Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I’m sorry, I can review fanfiction? Sign me up for a triple cannonball…

Owl Was Well by fencer_x

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I have long been an avid fanfiction reader. I discovered it in 1999 when I was still in high school and for the past 20+ years I have gone through bouts of reading nothing but fanfiction for a single pairing for months/years on end. According to my iBooks stats (where I download most fics from AO3 in epub format), I have read 163 fics in 2020 and 146 in 2019. And to this day, no book I ever read has had the same immediately uplifting […]

A Modern Poldark AU Fanfiction, because why not?

The Distance Between Us by Lucretiassister

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Welcome to my first ever review of fanfiction, are we ready? We’ll try to be, certainly. I read a lot of short form works this year (my AO3 history tells me somewhere in the neighborhood of 600, certainly not all of it good) and I don’t really think I’ll be reviewing any of those, but I am going to review a novel length work that I’ve been following along with since March. I had mentioned in my review of Spoiler Alert, a book where fanfiction […]

“We need new songs.”

The Silence of the Girls: A Novel by Pat Barker

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I recently reviewed Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles for CBR12 bingo, and I referred to it as a gateway into a genre I call “reimagined classics” or “classics fanfic”. The Silence of the Girls is yet another outstanding addition to this genre and it happens to overlap with The Song of Achilles, presenting several main characters and incidents from The Iliad from a very different perspective. Pat Barker imagines for us the life of Briseis, a Trojan princess who becomes Achilles’ slave. Through the […]

Fanfic — Classics Edition

The Song of Achilles: A Novel by Madeline Miller

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Cbr12bingo Gateway BINGO horizontal (Gateway to Shelfie) I first read The Song of Achilles for CBR4, and for me, it is the gateway to a genre that I will call “reimagined classics” or perhaps “fanfic: classics edition.” This is the first book I can remember reading that is based on a classic story, in this case The Iliad, expanding on a part of it and telling it from the perspective of a minor character. Re-imagined classics allow authors to go into more detail on aspects […]

Clicks ‘Publish’, backs off slowly.

Just a bunch of novel-length Sherlock fanfiction I read this year by Various

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So first off, let me just say that I feel weird about this, so if you feel weird about this, then I’m right there with you. I went back and forth (and back and forth) over whether to post this, but in the end, I spent a SIGNIFICANT amount of time this year reading (and re-reading, and re-reading) Sherlock fanfiction. This year has honestly been pretty terrible for me personally, and among other things, I have developed pretty severe anxiety. I’ve never had to deal […]

GoT Fanfiction in Two Parts: Snark and SRSLY! OR, why we get drunk and know things

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*This one needs a disclaimer and a trigger warning. In an attempt to rationalize the thought process behind the idea that a romance novel could employ the tropes that this one does (Enemies to lovers, Kidnapped, Marriage of convenience, Mistaken identity and Victim falls for rapist) and still find a welcoming readership, there may be a bit of Devil’s Advocate stances tossed about. Please note: this is strictly an exercise in disambiguation and a genuine attempt to understand how this story could be conceived, presented […]



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