Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“My mother used to say that once you’ve made a choice, you have to act as though it’s been made forever. But I don’t know if I believe that’s true. Our lives aren’t decided by one choice, but by a series of small decisions that build up to pivotal moments. You can always make a different choice at the next juncture.”

The Ivory Key (The Ivory Key Duology, #1) by Akshaya Raman

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This is a book I definitely wouldn’t have picked up on my own, but it came as the second bonus book in my January Illumicrate box, so I thought why the heck not. And it was pretty good! Not great, but good. The book follows four estranged royal siblings in the made-up country of Ashoka who set off on a quest to find a magical item that will save their country. One of them is the ruler, one of them is in prison for killing […]

Probably one of my top ten favorite Kings?

The Dark Half by Stephen King

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Okay, now that I’ve slept on this a couple of days, I think my final thoughts are that this is a nearly perfect horror novel (hence the 4.5 stars, rounded up). I say nearly because there were a couple of moments that really didn’t age well. But most of it still holds up unbelievably well. The more SK books I’ve read, the more my (obvious) theory—that he is often at his best when he’s writing about writers—holds true. The Dark Half was notably written after Uncle […]

The one where Holden gets to be a do-gooder on another planet.

Cibola Burn (The Expanse, #4) by James S.A. Corey

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Whoops, need to get this review out before I start my re-read of book five. This wasn’t my least favorite of these books the first time through, that for some reason was book two (even though I can objectively say that one is a better book, I just prefer this more inferior one for some reason). This is also most people’s least favorite of the series, and I can see why, I really can. This is actually the only one of these I read in […]

This guy wanted to be Tolkien so very badly.

The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, #1) by Guy Gavriel Kay

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I was but a wee little fetus when this book was published in 1984, so I should probably give it some leeway—it was 38 years ago, times have changed, this probably seemed great back in the day, the genre hadn’t evolved yet, blah blah blah—but I don’t want to, and I’m not going to. This book is the sort of stuff new writers churn out when they are getting their own voices under them, almost nothing but imitation of things the author loves with small […]

I found this Persian-inspired fantasy intriguing.

This Woven Kingdom (This Woven Kingdom, #1) by Tahereh Mafi

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I always try to go into books with an open mind and wanting to like them; it’s not fun for me to read books I don’t like. But even so, I haven’t had great luck with YA fantasy in the past so I mostly stopped reading it. For some reason, as a genre it’s particularly vulnerable to publishing trends and the resulting books often end up feeling the same as all the other books to me, even when having seemingly original sounding premises. Also, I’m […]

I unexpectedly fell in love with this one day.

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson

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Thanks to NetGalley and Recorded Books for the audio ARC. It hasn’t affected the content of my review. Firstly, I’m going to apologize in advance because this review might end up being the equivalent of one of those annoying YouTube comments where some genius pops in to be like “FIRST!” and sometimes they’re not even first but they’re so proud of themselves anyway. I hope I don’t descend to that level but I can’t promise anything because I had such a good time with this […]



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