Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Is It Coming Home?

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

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Read as part of CBR16 Bingo: fanfic. This is Lev Grossman’s take on the King Arthur mythos.  I don’t really know how to write this review because I loved it and I really want to give it my full throated endorsement. But there are things I loved about the book itself and things as an Arthur fan that I both loved and hated. Let’s start here: it’s one of the best things I’ve read in 2024. I liked the first Magicians book, less so the other two. […]

The meter of the poem fired his blood until he was a molten core. The hammer’s song was a charm for living, a way to keep singing himself into existence.

The Winter Knight by Jes Battis

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The word eôel meant home turf. People trust home. Through years of investigation, her grandmother had learned that what people told you depended on where you talked to them. Lies for every space, but occasionally a truth snuck its way in.” ― Jes Battis, The Winter Knight When she had interviewed him, she’d traced a discreet rune on his phone case. It was sketchy magic, but it should have given her access to the phone’s GPS. The problem was that it wasn’t working. His location […]

The Knights of the Round Table vs. Climate Change

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee

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Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. The realm is in peril, and the knights of the round table have been called back to duty once again, waking up from under the earth to fight . . . climate change. Among other things. Here’s a little bit of the blurb: “An immortal Knight of the Round Table faces his greatest challenge yet—saving the politically polarized, rapidly warming world from itself—in this slyly funny contemporary take […]

A little romance

The Thorn and The Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story by Theodora Goss

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The Thorn and The Blossom is a novella by Theodora Goss which uses the tale of Gawain the Green Knight from Arthurian legend as a point of departure. Goss takes the legend, updates it to the modern age and provides her readers with a charming love story told from two perspectives. The Thorn and The Blossom is the story of Evelyn Morgan and Brendan Thorne, and it is the story of Gawan, Queen Elowen, the sorceress Morva and the thousand year curse. The reader can […]

A really good anthology! Emmalita and andtheIToldYouSos were not kidding.

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Eds. Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington

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This is one of the best anthologies I’ve ever read. If you like Arthuriana, this is a must read. If you like anthologies just for the variety, this collection is a winner. I don’t think I will ever give an anthology five stars, because I’ve yet to find one where I like every story, but this one comes pretty close. There were only two stories in here I didn’t like. What makes Sword Stone Table so great is that the authors chosen really had their creativity flowing. […]

World War II meets King Arthur’s Court

The Metropolitans by Carol Goodman

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Set in WWII New York, four kids find themselves at the MET on a cold Sunday afternoon, each dealing with a hand far heavier than any teen should be dealt. Walt was sent to live with family in the US to keep out of Hitler’s grasp. Kiko is a young Chinese girl who looks too much like the enemy to ever be trusted. Madge has been separated from her siblings as a result of her father’s overwhelming grief over her mother’s passing and all she […]



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