Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Russia I Never Knew

The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

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I believe there is a certain amount of fate and luck when it comes to reading. Picking up the right book at the right time is crucial for a mood reader and there have been many times when I found a book I wanted to read but just couldn’t slide into for whatever reason. Sometimes I’m able to set it aside and come back, sometimes they never get their time to shine. Luckily, this book and I finally clicked on the third attempt and I’m […]

There is beauty to be found in the melting snow and McDonalds wrappers

Little Foxes Took Up Matches by Katya Kazbek

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Mitya is not good at math, as you can see. But he’s good at imagination. Mitya is utterly convinced that no one has ever looked at two halves long enough, or attentively enough. Mitya has some stories for you. Much like Mitya himself, this novel contains multitudes. Katya Kazbek, who often works as a translator, holds the door open for the curious reader with snippets of fairy tales. Sometimes these tales are her takes on mythology, and sometimes they are the mythology of being a […]

Magic and War Collide

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

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I loved the first novel in this trilogy because for me it was the perfect mix of fairy tale magic with some real life politics mixed in.  By focusing on the story of a young girl in her village, the novel had a nice intimate setting even as it dealt with a figurative battle between good and evil, the old ways and the new.  The greater politics opened up the potential for a broader scale in the rest of the trilogy, and I think that […]

Meh, ok, I don’t care anymore. Mostly.

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

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This was the right ending to the story, but I started disliking Vasya in the previous story and she does not redeem herself much. She still refuses to consider how other people might be affected by her actions, but at least she spends most of her time in the folkloric realm and not the real world. Vasya’s “reveals” were a little cliche, as was what happens when she goes to free Morozko. Saw that coming two books ago. For the reveals she discovers about herself […]

In which I rant about the heroine

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

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I was about the day I finished The Girl in the Tower-years old when I realized two things: one, this series is YA darkish fantasy romance; and two, I don’t especially care for YA darkish fantasy romance. The problem is that there are a few characters I do want to see what happens to and the setting is interesting, with its mix of Russian folklore and history. I also do like the conflict from the first novel, not so much present here, between the old […]

Naomi Novik is two for two in my book (I still need to read Temeraire!!)

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I read most of this book in a day. It was so charming and lovely. In the vein of Uprooted, Spinning Silver is another loosely inspired retelling of a fairytale, this time Rumplestiltskin. I’m honestly not sure which book I liked better. It’s been a while since I read Uprooted, and this book is one of those that gets better in your head the longer you sit with it after you finish. Our Rumplestiltskin is actually one of our heroines, Miryem, the daughter of a moneylender (a historically […]



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