A.E. Bennett

This was downloaded from Voracious Readers. This has all the ingredients of fantasy ….golden eyed magicians, armoured knights, vicious overlords all trapped behind the border. It also a dystopian post apocalyptic story as the border is in the US a long while after an unspecified disaster. The main character Leora is feisty, capable, loyal …and also a witch, mage whatever…able to stuff…the story brings together four travellers all fleeing death, mayhem and disaster. They are very unlike: an outcast, a thief, a princess and a disgraced knight.

The story is full of incident both external to the group and within it. The magic is not too overwhelming…we are still aware of human frailty even for those with power. The characters are well drawn and believable ..not too many who are just evil.

If this is the beginning I definitely want to read more… (mais)

BECAUSE YOU ASKED, a standalone FF romance novella which is part of the Serrulata Saga, is a lovely character-driven story that explores two middle aged women, Lady Isolda Upshur and Lady Eustace Durham, who find love with each other after the deaths of their husbands. One had a happy marriage and only recently lost her husband to a terrible fever. The other has never known love. This novel is definitely a slow burn because of Isolda’s past and that was okay with me because there was so much other good stuff going on, including and especially Eustace’s work to try to help vulnerable women in her city gain access to reproductive rights care and the more time I spent with both Eustace and Isolda, the more I wanted to read about them. They were both well suited and also genuinely good people and the story was empowering to read with such great messages! 5/5 stars.… (mais)

HERE AND THERE by author A.E. Bennett was the perfect horror short story to get my spooky season started!

An unnamed protagonist suffers both in a world of insomnia and nightmares, where they are plagued with horrific scenes of past atrocities and well… nightmares come to life. Then in the real world, people are nightmarish in different ways, and they have to deal with rejection from their family who don’t accept them for who they are, and harassment in the workplace. Where can you turn when nowhere feels safe and you can’t get any sleep? This was thought provoking and had a cool twist at the end! 5/5 stars.… (mais)