Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A little disappointed in this one.

The Merciless Ones (Deathless, #2) by Namina Forna

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I’ve been going back and forth, and then back and forth again over whether to round this up to four or down to three stars. I think I’m settling on three stars because the plot made my head swim, and not in a good way. No one but Deka, Ixa, and perhaps Britta get significant development, so I had very little incentive to actually remember who any of them were, which didn’t help with my confusion. This is very different from the first book, where […]

I liked it, even though it could use more dragons

A Natural History of Dragons, A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan

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CBR BINGO: Monster, because there be dragons in here! BINGO: Rec’d, Monster, Verse, Bird, Time First of all, I love this image on the cover. The idea of a naturalist who studies dragons is appealing to me, as someone who a) enjoys naturalist memoirs and b) enjoys fantasy. The marriage of science and fantasy appeals to my nature, and I was very excited to read this book. And, I enjoyed it. But I didn’t love it as I hoped. A Natural History of Dragons is […]

The Language of Thorns

The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo

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Absolutely fantastic. This was so good I didn’t want it to end. Bardugo does an excellent job with the stories and Kipin’s illustrations evokes the fairy tale setting and characters so well. I may just buy this in hardback for the illustrations alone. These stories are a great blend of retellings as well as something darker that leaks into each story that makes it just as much a cautionary tale as Grimm’s original fairy tales. Here are my ratings for all of the stories, but […]

Never Trust the Fae

Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald, Jose Pimienta

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Somewhere in Massachusetts, two best friends, Darra and Andrea, struggle with the reality of growing up and growing apart. As they start high school and consider their futures, one wants to stay put while the other can’t wait to get away, which inevitably strains their friendship. When they break into an abandoned, supposedly haunted factory and the ghostly woman trapped there offers one of them eternal youth, they accidentally unleash something sinister on their unsuspecting small town. I really liked this one, which is unsurprising […]

Angry Mothers Raise Daughters Fierce Enough to Fight Wolves

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

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Reviews for the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo! I’m reviewing in the order they were published, but they are connected by place rather than plot, and can be read in any order.   The Empress of Salt and Fortune Chih is a cleric of the Singing Hills Monastery who travels the world to catalog, record, and document histories. Rabbit is the former servant of the exiled empress In-Yo. As Chih catalogs the contents of Rabbit’s house, Rabbit shares with them bits of stories related […]

Will This Be the Year the Earth Refuses to Forgive Us?

Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North

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Notes from the Burning Age deposits its readers sometime between Mad Max and The Broken Earth. The world that seems in the first chapter to be an unknown, fantastical place, is actually a snapshot of a future Earth, its landscape shifted by centuries of exploitation. Eventually, it seems the Earth fought back, defending itself by unleashing fearsome spiritual creatures called the kakui, who, depending on who you ask, burnt the world or saved it from the burning. Regardless, it was a hefty price that humanity […]



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