Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Time loops that feel like fairyland.

The Last Hour at the End of the World (The Echo Archive, #1) by Melissa Caruso

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Thanks to NetGalley, Hachette Audio, and Orbit for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. Firstly, this is way more fantasy than it is sci-fi, for those who want the proper expectations. There are time loops and parallel universes, but they function on what feels like magic much more than science. And this is a book with a fantasy heart. Feeling blah right now, so here’s the (truncated) blurb: Kembral Thorne is spending a few hours away from her newborn . . […]

The Almost Perfect Last Book to Review for a Last Review of the Year

The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso

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The Last Hour Between Worlds might just be the perfect New Years read; it’s almost cozy, it’s fantasy, it’s got a touch of romance, it takes place during a New Year’s Eve party, the characters are pretty interesting, the world is interesting, and it’s mostly just a fun read. The Last Hour Between Worlds features a new mom at a New Year’s Eve party trying to relax her totally exhausted self, but she gets pulled into trouble that happens to fit her profession (but she’s […]

The “horrible little attack weasel” gets to save the day and it’s not the hero

The Ivory Tomb by Melissa Caruso

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The Ivory Tomb is slow to start but once it gets going it’s a good adventure and solution to the problems set up in the first two volumes of the Rooks and Ruin trilogy. The first half is everyone running around trying to figure out a way to stop the demons who have all been released by the end of the second volume; then a cameo that way both fun but also not nearly as nuanced as I kind of wish given who it was […]

Mid-trilogy shift from Snarky Magical Adventure to a Demon Endless Philosophy

Quicksilver Court by Melissa Caruso

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Quicksilver Court is an interesting middle installment; there’s a lot of set up for future things and not much is resolved. What’s interesting is that a key question from the first book is answered about halfway through; usually you have to wait until book 3 for that. What happens here though is that that reveal sets up both a good bit of probably character development (or at least soul searching) as well as the final major plot conflict. Ryx, Severin, and the rest of the […]

Something Old, Something New

The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso

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There are a lot of familiar things in The Obsidian Tower; it’s set in the same world as the author’s previous trilogy, but focuses on a completely different part of it; there’s a strong-willed female lead who is something of an outsider but has considerable power and ability from the start, but she’s got a much better sense of the world(s) around her than her counterpart in the previous series; there’s hints at various alliances, betrayals expected and not, possible friendship and romance, the possible […]

Avoiding the end but it’s not quite the end

The Unbound Empire by Melissa Caruso

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I have noticed a rather troublesome habit about myself that when I get to the conclusion of a series, I tend to put off reading it because I don’t really want things to end, but this is a problem because of the risk of spoilers. I blasted through books one and two of the rather generically named Swords and Fire series maybe a year ago, and finally not too long ago, I finally have gotten to book three, The Unbound Empire. I knew a little […]



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