles, #3) by Robin Hobb

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2 Book 7/30 This ended just as it was getting going! I understand that there were publishing issues, and logistical things to consider in terms of ballooning page length on this one, but if I were her publishers, I would have just let her turn in one gigantic book late than split the book in two, to its detriment, just so they could publish on time. This is not a full story, and it starts out slow in the […]

Three stars, for now. It’s not the book it’s me??

Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy, #2) by Marlon James

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This book has been holding up my review queue since I finished it in late March. I was surprised at my reaction to it when I read it, and wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, because I wasn’t sure if I liked the book or not. And, if I didn’t like it, why not? I feel like nothing much has changed in James’s style in the last three years. I think it’s me, and that I just wasn’t in the mood at all to […]



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