Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I could not prevent what was done to me, nor can I change what people made of me. But I know what I am and have decided to continue being what I am.”

Dragon Keeper (The Rain Wild Chronicles, #1) by Robin Hobb

by Leave a Comment

This is the fourth series overall set in Robin Hobb’s Elderlings world, and the second that takes place in the Rain Wilds, with the liveships and dragons, after The Liveship Traders. I continue to be very, very glad I gave her another chance as an author. I loved revisiting this world and seeing characters from Liveship again, but here we get an all-new set of characters to follow for four books, including a dragon POV! Please do not read further if you haven’t read The […]

A ridiculous farce with a core of sweetness.

Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall

by Leave a Comment

This book is funny and adorable with a side of aggravation. This review will be short because I never know how to talk about funny books in reviews. Our main character is Valentine, a young duke who is set and ready to do his duty by marrying the girl he’s been betrothed to since he was a child, a thing both their fathers wished for them. Only the girl, Arabella, has no desire to get married, and she hates Valentine, so she absconds with herself […]

Death can’t stop any of these characters

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

by Leave a Comment

TW for this review and the book: murder, suicide, discussion of death of both people and pets. Author TJ Klune also includes a similar warning at the very beginning of the book which I greatly admire. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s reading more. Maybe it’s just accepting my own emotions, but Cannonball Read has made a liar out of me. Books never used to make me cry. Rarely even tear up. I would feel things, sure. But not cry. That was a response strictly reserved […]

A break from the norm, but everything is too rushed

The Magicians: New Class by Lilah Sturges

by Leave a Comment

A group of hedge witches are being enrolled at Brakebills as third year students much to the dismay of the students who have been studying at Brakebills since year one. There’s obvious tension between the hedge witches and the Brakebills students, but they’re being forced to work and study together. Initially they’re told it’s to bridge the gap between the two magical worlds, but the students soon learn the truth. They will be learning battle magic, an outlawed practice, in order to be prepared for […]

Fascinated, then Restless

We Were Restless Things by Cole Nagamatsu

by 2 Comments

Sometimes a book gets packaged as something it’s not, which always does it a disservice since the reader is expecting something different than they get. They may love the new, surprise story or they may be annoyed that what they hoped for wasn’t within the book they picked up. I’m somewhere in the middle with this novel. We Were Restless Things is about a mysterious lake in the woods that only appears to teenager Noemi Amato and occasionally to her friends once Noemi has taken […]

Spies Alive

The Torqued Man by Peter Mann

by Leave a Comment

The Torqued Man is a very difficult novel to pull off. It has to accurately replicate the atmosphere of Nazi Germany in World War II, introduce two queer heroes enmeshed with each other without the Tragic Homosexual trope, present a novel-within-the-novel that tweaks the story without it losing momentum. become a high wire spy tale in the tradition of Furst and LeCarré, and do all of this in a way that entertains while seamlessly blending multiple genres. And man oh man does Peter Mann do it. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo