Imagine you’re a frail and fragile mortal in a world that’s dying. You have death following you since the day you were born, and try as it might, it just can’t keep up pace with you.

You’re orphaned and your only living relative, your sister, can’t quite out step death as you have.

Your world has been covered in a plague that sees its people withering right before your eyes, day after day. You, a very curious mouse, have an insatiable desire and hunger for knowledge. When you realise that the god – Vitarus ( a member of the White Pantheon) – who cursed your people has no intention of healing them no matter how much they sacrifice and beg, you take matters into your own hands.

In this dying world lives a dead-living beast, a son of Nyaxia(aka a vampire), enemy of the White Pantheon. It is to his door that you come knocking in desperate search of a cure.

Carissa Broadbent takes us on such a dread filled and intoxicating ride in Lilith and Vale’s story. Two characters who are complete foils of each other if any ever existed. For all the things Lilith isn’t, Vale is. These two unlikely and improbable beings strike a deal that could save the lives of the inhabitants of Adcova while, unbeknownst to them, saving each other in turn.

This story is riddled with loads of introspective themes. How far would you go to save other people’s lives while you too are at the brink of death? What is loneliness and when do you know when it’s enough? Do we really truly ever know the people we love? What is the purpose of knowledge, or science? What is right and what is wrong? Is belief/religion the be it and end all of navigating life? Is the forbidden always worth avoiding? Can answers and second chances truly come from the most unlikely places? Could death be the beginning of life?

Carissa stole my heart with The Serpent and the Wings of Night. With this novella, she has stamped her name on my shelf for all time. The prose, the discourse on how frail and fickle life can be and how love – in all its forms – could possibly be the only cure for living have rendered her unforgettable. Six Scorched Roses, to me, is a tale of bargains and risks with that underdog theme I love so much dozed with deep complex characters. It is a story of hidden power that is resurrected by loving someone/something you’ve been taught to hate. Oh, who we become when we rebel!!!

xoxo
Vuvu