Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Plague of Monsters and maybe Magic

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giebrecht

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I have to honest and admit that I did not read this  thoroughly, more like slow skimmed. The Monster of Elendhaven was described as “dark”, “humorous”, “rotten with magic”; these descriptors match some things I’ve read and enjoyed. This novella is most definitely more the ‘dark’, as in horror. The setting is Elendhaven, somewhere around the North Pole, where some sort of seriously nasty plague caused by a magic eruption of some sort that either kills people or essentially mutates the survivors. Being a sorcerer […]

Unfortunately, this one was just meh for me.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

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I actually don’t have too much to say about this one because it didn’t really hit for me. I’m not really sure why, because I’ve liked everything else P. Djèlí Clark has written (Ring Shout was the last thing of his I hadn’t yet read). And I mean, I didn’t not like it, but it’s never really a good sign when your reader is liking your world-building and the alternate history aspects of your story more than your actual story, and more than the characters. […]

“You can. Stop fighting the tide, Nella. Once you stop fighting—once you let this wave wash over you—you’ll see. It’ll wash over you so quickly, you won’t even feel it.”

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

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It took me about a month to let this one simmer in the back of my mind before ultimately deciding to round up to four stars. The small thing that threw me at first is overshadowed by how much the ending has stuck with me, and how powerful the implications of that ending are. This one starts out pretty simply with our main character Nella, who works in the otherwise all-white workplace of an influential publishing house based in NYC, excited that another Black woman […]

The House, It’s Haunted

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

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I did not intend to follow one Riley Sager book with another, but since what I was reading wasn’t working for me, and since my rental of this one was due to expire soon, I decided to give it a go. This one is weird. In some ways, it’s better than what Sager has written but in others, it’s probably my least favorite. It’s a haunted house tale and he gets the atmosphere of a haunted house down pat. I’m not a horror guy; I […]

Two Comics and a Horror

Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughn, et al.

Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller and Dave Mazzucchelli

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

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Read two comics and re-read a horror classic. All good in their various ways, two not living up to the potential of greatness and one with said potential… Paper Girls, Volume 1 A lot of folks warned that this one would be confusing but being a huge “Saga” fan, I was willing to give Brian K. Vaughn the benefit of the doubt. And it paid off. It’s a good table setter for what promises to be a good story. I liked the characters and, I’ve […]

Let’s call this starter horror.

The Year of the Witching (Bethel, #1) by Alexis Henderson

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I liked this but it could have been better. I feel like with a more practiced writer, this story could have been F I R E, or whatever. As is, it’s just a pretty good story. For horror, it was tame. For adult, it skewed young. (It’s not YA, but according to the author, “has crossover appeal,” and I can see that.) For me, it felt much more atmospheric than a lot of YA. Or, at least, the stuff most YA fantasy authors are producing […]



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