Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Haymitch behind the Capitol’s narrative

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

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Well fuck. That was so much more devastating than I expected. It’s been forever since I read the original trilogy but I rewatched the movies recently – which means I likely missed some details that didn’t quite make it into the movies (especially around Maysilee’s family and Merrilee). At least, I could truly appreciate appearances of the younger versions of some of the characters from Catching Fire who appeared as mentors (and the amount of tragic backstory we learned about some of them was wrecking). […]

I read Snow’s story to get to Haymitch

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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This is one of those books I have had almost since it was released and yet just kept skipping over. Because of course I want more of The Hunger Games but also, fuck Snow. However, with the new novel focused on Haymitch, that I definitely want to read, I ended up finally deciding to read it – even if I considered skipping it all together.

A fun read, but possibly too light-hearted

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

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3.5 stars Twenty years before the events in Legends & Lattes, Viv is a young and relatively inexperienced mercenary, who gets badly injured fighting undead monsters while hunting for a powerful necromancer. Her mercenary band leave her in the quiet and mostly empty seaside town of Murk to heal up and recuperate. She worries that the group are going to leave her there, but thankfully, to take her mind off her fears, she encounters the local bookshop owner, who manages to persuade her (Viv has […]

Some Minds are Better Off Not Read

The Journey by Isobelle Carmody

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What a perfect pick for the ‘And Also…’ bingo  square. I started bingo this year with the ‘Part 1’  because I decided to re-read the Obernewtyn Chronicles, and it really helped me get out of a rut.  Now as part of my re-read, I’ve leant about a very short Obernewtyn prequel story available on Audible and now I guess I have a new ‘Part 1’ to review? The Journey is set before the Great White and it gives us a glimpse of  what the world was […]

Proof that prequels can absolutely work if you have the right story.

Concrete Rose (The Hate U Give, #0) by Angie Thomas

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To be quite honest with you, not only do I feel this is an excellent prequel (a rare beast in and of itself), I may actually have liked this one better than it’s predecessor, The Hate U Give. I will hold off on stating that for certain as I haven’t read that book since it was first published, so my memories of it aren’t the freshest. But this book was great! Prequels CAN be done, if you have an author that isn’t scrambling to justify […]

A boy, his canoe, and the beginning

The Book of Dust Vol. 1 : La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

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I quickly and deeply fell in love with Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy.  The ending of the third book has me in tears each time I read it.  However, when I heard that he was writing a prequel with Lyra “at the centre of the story”,  I rolled my eyes.  We already have three books where she is a main character.  How much could have happened to her before the start of The Golden Compass?  Then last year a fellow Cannonballer warmly reviewed it (apologies, […]



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