Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Lumberjane Standalone

Lumberjanes: THe Infernal Compass by Lilah Sturges, Polterink

by Leave a Comment

Bingo 16 (Illustrated) I really liked the first few installments of the Lumberjanes series, and then things started to get uneven, both in terms of art and the story. Then came Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass. This volume isn’t part of the main series exactly, it’s a stand-alone graphic novel, but it seems to go back to the original spirit in ways I really appreciated. A significant bit is dedicated to a single story that’s not an obvious episode (a good thing). The basic story focuses […]

Redemption for the Great Library

Smoke and Iron by Rachel Caine

by Leave a Comment

Bingo 12 (Youths!) I have to admit I’d really gotten close to giving up on The Great Library Series. The last volume was pretty bad; it had little action, and a lot of the characters started to look bad or empty. Thankfully, many of those issues were resolved in Smoke and Iron (Great Library #4). Smoke and Iron begins where Ash and Quill left off. Jess and his twin Brandon have switched places, and “Brendan” goes to the Great Library to hand over Morgan (beloved […]

No Brothers Left, and There’ll Be No More After Me

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

by Leave a Comment

I’m going to write this review as though it’s three separate reviews, because I can’t figure out how to review Books 2 and 3 in this series without completely spoiling Book 1. So if you don’t want to read spoilers, you can stop reading after Book 1. Book 1: Daughter of Smoke and Bone is the story of Karou, an art student living in Prague. She has a best friend, Zuzana, an annoying ex-boyfriend named Kaz, and a double life, wherein she works for a […]

No Nonsense Fairy Tales

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede

Searching for Dragons by Patricia Wrede

Calling on Dragons by Patricia Wrede

Talking to Dragons by Patricia Wrede

by 8 Comments

(Spoilers throughout) Dealing with Dragons has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, but this is the first time I’ve read the rest of the series. This series, known as the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, focus on a group of characters living in and around an enchanted forest (as you may have guessed). The first book, Dealing with Dragons, introduces Princess Cimorene. She’s a misfit as far as fairy tales are concerned: she’s too businesslike to care about romance, is more interested in […]

Rolling in with a late Cannonball on a hate read

by 5 Comments

So, about three weeks before starting Red Queen, I finished a book called Morning Star, the final book of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy. That series was about a class of humans called Reds who had been born into slavery, in a society that coded humans by color and where each color was assigned a particular role in Society, with Golds on top. The protagonist, Darrow, infiltrated the Golds with the aim of initiating a revolution that would hopefully lead to a more equal society. […]

The power of good-bye

by 2 Comments

CBR10Bingo: Brain Candy (BINGO!) Before this year, I wasn’t much of a YA reader. I saw myself as more of a Serious Reader, too serious for the frivolity of YA lit. And while my favorite books are still likely to be denser and heavier literary fiction and hard sci-fi, I’ve come to enjoy the balance that YA brings to my library with the quicker read and lighter tone even when the subject matter isn’t so light. Thus, the Brain Candy square was always going to […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo