Reading, Not Crafting

    I started and finished Broken by Daylight by Elizabeth Helen this week.  This is book four in the Beast of the Briar series.  It's a fantasy why choose; very loosely based on Beauty and the Beast.  It's also a multi POV which makes it interesting.  This series is probably one of the more spicy that I've read.  It can get fairly repetitive in places but the authors do a pretty good job of giving each prince a unique personality.  There are quite a bit of in world politics and dynamics at play.  In the previous books quite a bit of action happened in the last 50 to 100 pages and then ended on a cliffhanger.  This one was no different.  I finished the book last evening an am still rolling over all the implications.  I'm truly worried about several of these characters.  I'm really hoping the authors don't kill off a couple of these main characters.

I read this book while I waited for The Garnet Daughter by Katrina Calandra to be released.  I saw on her Instagram that she was still looking for ARC readers so I signed up expecting nothing.  I checked my email last evening and discovered I had been chosen.  I'm stoked, I've never gotten an ARC before.  I only had 30 pages left in Broken by Daylight so I quickly finished that one and started The Garnet Daughter immediately.  I'm about 15% into it.  This book is following Calliape and August and it's from Calliape's POV.  It starts out with a flashback to events from the first book.  It briefly explains Calliape asking August to take her back to Cosima with them, then it catches back up and starts at the end of book two with the waking of the old god, Thea falling to her death and then Calliape folding space with August.  <SPOILER AHEAD>

She folds herself and August back to Frith.  Yes, an entire planet away.  She and August travel back to her village, meet with the elders and are given permission to send a message through the beacon to get picked up by a Viathan ship.  Well once they get to the beacon they find it has been damaged severely by a lighting storm.  So the portion I've read thus far is the two of them living in Calliape and Selene's house and working on fixing the beacon.  I expect this will take longer than either of them are anticipating.  So far the book is engaging.  It feels different reading from Calliape's perspective, but of course that's the point.  A couple characters from the first book are here on Frith, so there is familiarity.  There seems to be more mystery and more gatekeeping surrounding what happened at the temple.  Calliape could understand what the old god said when it saw Ferren.  One of the elders on Frith seems to see this is significant but of course is keeping information from Calliape.  I'm really excited to keep reading this.  I've enjoyed both August and Calliape from the beginning so I'm happy they're getting their own story.  I ordered the first and second book from Amazon and they arrived today.  I've enjoyed these books so much I wanted to have my own hard copies.  

    The weather has turned colder here.  My husband harvested all the watermelons and the two spaghetti squash from the garden.  We were expected to get a killing frost Saturday overnight so Friday I picked all the tomatoes that were anywhere near ripe and the beans that I'd ignored for a whole week.  We did get that frost so garden season is over for me this year.

    I got notified our pigs were ready late Tuesday evening so we picked up the meat Wednesday.  It all fit in our middle freezer.  We've tried out the sausage, bacon and Canadian bacon already.  It's all been very good.  Our new freezer finally arrived and we picked it up  Friday.  We're still debating on where to put it.  I was able to attend a work conference in Syracuse on Friday.  I got to connect with quite a few former collogues and listened to several informative speakers.  I'm hoping to be able to attend the annual conference in November, but getting away is always difficult in a small lab.  I think that's it for me this week.  I really need to meal prep some more lunches but I want to read more of The Garnet Daughter.  Part of getting an ARC is reading it and reviewing it rather quickly so I guess I'm obligated to ignore all my other household duties right now...... oh no, what shall I ever do.  Until later, happy crafting.

-Q