Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Sparing another person is a tricky thing. It’s easy to think you’re succeeding when you’re failing spectacularly.”

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

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I like Holly Black’s writing. She she sets books in, basically, our real world with fantasy tweaks, and the stories are unapologetically confident in defense of myth and magic. The Darkest Part of the Forest is set in and around an ordinary town called Fairfold with a supernatural attraction: there is a faerie boy trapped and hibernating in an unbreakable glass coffin in the forest, symbolic of the town’s close proximity to the Fae people. Generations of residents have built lore around the boy and […]

Teen witches, good witches, bad witches, swamp monster witches, and more!

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This was a lovely little fairy tale that had just enough familiar pieces that I thought I knew where everything was going, but just enough originality that I was intrigued throughout and couldn’t put it down, even though I was pretty sure there was sad stuff coming. Plus, two truly excellent secondary characters (I want a Glerk and a Fyrian of my very own – this book should come with a swamp monster and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon). Once upon a time, there was a […]

The one without the series’ main character.

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I have liked this book against my will. I am a completionist, so I will be finishing this series, even though it is ALL OVER THE PLACE, all caps well deserved. But I put off reading this book for a long time because it seemed like SJM was taking me on a detour to a country I knew nothing about with characters I didn’t know, and Chowl (who I really grew to dislike over the course of the first four books), and I was resentful […]

People Fear What They Don’t Understand

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I read this book because of Ellesfena‘s descriptive, intriguing review. Seraphina takes place in a world where dragons live in the world with humans, and they can transform to look human for their comfort. In Goredd, a peace treaty has been negotiated with the dragons, which is about to celebrate a 40 year anniversary. The world is medieval in nature with the clothes, and court, and everyone is very religious (there are many Saints.), but it also seems less sexist. The Queen is a powerful woman […]

A fantastical coming of age tale in space

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When we decided to read A Wrinkle in Time for our #CannonBookClub, I was ecstatic! Perfect motivation to re-read it before the Ava Du’Vernay’s film release. Before its release, there seemed to be some negative buzz that disheartened me. I felt like I was defending the movie and the book to an extent before it hit the theaters! In the end, I managed to complete my re-read the morning before seeing the film. The refresh with the original text rekindled my childlike curiosity and sense of […]

Apparently Anarchists Can’t Fight Without Their Leader?

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Renegades, the first book of a superhero duology by Lunar Chronicles writer Marissa Meyer, starts out a bit rough, but it ends up becoming an enjoyable enough read that I’ll probably check out the second one whenever it comes out. The story is told from two perspectives: Nova, aka Nightmare, who can cause people to fall asleep with her touch, and Adrian, aka the Sentinel, scion of the reigning superheroes in a fictional city. The setting is our world at some point in thefuture, as […]



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