Twilight's Dawn, Anne Bishop

Another Anne Bishop, so you already know I liked it.

This is a collection of 4 short stories from the Black Jewels Series. This world is a flip flop of what you typically find for fantasy imagery. The Darkness is good - in fact the darker something is, the better. Gender roles are turned on their head. Men have to protect their virtue and reputation. Women rule and men bow to their wishes - for the most part - and are happily sexually liberated. Unfortunately, men are also more vulnerable to sexual predators. The characters are named Lucivar, Daemon, and Saeten, High Lord of Hell. They're also the good guys.

Bridge of Dreams, Anne Bishop

Anne Bishop is one of my favorite authors! I love her. I enjoy fantasy generally because of the worlds the fantasy genre can create. You can do things you just can't do when you have to adhere to, say...physics.

Bishop, for me, is one of the best. Yes, Tolkien et al are epic, I don't mean to  downplay the the greats, but Bishop creates such unique and inventive worlds. I just look forward to whatever she writes.

This is the third book in the Ephemera series. Ephemera is the name of the world. It has been broken by a war, and pieces are adrift. Say, you're in Spain, maybe even right on the border of France. But because the world is broken, you can't get to France. That's not true for every piece of Ephemera, but some are completely unconnected.

Ephemera is also... sentient, it has a personality. It's childlike and grants its peoples wishes, changing the world to fit those wishes. So, in this world, there are Landscapers and Bridges.