Having read Julie Anne Long’s eleven book Regency romance Pennyroyal Green series, I am not really in a position to judge how this novel reads as a standalone, but as a long-awaited end to the series, I have but two syllables: BRAVO! Somehow The Legend of Lyon Redmond manages to be both epic in the way required of its buildup and personal in its sweet and believable love story. What’s more, Long successfully tied up every single loose end I could think of from the […]
This is how it will be when you drown.
Dead in the Water by Nancy Holder is about a ghost ship and the horror that befalls shipwreck survivors who board her. The setup isn’t new but what elevates Dead in the Water is the pitch black execution. Dead in the Water is a harrowing story about trading your soul for what you desire most. It’s a riff on Faust but these characters don’t know they are even making a deal with the devil. It’s about obsession, desire, pain of loss, and being unable to […]
All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.
Purely by coincidence, I read Solar Storms during the week that included Columbus Day — a holiday that made me uncomfortable for some time and now makes me sick. Solar Storms is set amongst Native Americans living in northern Minnesota in 1972-73 as their lands are being overtaken for development. Author Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw writer, uses her gifts for language and character development to tell a spellbinding story of connectivity, brokenness, environmentalism, and spirituality with a focus on four incredibly strong and thoughtful women […]
“I’d made the vampire cry. Great. I felt like a real superhero. Harry Dresden, breaker of monsters’ hearts.” **
One of the things I like most about doing the Cannonball every year is getting recommendations from other ‘ballers for books I might never have heard of otherwise. Honestly, I can’t believe I had never heard of Jim Butcher or Harry Dresden before, and for that I am sorry. And I also can’t believe that its taken me this long to get around to the first of the series, Storm Front. I’m going to admit something to you about Storm Front. I had taken it […]