Knitting, Sci-fi and other stuff...

5⭐️ 1🌶 I finished Bright Burns the Flame by Angelina J. Steffort last evening.  This was another ARC.  This was written in the third person which sort of threw me.  Most of what I read is in 1st person.  Even with it being in 3rd person we as readers really only got the FMC, Lory's perspective.  The world building was methodical, detailed, epic but not overwhelming.  Lory lives in the slums on the street barely surviving.  She strategically picks marks from a local brothel to rob.  This time she chooses the wrong mark and after giving chase is caught.  She's taken to prison, brought before the triad and will be executed the next day.  Moments before she is beheaded she is given a choice, death or enrollment into a vicious military academy she only heard about the day before from a fellow prisoner.  She chooses Ashthorn Ward.  She's taken there by the most gorgeous man she's ever encountered the MMC Khayrivven Falcr...

5 ⭐️ 2🌶 I finished up my ARC of The Stars We Found by ES Brandon last evening.  It was very good.  I liked it even more than the first.  This book takes place about 7 years after the first one finishes.  The ship has made it to Proxima Centauri b and all the occupants are building a colony.  The environment is very harsh and there's crystalline creatures called razerbeaks that are trying to kill everyone.  The book had a little bit of a Jurassic Park feel to it. Spoilers ahead; Maya is grieving the loss of Julian's neural interface projection.  Cryosleep didn't erase or heal her experience, it just paused it.  She starts to rebuild his sensor ghost line by line on her down time.  She lives jacked into this neural interface and sets herself down a destructive path that doesn't affect just her.  She rebuilds fake Julian, that she calls Echo in this book,  by cyphoning power from the colony.  Eventually the power stea...

5 ⭐️ 2🌶 I finished The Stars We Carry by ES Brandon last evening.  I was awarded the ARC of the next book in the series so I figured I should probably read the first book, first.  This was very good.  I knew one of the plot twists from reading the book blurb of the second book.  There was a decent amount of signaling though so I think I may have figured out that part on my own.  However, there is a major plot twist in this I never saw coming and it was a whopper.  It was unlike anything else I've read, apart from say Star Trek.  So good and the ending had me sobbing.  Maya Sato is the only occupant awake on a ship bound for Proxima Centauri b.  She must keep the ship running during her two year stint while the 200 other occupants on the ship are in cryogenic storage.  Her only company is the ship's AI ARIA.  ARIA is hilarious and a wonderful side character.  I loved her snark and socially awkward interactions with ...

4.24 ⭐️ 1🌶 I just finished Of Fates and Ruin by Alaya Wells.  I received an advanced reader copy of this book from the author.  This book comes out 3/1/26. Mild spoilers ahead: Most of this book was a struggle, I didn't really really enjoy it til the last 7 to 10% of the book.  This book is long, too long, at 700 pages.  I think it could have been cut down by a couple hundred pages and it would have had better pacing and been more coherent.  There was so much exposition and so many repetitive details.  Isi is from Caldrith where magic is forbidden and if they find out you have magic abilities they kill you.  Don't worry, if you didn't catch that detail in the first couple chapters where it depicts the actual ceremony that kills a bunch of people; everytime Caldrith is mentioned again in the book that detail is repeated.   The body of Isi' sister is delivered to Caldrith by a gigantic bird so she assumes the rival kingdom of Sylla...

I read six books total in January.  I had four 5 star reads, a 4.5 star read and I read Stutter last month.   The Ever King was a re-read.  The Ever Queen was a very good follow up, but I enjoyed The Mist Thief the most out of the three.  The fourth book in the series, The Stolen Crown will be coming out in October of this year.   Moonborn was an ARC read.  I enjoyed it, but it wasn't quite a five star read for me.  It's lacking something but I can't put my finger on what exactly.  It's the first book in a series and I will be reading more when they come out. Daughter of the Pines was also an ARC and it was exceptional.  I enjoyed it so much.  I wasn't sure about it reading the blurb.  I don't usually like the urban/paranormal stuff as much as the full on fantasy but this was done so well.  I loved the FMC, she is snarky, independent and smart.  There is a mystical companion creature, a cu...

5 ⭐️ 1🌶 I just finished the eARC of Daughter of the Pines by Maria A. Eden.  It was amazing.  I absolutely enjoyed this.  This one is a bit hard to describe.  It's a historical fantasy urban legend retelling.  It takes place in a real world location called the Pine Barrens in the town of Galloway.  It's set prior to the American Revolution from what I gleaned from the description but its fantasy so I may be off on that.  The author decribes this as a retelling of the Jersey Devil story.  I have to admit I knew nothing really about the Jersey Devil nor this region, the Pine Barrens.  This story is rich and imaginative.  I was immersed in a hauntingly spectacular world.  The story follows a single family that is more or less the nobility of this town, the Ledes family.  The Pine Barrens is described as a place where the separation between realms is thin so demons and other fantastical creatures can move through these...