Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I still don’t get what a nome is…

The End of Oz (Dorothy Must Die book #4) by Danielle Paige

by Leave a Comment

This is the fourth and final installment of the Dorothy Must Die series. The first three books are dark in their own right, but this book feels a little more so. In book 4, we travel to Ev, land of the Nome King. I’m not familiar with the original Oz books, but if you are familiar with the difference between The Wizard of Oz movie and the sequel Return to Oz, that is the change of pace to which I’m referring. Remember the wheelers? Yeah, […]

Monkeys and unicorns, and monsters, oh my!

The Wicked Will Rise (Dorothy Must Die book #2) by Danielle Paige

by Leave a Comment

This is an example of where the second installment is better than the first. If you aren’t familiar with the Dorothy Must Die series of books, you can read my review of book 1 here. Basically, this is the second book in the Dorothy Must Die series, which tells the story of Amy Gumm, a teenager from Flat Hills Kansas, who finds herself whisked away to Oz. Amy discovers Dorothy is real, and has transformed Oz into a magical wasteland and ruled with an iron fist. […]

Big Finish!

The Toll: Arc of a Scythe Book 3 by Neal Shusterman

by Leave a Comment

This series is outstanding. This final book hit all the right notes and brought its several storylines together in a coherent, exciting and generally satisfying way. My review of Thunderhead indicated that there was a biblical tone to that book, and that tone is even more obvious in The Toll. But this is not a series about religion so much as about human nature, politics and belief. The Toll brings together four storylines. There is the story of Scythe Faraday and his search for the […]

It’s biblical!

Thunderhead: Arc of a Scythe Book 2 by Neal Shusterman

by Leave a Comment

Thunderhead, the second book in Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy, is a gripping, exciting novel that sets the stage for major conflict in book 3, which I can’t wait to start. Book one introduced the reader to Shusterman’s futuristic world in which all evils seem to have been eradicated: illness, disease, war, crime, even death have been brought under control. In this world, people who meet unfortunate accidents or try to kill themselves can be revived. One is only truly dead when a scythe […]

A nightmare at times, but ended like a dream.

City of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer

by Leave a Comment

I have to admit, this book gave me at least one nightmare. It wasn’t the worst I’d ever had, but it involved dead puppies, so it was pretty bad. It’s not that I found the book to be scary, per se, but the premise is a great one for a horror movie: For reasons unknown, if people have a nightmare, they will wake up and become their nightmare. This could mean a variety of things. Some people just disappear, so no one really knows what […]

Old Magic in Not Too Old Times Past

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix

by Leave a Comment

The Left Handed Booksellers of London sounds like an interesting premise, and thankfully one that gets pulled off reasonably well. One thing I will say right off is that it’s a lot more interesting if you know a little bit about British or Celtic folklore; I also think the 1980s setting doesn’t get enough attention and that’s a totally missed opportunity. In a lot of ways the story is pretty standard: country child comes to the big city to pursue an education and find the […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo