Knitting, Sci-fi and other stuff...

5⭐️ 2🌶 I was lucky enough to receive both the ALC and eARC of this book from the author via The Nerd Fam.  This book was amazing on so many levels.  The audio came at the perfect time.  I needed to be in the car quite a bit last Wednesday so I decided to start the audio of this even though I was about half way through Bright Burns the Flame at the time.  Well the duet narration of this book is out of this world.  Done by Amanda Leigh Cobb and Anthony Palmini.  They do different voices and accents.  Truth be told this was my first ever audio book and I think I chose one that put the bar extremely high.  I also "eye" read along in the later half of the book when things were getting very intense and I was having a hard time putting the book down.  In fact I finished reading the book today at work because I went to bed last night with only 5% left and I couldn't stop thinking about it.  I was not ready for the end of this book and truthfull...

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...