Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Color Black and Erased Memory

The Ancient Magus Bride Wizard's Blue vol. 8 by Makoto Sanda, Isuo Tsukumo, Kore Yamazaki

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Is it weird that it’s sometimes uncomfortable reading in front of someone? As in, it almost feels like an invasion of privacy. Long story short, I’m hosting a family member temporarily out of their home for major water damage repair, and it’s been kind of hard to do extended reading time; that and it’s been crazy-time at work but that part’s better now. Anyways, both of those are why I’ve been going back to graphic novels and manga a bit more than usual lately (still […]

“Zahra and I were complete; we were the sun and the wind, the sky and the earth, life and death, above the world and untouchable.”

The Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

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I was a big fan of Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga, so when I stumbled on this novella, I was thrilled! In the sprawling Green Bone Saga, Lee crafted a dynasty in which 10s of key actors loved and hated and fought and died over several countries and thousands of pages. In The Untethered Sky, Lee narrows the scope to a single girl and her bird – well, never her bird, but the bird that she tends. I didn’t read the blurb on this book, […]

There’s a Girl in a Tower, But This Isn’t Her Story

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

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If you know me, you know that a good fairytale retelling or interpretation is totally my jam. Robin McKinley had me by the throat for years thanks to Beauty, Deerskin, Spindle’s End, etc. So when I learned that T. Kingfisher, an author whose books I’ve previously enjoyed (and who is a delightful follow on used-to-be-Twitter), had a re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, I was more than down. Thornhedge is the story of Toadling, who was stolen by the faeries as a newborn babe, adopted by a […]

This was… fine? I guess?

The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten

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I didn’t know much about this book going in, I picked it up because I thought the cover was pretty (I’m a sucker for anything purple). The Foxglove King focuses on Lore, a young woman who works as a spy for a smuggling operation ran by her adoptive mothers. She also has necromancy-related magical powers (Which are illegal? Sort of? Maybe?). When she’s caught using them in public and arrested, she’s forced by the King of Wherever (I’m pretty sure there was an actual country […]

Magic and Anxiety

Secret Passages 1985-1986 by Axelle Lenoir

The Ghostkeeper by Johanna Taylor

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Secret Passages 1985-1986 by Axelle Lenoir – 3 stars In an effort to untangle her complicated feelings about the loss of her cosmic twin, author Axelle decides to unspool her life in an off-kilter autobiographical comic. This is a surreal and funny graphic novel which depicts a year in young Axelle’s life as she starts going to school, forms a strange connection with the forest by her home, and begins to suffer in the grip of acute anxiety. The art is both atmospheric and humorous, […]

Kaiju Holmes

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

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A Holmes and Watson style mystery set in a high fantasy world reminiscent of Attack On Titan or Pacific Rim. Dinios Kol is an engraver. An engraver can permanently engrave memories in their mind and retrieve them at any time by inhaling different scents. He is the brand new assistant to Ana Dolabra, a brilliant but extremely eccentric Iudex investigator who is apparently in some sort of great disgrace, banished to a backwater town by the sea walls. In a nearby town a high ranking […]



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