Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“He looked as he always did: slightly underfed, terminally scholastic, and two weeks overdue for a haircut.” CBRBINGO – Pride

Evocation (The Summoner's Circle, #1) by S.T. Gibson

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Urban fantasy but not? The center of the plot here is actually the developing relationship between its three main characters: David, Moira, and Rhys. Really, the demon possession is just background. But it’s good background! Here’s the set-up: David and Rhys used to date in college. David comes from a family steeped in magic and has been groomed since the age of five to become the head of the secret society his family started, and his dad was abusive. David is an alcoholic and it […]

A Winter’s Tale from the Rivers of London

Winter's Gift by Ben Aaronovitch

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Winter’s Gift is the most recent novella in the ongoing River’s of London series by Ben Aaronovitch and the subject actually came as a surprise to me when I got the book. When you have a character in the series called Tobias Winter (a German police officer) then an assumption that this is one of his books seemed logical, instead this is set in the US and features FBI agent Kimberley Reynolds. Rewinding for a Rivers of London recap: magic is real, gods exist and […]

A strange little fantasy. I expected nothing less from this author.

City of Last Chances (The Tyrant Philosophers, #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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This is a tough book to sink your teeth into. It’s slow to start, and slow to catch your emotions (if it ever catches them all), but still, for the right reader this book could work very well. I always appreciate a well-executed attempt at a unique structure, and we have that here in abundance. Up front, though, the reason this is getting 3.5 stars is that though there were bits that caught my imagination in the first half of the book, it didn’t really […]

The meter of the poem fired his blood until he was a molten core. The hammer’s song was a charm for living, a way to keep singing himself into existence.

The Winter Knight by Jes Battis

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The word eôel meant home turf. People trust home. Through years of investigation, her grandmother had learned that what people told you depended on where you talked to them. Lies for every space, but occasionally a truth snuck its way in.” ― Jes Battis, The Winter Knight When she had interviewed him, she’d traced a discreet rune on his phone case. It was sketchy magic, but it should have given her access to the phone’s GPS. The problem was that it wasn’t working. His location […]

Rivers of London

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

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I’m so glad I finally took the plunge (into the river wink wink nudge nudge) and started this series! Peter Grant is a police officer at the beginning of his career in London, a career that seems destined more for the never-ending paperwork division than the exciting chasing down dastardly criminals type. One night he receives some crucial information about a very strange murder from a witness who happens to be a ghost. This brings Peter to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale, the […]

If books could kill. (I do not regret this pun.)

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

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Ink Blood Sister Scribe is a contemporary fantasy novel that treads some well-worn tropes and plot structures that make it rather predictable, but because of the execution, still very enjoyable. If you haven’t spent your life reading fantasy books, you probably won’t think this was as predictable as I did, so in that way it might be a good intro to fantasy book, particularly since it’s set in our world. But there really is enough here to interest regular fantasy readers as well (unless you’re […]



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