Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

What a fantastic ending to a phenomenal series!

Briar's Book by Tamora Pierce

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BINGO – Pandemic (I know this category is a catch-all, read-what-you-want category, but this book is also about a pandemic) SUMMARY – Oh boy, what a book to read during a pandemic. Briar Moss and his teacher Rosethorn head to the city in order to provide healing services to the sick there. Briar, a former street kid, can’t help but give special attention to all the homeless, poor children while there. While attending to the street kids in the Mire, the poorest part of the […]

Magic takes a backseat to marvelous worldbuilding

Daja's Book by Tamora Pierce

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BINGO – FREE (Checked out from my local library’s digital audiobook collection) (This is the start of my second BINGO sheet) Daja and her three friends find themselves outside of Winding Circle for the first time since they met. They and their teachers along with the Duke of Emelan travel north to Gold Ridge Valley to assist with a drought. Upon arriving, they learn that there hasn’t been a forest fire in the Valley in years due to the efforts of a mage named Firetamer. […]

Even the sophomore slump is a great read

Tris's Book by Tamora Pierce

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BINGO – Landscape (technically a seascape, but I think it counts) We pick up with the four powerful mage children Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar not long after the earthquake that struck Winding Circle in Sandry’s Book. The earthquake has damaged many of the Winding Circles defenses, and pirates threaten to invade the surrounding villages and Winding Circle itself to steal priceless magical tomes and artifacts, as well as take mages as slaves. The four children and their teachers must fight against the pirates in any […]

Don’t skip this series just because they books are children’s novels, please!

Sandry's Book by Tamora Pierce

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BINGO – Gateway – author Tamora Pierce and children’s novels Sandry is the sole survivor of a pox outbreak that killed her entire family; she carries with her the trauma of that loss and being locked in a dark room for months to be safe from marauders. Briar is a street boy with no home who has been caught stealing three times; his options are going to a temple or going to work hard labor at the docks or the mines. Daja is a trader […]

Go Kel Go Kel Go

Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce

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And with this, the final chapter (so far) in Kel’s story, we finally see our stoic fledging come into her own as Protector of the Small. I think this series maintains a tense, 4 star rating throughout, which is pretty impressive when I think of the number of trilogies/multi part books where I apathetically push through some middle bits to get to the Good Stuff. With these books, I found myself usually as intrigued by the middle bits as by the Big Stuff. In some […]

Closer to the end, the books get longer

Squire by Tamora Pierce

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I’ll say that I didn’t like Squire quite as much, even though my issues with it were largely mitigated by the opportunity to be around Raoul of Goldenlake. Similar to the Circle Opens series of books that followed the Circle of Magic books, Squire has us moving away from school and the rhythms of usual life. I suppose that’s why I would be a terrible Knight (although I’d squire the shit out of Sir Myles of Olau). Kel wants to go out and make a […]



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