Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Strong Second Book in a Delightful Series

Paladin's Strength by T. Kingfisher

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CBR15Bingo: On the Road (a lot of this book takes place on the road) I continue my slow progress through this trilogy, having read the first one about a year ago and loved it. I then got the next two for either Christmas or my birthday last year and then they sat on my shelf waiting for the opportune moment to strike and whisk me away to a delightful fantasy-romance-mystery realm. Well, last week was the time and I zipped right through this one. Honestly, […]

“It’s really most remarkable how the human race is so seldom satisfied with what it’s got. Give a man the world and he’s still pining for the moon.”

Penmarric by Susan Howatch

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CBR15 Bingo – Relation”ships”: The many overlapping relationships between the Castallacks and Roslyns, both familial and romantic, drive much of the action of the book forward. When Mark Castallack takes gloomy Penmarric as his home and Janna Roslyn as his wife, he sets a massive family drama into motion. This is one of those sprawling family sagas in which there are a lot of beautiful, dramatic, maladjusted people. The fun of Penmarric though is that it’s also a transposition of the story of Henry II, Eleanor […]

From Serf to Empress

Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten

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CBR 15 Bingo – History: This is a historical novel which in following the rise of Catherine I recreates the world of late 17th century Russia. Born a serf, Marta manages through her cunning and luck to rise through society until she becomes the mistress and later wife of Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia. This is an insane story of stratospheric social mobility, and I am shocked I hadn’t heard of it beyond Alpsten’s books. There’s plenty of shadowy corners in Catherine’s biography in […]

Obscure Sex Fantasies Don’t Have to Make Sense

Reckless Heir by Jenika Snow

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Listen, is this book good? No. Not really. It’s got a weird obsession with a particularly Victorian idea of virginity, and only the loosest possible concept of the physical logistics of real human sex. It’s distracting. These people need, like, so much sex ed. And also probably to see several doctors. And then to hire somebody to come and clean ALL of their furniture. But is this book compelling? Yeah, actually. Like, I get it. Until somewhat recently, I really didn’t see the appeal of […]

Clueless Romance in a World Where Nice and Smart Can’t Co-Exist

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! v.8 by Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka

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Bingo 21: Sex So, when the main character of a fantasy romance game whose regained her memories of a past of life of being a modern mundane teen has absolutely no concept of sex at the age of 17, and everyone around her does, it makes for some mild cringe, but mostly entertaining hijinks. By this point in the manga, Katarina has managed to make her fiancée the Prince fall for her and express his desire (totally confounds her, an she pretends it didn’t happen), […]

Gay-Lesbian Solidarity

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

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CBR 15 Bingo – Queer Lives: Both the main characters in this book are queer, and one of the major plot-lines concerns itself with what must change in society for them to live their lives openly. Hundreds of years after the time of Arthur Pendragon, his descendent Arthur Delacey is betrothed to Gwen, the princess of England. If only she wasn’t more interested in the only female knight in the realm; if only he wasn’t more interested in her brother… I picked up this book because […]



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