Lev Grossman’s The Magicians has many elements that I like in a novel – young protagonists, magic, magic schools, etc. In spite of all these things going for it, I had to force myself to finish it, probably won’t seek out the other two novels in the trilogy, and will end up writing more than I should about it here for CBR. I always write more when I dislike something. The Magicians is the story of Quentin Coldwater, a boring young Brooklyn teenager who suddenly […]
Hard, HARD pass
I wanted very much to like this book. I saw a review for it here on Cannonball and it seemed like exactly the kind of silly, light fluff that I was feeling. And it is? But there were just too many other problems with the book, from bad writing choices to flat characters to terrible plotting, that detracted from the book and I ended up hate reading the last half of it. Most damning was that I bounced hard off the main philosophy behind the […]
Like a Cozy Sweater
Unquiet Land is the fourth book in Sharon Shin’s Elemental Blessings books. The books are each self-contained stories, so you could probably start anywhere in the series. However, if you do that you are going to be spoiled for events in previous books as they books do come in chronological order and characters from previous books appear in each successive novel. So, I really enjoy this series. It’s not great, it’s not complicated, but it is like a warm sweater you can snuggle down in […]
The Cruel Beauty of the Faeries
Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in Cold Town was the first audiobook that ever held my attention. Even now, when I am trying to listen to them more, if I am somewhere I can sit, I grab my actual book/Kindle to read. The Coldest Girl in Cold Town was so good that after returning from a walk, I sat on my couch and kept listening for hours. As a result, I am kind of surprised that I haven’t read her entire back catalog but I […]