Burning Rose by Hope Ann has released. Hopefully, providing I got the time right. It can be a tad confusing when converting American dates and times to Australian, we tend to be a little early, time travellers that we are. As part of her launch team I got an ARC to read and review. Hence this review.

Burning Rose consists of a prequel and three short stories. 

ROSE OF THE NIGHT: a Rose of the Oath prequel

ROSE OF THE OATH: a Beauty and the Beast retelling

SONG OF THE SWORD: a Rapunzel retelling

SHADOWS OF THE HERSWEALD: a Hansel and Gretel retelling

Behind every beast, there is a curse.

Behind every curse, there is a promise.

Behind every promise, there is a sacrifice.

Two hundred years before Beauty was born, blood and tears wove a legend of hope and sorrow. A timeless tale of a forbidden rose and the smooth voice of a masked stranger. A story of rebellion and despair and love. A story of a promise given and of a hope received. 

The story of the Oathkeeper.

With each novella based in an aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, these are fairy tale retellings as you have never heard them before. 

Behind the scenes of Burning Rose: Shadows of the Hersweald

"Writing Burning Rose took around two years, from the publication of the first novella to the final paperback. Of course, that wasn’t non-stop writing. I published each of the three novellas contained in the paperback separately as ebooks, then pulled them together for the first book of Legends of Light. 

My third novella, Shadows of the Hersweald, was probably the hardest. I knew I wanted to retell Hansel and Gretel, but originally the sister was going to be the main character. During my first try, I only got a chapter or two written. The second round I actually wrote the whole novella from Gorawen’s point of view. It didn’t work. Finally, I realized Haydn, Gorawen’s step- brother, had a much more interesting story not to mention a more dynamic history. So I switched main characters, changed the plot a little bit, rewrote it, and was very happy with the result.

Read Haydn’s full story in my new paperback collection, Burning Rose!"

Elissa, a villager from the northern mountains, attempts to save her brother and ends up trapped in a hidden valley with a strange host and a treacherous enemy.

Evrard, the Wingmaster of the Prince’s army, races against his own weakening powers to discover the location of his twin and save her from deadly mistbenders.

Haydn, a pardoned rebel from Tauscher’s army, confronts shadows of myth and former comrades in his struggle to keep his sister safe and find the stolen Stormestone.

My Review 

The prequel/story at the start was just amazing. Of all of them it is my favourite, and as Rose of the Oath followed straight on it was too. The first few pages were a little confusing as I got it into my head that 'I' was female and then relised 'I' was male..... but after that it was very cool. Actually very sad and heart wrenching. I'm a bit of a skeptical person and overall the stories were better than I expected, but saying that I didn't really know what to expect at all.

Rose of the Oath was good, the only thing was I somehow got confused without knowing it and thought that the MCs siblings were her children.... and her brother was her husband... I got a long way through before realising my mistake. The story was mysterious, and heartbreaking. Words wove together in a beautiful way with such a ring of truth. I loved how different it was from the normal fairy tale while still containing many of the elements.

Darkness can be so beautiful when such a great light shines forth from it.

Song of the sword was beautiful. The words were melodious, sparkling with colour and light. The hope and promise the story leaves you with is refreshing. There were some very minor plot twists, which I guessed. The plot, though simple, was interesting. There was no bad content and not even much violence, though there is a war going on and a combat takes place. 

Shadows of the Hersweald was really cool, and I didn't actually guess the full extent of the story twist until it was just about happening! I read this one rather fast too. So obviously it was a good one. The story was beautiful again and full of hope, and forgiveness that just made it so lovely to read. I liked the characters and the retelling factor. It was easy to forget that it was a Hansel and Gretel retelling. There were some major elements from the original, but I loved seeing how things were switched up. This story seemed a bit more violent than the others, but still at a very low level and not descriptive. There was a lot of emotional pain and tortured characters, which is makes them good. They felt very alive and full of history together, and individually. 

The books all follow a story line of the fantasy world they are set in with some characters and time periods overlapping. I would highly recommend this book as a good read with really deep themes that ring with truth and life.

Order Burning Rose now!

It is about time for another book review. Well that is what I am writing about today anyway. This e-book, Dreamlander by K.M. Weiland can be bought from K.M. Weliand's store and some other places for free. Probably because once you have had one taste of her writing you will want more. And I am saying this simply because her writing is excellent and I want everyone else to have the opportunity to read her amazing books. Dreamlander is the third book by K.M. Weiland that I have read, the others were just as good. But onto Dreamlander. 

What if it were possible to live two very different lives in two separate worlds? What if the dreams we awaken from are the fading memories of that second life? What if one day we woke up in the wrong world?

The characters are what makes this book so amazing. But even without all the cast of complicated interesting, endearing, funny, exasperating characters the book is still very well written. The concept is so cool too, I really liked how the dreams were not just dreams but an alternate reality. Even with the two worlds it did not get confusing but flowed well, and some questions I had at the beginning about how that world/dream traveling worked were answered later in the book without any info dumping but it showed the things I had questions about happening.

There is always so much going on in the book and I feel for the characters so much, they are such real characters and their struggles feel true and the choices they must make are so so very hard, I wanted the same things as them and believed with them what they believed and learnt with them that they were wrong. There is so much more to this story than meets the eye. There are good lessons to be learned though they are not all very obvious. 

Did I mention the characters are amazing? oh I did, right...

The book is epic and fast paced and the poor characters are never given a breather. All over it is amazingly written, and some sentences are just beautiful. I also liked how there were words in the book I did not recognize and know the exact meaning of, I enjoyed looking them up and seeing how well they fit. There is so much action but also a good amount of description to balance it off. 

AND THERE IS A MAP, sadly it is hard to look at when you have an e-book, but there is one!

There was quite a lot of violence and some of it, especially the battles are, lets say, well described, so I'd recommend it for older readers. Particularly when a child of another non-human race and a human are executed, and also when some people or again a person from another non-human race are seriously wounded in battle. There is also a tad of romance. But I just loved this book even though the last few chapters did have me in tears.

Have you read any books by K.M. Weiland?

If you are a writer, have you checked out her blog on which she posts writing related tips, regularly?