I continue with my end of year promise to finish several started but unfinished books before beginning anything new. Next up: Devil Said Bang, Sandman Slim #4. Maybe it was the month or few between starting and picking it back up, but this one seemed to have a lot less action, and a lot more of Stark inside his own head or contemplating his situation or himself. I’m not complaining about this, it just seems a little different from the previous novels in the series. […]
The Emerald Circus is multi-faceted but disappoints
When Kindle asked me to rate this out of 5 stars, I had a moment’s pause. My confession: it took me over six months to make it through this collection of 17 short stories by Jane Yolen. Some I read in a single sitting, desperately flicking through the pages without hesitation. But unfortunately, most of the stories were a hard slog that I struggled to finish. This is my first (and likely, last) Jane Yolen novel. The stories of The Emerald Circus are typically slanted […]
fabricati diem, pvnc
First Watch is a buddy cop movie in a high fantasy setting, where our two comically mismatched partners (a wet-behind-the-ears human and a grizzled veteran dwarf) have to find a way to get along and solve an increasingly complicated mystery in an early-modern city riven by factionalism and peopled by elves, orcs, mages, humans and dwarves. The premise would have sold me on this book immediately… if it was 1988 and Guards! Guards! By Sir Terry Pratchett didn’t exist. Unfortunately for Dale Lucas, Pratchett’s […]
Falling in Love with the Spirit in the Sword
I have sung the praises of T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon many times here on Cannonball. Her books are autobuys for me, and I have never been disappointed with them. They are funny, clever, sensible fantasy romps and I love them to pieces. I love her world building and they way that so many of her novels are reactions to other stories. For example, in this book Kingfisher was annoyed by Elric (Michael Moorcock’s Elric? I haven’t read them, I’m not familar) and claimed the real victim […]