Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The important thing in running away is not how fast you run but simply that you run faster than the next man.”

Prince of Fools (Red Queen's War #1) by Mark Lawrence

The Liar's Key (Red Queen's War #2) by Mark Lawrence

Wheel of Osheim (Red Queen's War #3) by Mark Lawrence

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Well, this is less ambitious of me than the time I tried to review an entire five-book series all in one go.  This is just a three book series this time! (Also, because I have chosen to review the books this way, there will be minor spoilers) I’ve started reading two of Mark Lawrence’s trilogies so far. Of those two, I would highly recommend The Book of the Ancestor series, starting off with Red Sister. They were one hell of a package: I loved both […]

Finishing School Arya, the later years

Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence

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Once again I have fallen a couple of books behind so please bear with me. Grey Sister, the second in Mark Lawrence’s Book of the Ancestor trilogy, doesn’t hold up quite as well as its predecessor but that bar was so damn high my arms are shaking trying to hold it up. Being “less good” then Red Sister still puts it miles above a lot of the other dreck I’ve suffered through this year. Anyway, book two pulls us a little further outside the Convent of Sweet Mercy as […]

The best opening line since The Martian

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

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“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size.” Seriously, y’all, read that and tell me you don’t want to devour this book whole because that how how Red Sister starts. It’s been YEARS since an opening line hooked me like this and I am still completely shook. Goddamn that’s good. Okay. On to the meat of the book, because it does not disappoint. Red Sister takes place in a world that exists between two encroaching sheets of ice. […]

Red Sister? Like a baby Red Sonja?

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  I’ll admit, even with the strong recommendations I was getting for this book, I did have some trepidation picking up Red Sister. The only other work of Mark Lawrence that I’ve read previously was Prince of Thorns, which I had a lot of difficulties getting into. The problem wasn’t so much with Lawrence’s prose, which I quite liked, or his world-building, but with his protagonist. While the story of an irredeemable psychopath does have the potential to be interesting, I found myself driven to apathy […]

“Finding Fantasy, Again”

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Short story is not my normal genre. But I’m trying to expand my readership, and I like fantasy, so I took the plunge and bought “Neverland’s Library.” The compilation was a neat idea, where 21 different fantasy authors were asked to write a short story that captured the pure fantasy that we know and experience as children.  Ultimately, it does its job. It was good; and I feel bad saying that because there were 4 stories in the collection that totally blew my socks off […]

“A dark time comes. My Time. If it offends you, stop me.”

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Back when I reviewed Prince of Thorns I had two complaints that kept my rating at a 3 instead of a 4. Those were: 1. World-Building. If my roommate hadn’t told me about the fact that this was supposed to be in our distant future and that we’re the builders I wouldn’t have had a clue. I love Mark Lawrence’s style, but much of this novel may well have been taking place in a setting bubble for as much as I grasped from the page. […]



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