Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Let it be my ambition and not my fear that seals my fate”

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

by 4 Comments

I’ve had a bit of mixed experience with Leigh Bardugo’s books. I thought the Shadow & Bone trilogy was generic and bland but loved the follow up duology set in the same universe, consisting of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. I loved Ninth House, but felt somewhat let down by the sequel, Hell Bent. I’m currently in the middle of reading several long series and wanted a bit of a palette cleanser (without starting another series), so I started reading Bardugo’s latest release, The […]

Beware the moat squid, magic garlic, and no memories

Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis

by Leave a Comment

One of the worst things I think a book can do to you is totally ruin things with a two page change of tone. Dreadful seemed like a pretty inoffensive light-ish almost parody of D&D-type fantasy/isekai. Dread Dark Lord Gavrax suddenly wakes up in his lab with no idea where he is or who he is. He’s got no idea why he’s got Princess Eliasha captive, what scary Dread Lord Zarcon has him doing, why the villagers a re terrified of him, and why he […]

My love/hate relationship with this author continues.

House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3) by Sarah J. Maas

by Leave a Comment

SJM is just bad at endings, is what I’ve decided. I feel the same way about this as I did about Kingdom of Ash. And even though I think it’s the best of her three endings, I also had similar issues with A Court of Wings and Ruin. It’s a pattern, is what I’m saying. I don’t regret reading this book; the first half in particular was a major improvement over the meandering, uninteresting second book. And then she started wrapping things up. Sigh. I’m finding it […]

“Power doesn’t have to be the way the regent and your rebels make it be . . . Power can be looking after people. Keeping them safe, instead of putting them into danger.”

The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1) by Tasha Suri

by 2 Comments

 I actually really ended up liking this and I’m going to need to use of one of my ten cheat books to pick up the sequel (I’m on a book buying ban for the whole of 2024 — I’ve already used three cheats 😬). It’s always lovely when as a lifelong fantasy reader you come across something that feels fresh and unique, and this book gave me that feeling the whole way through. The underlying story—about a society oppressed by an empire led by a […]

It could be (at least somewhat) my own fault this one isn’t my favorite

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske

by Leave a Comment

It has been a long while since I read the first two books in Freya Marske’s Last Binding Trilogy, which may account for some of my complaints about A Power Unbound. I remember Adelaide being a part of the first but not the second story, and when she comes back in the third, I couldn’t remember much about her personality or backstory-wise. As a result, her parts (small but in one or two spots, important) felt underdeveloped and like I was missing something. She’s a […]

Deadpool Does D&D

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

by Leave a Comment

Imagine if you took Deadpool, made him a her named Davi, made him the main playable character in a video game, and tossed into a D&D sort of world in which (true to video game), every time he dies, he goes back to the re-set position. And this happens hundreds of times as Davi keeps losing to the Dark Lord. But then, Deadpool/Davi decides that, instead of trying to save the world from the Dark Lord, why not just become said Lord instead? And let’s […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo