Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The Darkling slumped back in his chair. “Fine,” he said with a weary shrug. “Make me your villain.”

Shadow and Bone (Shadow and Bone Trilogy #1) by Leigh Bardugo

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In one word: Fine Cannonball Read Bingo: Adapt I don’t read a lot of YA so I’m a late adopter of what’s hot in the genre, so I first heard of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books on a Cannonball Read Zoom meet-up. My CBR buddies told me I could skip the trilogy (which chronologically takes place first) and go right to the duology, as the duology was better, and doesn’t really build on the action of the trilogy. Other than a romance novel, I have never […]

A Satisfying Conclusion (For Now…)

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo

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After watching the Shadow and Bone series on Netflix, 2022 became the year of Leigh Bardugo for me – and although I didn’t connect equally to all of her work, overall I’ve very much enjoyed this adventure. I started out with the original Shadow and Bone trilogy, then moved on to the Six of Crows duology, took a brief detour to read the first of the Alex Stern Series, and now I’ve rounded out the year with the King of Scars duology.  For me, these […]

Delightful book about magic and secret societies and privilege

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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This was recommended to me by a friend almost a year ago–we met up after years (like, 5+? 10+?) and realized we both shared a fondness for fantasy novels, which are apparently thin on the ground in Paris–and I ended up hemming and hawing due to some vaguely unsavory tumblr posts from an author I follow. This was around when Shadow and Bone premiered on Netflix, and the gist of it was that Bardugo had some problematic rep in her books, e.g. the tired use of “almond” to […]

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 […]

Are we not all things?

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

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CBR14 BINGO: Series (first in a duology and part of the Grishaverse series of books) I have probably already sufficiently raved about the Grishaverse books written after the initial triology, but here I go again. Nikolai was a favorite character from those books so I was excited to revisit him and spend more time with his wink-filled antics. If you haven’t read the Shadow and Bone trilogy or Six of Crows duology, stop right there. Go to the library and get cracking. From here it gets spoilery. King Nikolai is trying to create the […]

We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary.

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

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The second book in the Six of Crows duology is the best book that I have read this year. Now, I REALLY want Bardugo to go back and rewrite the Shadow and Bone books. I want to care about those characters the way that I care about these crazy kids. The, ahem, bones are there in the Shadow and Bonebooks but the depth of the characters is not. I understand that Bardugo grew as a writer but the difference between the first trilogy and this duology is startling. The misfits from Six of […]



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