Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A really good anthology! Emmalita and andtheIToldYouSos were not kidding.

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Eds. Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington

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This is one of the best anthologies I’ve ever read. If you like Arthuriana, this is a must read. If you like anthologies just for the variety, this collection is a winner. I don’t think I will ever give an anthology five stars, because I’ve yet to find one where I like every story, but this one comes pretty close. There were only two stories in here I didn’t like. What makes Sword Stone Table so great is that the authors chosen really had their creativity flowing. […]

the great 2022 Bingo Catch-Up!

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark

From Hollywood, With Love by Scott Meslow

The Companion by E.E. Ottoman

My Mother, She Killed Me, My Father, He Ate Me by Kate Bernheimer

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It wouldn’t be CBR Bingo without me frantically catching up on everything I read but was too distracted to write about, now would it? Square: Cold – Fool Moon – DNF This is it, folks- my first DNF in YEARS! I just couldn’t do it. I started this book way back in JANUARY, and despite multiple formats and multiple tries, I just can’t do it. I know there’s a mythical “it gets better” carrot hanging out past the fourth entry, but I just don’t have […]

“I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me.”

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

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I think it was probably a little unfair of me to go into this one with super high expectations as I almost did, thanks to the Circe comparisons, so luckily I curbed those as best I could before I actually started the book. That turned out to be a very good idea. I think going in with no expectations is probably the best way to experience this one. I was also almost completely unfamiliar with the Ramayana before reading this book, and that held until about […]

“The greater the desire, the greater the suffering, and now she desired greatness itself.”

She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1) by Shelley Parker-Chan

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I was a weeny and put off writing a review of this because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say about it, and now it’s been a month since I finished. I feel like I’ve told you this story before. Coincidentally, this is a retelling! I didn’t pay too much attention to the specific plot of this one before reading it, other than the keywords “historical” and “Mulan” and “retelling”. This is why you shouldn’t pay attention to other people sometimes. It is historical, […]

“Suddenly revenge is so close he can actually taste it. It tastes like steak, rare.”

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

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I actually really enjoyed this retelling of The Tempest*, particularly since I had just re-read the play as a refresher, so it was a lot easier to catch all the references and parallels. This is actually only my third Margaret Atwood book, which feels weird, since she is everywhere, and also because I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale three times. About time I branched out! (I’m sorry, Malin, I still haven’t read The Blind Assassin, which is a book I know you love.) *Thanks to andtheIToldYouSos […]

Into the Sleeping Beauty-Verse.

A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables, #1) by Alix E. Harrow

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This was so fun! I didn’t actually know what this book was really about going in. I knew it was a Sleeping Beauty retelling, and that Alix E. Harrow wrote it, and that was all I needed. So the actual premise was surprising and refreshing! There’s definitely a reason the title for this series of novellas is ‘Fractured Fables.’ Harrow notes in her afterword, she pitched this book to her editor as “I want to Spider-Verse some fairy-tales.” I mean, who can’t get behind that? […]



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