Knitting, Sci-fi and other stuff...

5⭐️1🌶 I finished The Ties That Bind Us by Deidra Duncan at about 4:30 this morning.  It was amazing but if I'm honest, I feel scandalized by that ending.  I knew it was the first in a series; I think it's going to be a duology, so I figured it would end on a cliffhanger but holy Hannah, I was not expecting that.  The book is very heavy with fantasy lore, the magic system is also downright trippy.  It's essentially a portal fantasy.  David and Sean are raised in Viterra, the mortal realm, our realm.  They live in a tiny town in California.  But they are both important.  There is a prophesy, they are both components of this prophesy along with a couple other people.  It gets really complicated, really fast.  I will admit, this first bit of this book dragged a bit for me, but there was so much that needed to be established.  Sean and David get pulled into Luxoria separately but they both wind up there.  Sean is the pu...

  6★ 2 🌶     I received an ARC for Until I Die by Deidra Duncan.  This book blew me away.  I was absolutely hooked from about page two and it just kept getting better and better.  It was emotional, dark, gripping, and simply exquisite.  This is the book blurb: In the ruins of a nation, two enemies risk everything for a chance at justice… and each other. After the Fracture, nothing is safe—not love, not truth, and certainly not women. In the ashes of the fallen United States, the New American Order has seized power, silencing dissent and enslaving the vulnerable. To stop the spread of their evil, Sophia Reeves has given everything to the Defiance, a resistance force battling the NAO, but now, her general has another command: become a contact for an enemy officer-turned-spy. She understands the sacrifice this order requires. Association with a Blood Colonel is a death sentence—especially for a woman. He’s just a name at first. A whisper in the dark. But...