A prophesied destiny brings a girl in conflict with the gods themselves.

The sequel to the spellbinding page-turner of a fantasy, Threads That Bind, this book takes the reader deeper into the fantasy world build out of the bones of mythology. After the havoc wreaked in the last book, the survivors have scattered.

In this world, every person has a life thread plus threads connecting them to the things and people they love the most. Threads can connect you to your fated match or simply to your favorite coffee shop. Io is a cutter, who can cut those threads, while her sisters Thais is a weaver and Ava can elongate and fray threads.

The sisters find themselves on opposite ends of the conflict, as Thais and Ava disappear into the night after their failure in the last book. Io and Bianca, the former mob queen, are on the run, tracing a golden thread that can only belong to a god. Edei and Nico are following them with one of the surviving muses. This book is at its best once fate brings all the characters back together.

I loved watching Edei and Io struggle with what it means that they are connected by a fate thread. Each one wonders what it means to be fated instead of choosing each other with free will, and what would happen if the thread were severed. Would they still choose each other?

This book delved deeper into the world, with more characters with new powers adding twists. The floating slums over a sewer was interesting, as were some of the terrible weather phenomenon's haunting this world. The deeper Io gets in tracing who engineered the slaughter, the more intriguing the world becomes. This conspiracy has layers and double-crossings galore, and the ending is both breathtaking and unexpected.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ( )

It’s been five weeks since Io left Alante to follow the golden thread, and she’s no closer to finding the god on the other end. She spends her days in constant, grueling travel and her nights worrying over the fate-thread she shares with Edei—which seems to be fraying. Making matters worse, she and Bianca soon realize that their only lead has shaken them off, snapped the golden thread, and disappeared. But not before Io gathers some crucial clues. Her investigation leads her to a new mystery, a rash of sibling disappearances across the Wastelands that seems to be connected to the murders in Alante. And all signs point to Nanzy, the golden city, as the center of the whole conspiracy.
As Io and Bianca make their way to Nanzy, they make powerful enemies, find allies new and old, and uncover a horrifying plot that traces back centuries. The more Io learns, the more she begins to suspect that the future of the world may truly rest on her shoulders. But she will have to determine how much of the future is her choice—and how much is simply her fate.