Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Necromantically animated mice, revenant nannies, and toe bones as love tokens

Saint Death's Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney

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This book is incredibly indescribable. It’s macabre, joyful, and heartrending by turns and utterly unafraid to immerse the reader in an astonishingly detailed (and very queer) fantasy world, full of necromantically animated mice, revenant nannies, and toe bones as love tokens. Miscellaneous (Lanie) is the youngest of a long line of creatively named Stones in Liriat, a family with a colorful history and strong ties to the royals. Lanie is a necromancer, born with an allergy to violence. Given her parents’ jobs as royal executioner […]

“What a fool. What a destructive, romantic, ridiculous act. It was always a certain kind of ass who approached love like that”.

Harrow the Ninth: The Locked Tomb trilogy vol. 2 by Tamsyn Muir

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Spoiler free review of Harrow the Ninth. I started Harrow at the wrong time.  When I began in mid-February, I didn’t know my dog was about to have an emergency that would lead to his passing within a month.  I couldn’t focus and the book deserved more attention.  I put it down for a long time and read comfort fluff.  When I picked Harrow back up again I would read it off and on.  One night I was determined to finish it, stayed up way too […]

My poor confused nerves, both cerebral and sensing

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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From a review I saw: “70% of deliberate confusing insanity before reaching the big payoff in the final 100 pages of the book,” and has anything been more truth? I posted an update at 10% of the book, going “ah I get what’s going on,” or something similar, and as it were I was right. But even with that, even with that thread of thought keeping me grounded, I fell asleep pretty consistently for the first 55% of this book. On one hand, I was […]

“I think ‘bone frenzy’ might be a term open to coarse misinterpretation, personally.”

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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I started screaming within the first 60 pages. This was good screaming, mind you. Surprise-party-on-a-rollercoaster-with-Elvis-in-space screaming. Everything that I had learned and loved from Gideon the Ninth exploded in my face, leaving a cloud of gore and pure insanity- and you know what? I was into it. Big time. If you have yet to read Gideon (WHY?!) then DO NOT READ THIS WRITE UP. Do not read anything about Harrow, do not read Gideon‘s book jacket, and do not waste any more time! Go go go! Our Lady Harrowhawk is, well, […]

crystalclear picked a good one!

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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I got this cheeky book from crystalclear for the 2019 CBR Book Exchange. I had seen a few so-so reviews for it already, so I was a little worried going into it, but I enjoyed it so much! I can see why some folks didn’t wholeheartedly embrace it, but the potential pitfalls didn’t bother me at all. We are dropped into this world with little to no explanation. Gideon Nav, an orphan who was raised on a planet ruled by the Ninth House necromancers, is […]

A Closed Circle Mystery Meets Puzzle Box Meets Necromancy

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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I originally heard about this novel during a sci-fi book club discussion, and while the fact that it starts with someone packing up their dirty magazines sounded a bit odd to me, the number of best of lists and the positive chatter about it made me decide to check out the sci-fi novel about “lesbian necromancers.” The first part of the novel is a bit slow since it sets up the premise but it still leaves a lot of details to be discovered later on.  […]



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