Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

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I was in the mood for escape and The Folk of the Air series really delivered for me. It is a flawed series, and I’ll mention a bit of that as I look at the individual books, but I found it a delicious treat at the end of some pretty long days. The Cruel Prince, the first book in the series, introduces us to Jude, Taryn, Vivienne, Cardan, and other key players who feature throughout the trilogy. Jude, Taryn, and Vivi are children when we […]

“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”

The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, #1) by Holly Black

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This one was fine! I liked the ending much better than I liked the first third or so. It was just, it was a lot of dramadrama, lots of characters, court politics, feelings, like a fairyland prime-time soap opera, and there’s a reason I don’t watch those anymore. But I did get pulled in as soon as Jude and Cardan started to interact more in a real way, because I am nothing if not a sucker for well-done enemies to lovers, and that part of […]

Annual Short Story Collection Round-up

New York Fantastic: Fantasy Stories from the City that Never Sleeps by Paula Guran & Others

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Because I’d never ask my students to do something I wouldn’t do, and also because NK Jemisin highly suggests reading short stories to get better at writing long stories, I try to read a short story collection every year. For whatever reason, no matter how good the writing is, short story collections take me EONS to finish, and New York Fantastic was no exception. With twenty stories by different speculative authors, New York Fantastic offers a wide variety of story types and a nice selection of award […]

Beauty & Cruelty

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

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After the herculean doorstop that was Brandon Sanderson’s Way of Kings, I needed a fast, fun, and gripping read. So I turned to Holly Black, whose Folk of the Air trilogy I gobbled up in about 72 hours over Thanksgiving break. The Darkest Part of the Forest did not disappoint, and I blew through it in a day. Written a few years before Folk of the Air, it was fun to see how Black was playing around with the themes and premises that she later expanded […]

Sexy YA(?!) fantasy roundup

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas

A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas

The Wicked King by Holly Black

The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black

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Here follows a roundup (still 250 words average for each book) of some adventures into the world of super sexy YA fantasy. *cracks knuckles* Let’s go. Spoilers for ALL these entries abound, because let’s face it, anyone who reads this review will probably just read it to see if I felt the same as them, not if they should pick it up. (But if you like YA fantasy, DEFINITELY pick up Holly Black’s trilogy).   A Court of Wings and Fury, Sarah J. Maas (2.5 […]

Revisiting The Folk of the Air, with more Cardan and Jude

How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories by Holly Black

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Spoiler warning! Don’t read this book, or review unless you’ve finished the entire trilogy of The Folk of the Air. The Cruel Prince is the place to start. This companion book, which I suspect would clock in at novella-length if you removed all the beautiful full-colour illustrations throughout by Rovina Cai, works as part prequel and part sequel to The Folk of the Air trilogy, as well as an alternate POV to several of the series’ events, especially in The Cruel Prince, where Prince Cardan is possibly at his most loathsome. In […]



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