I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Published by Evolved Publishing on November 4, 2019
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 219
Format: eBook
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Have you ever awoken from a vivid dream and wondered which side of waking was real?
Burt Higgins' retirement is not going well. His children have grown, and his wife has gone off to earn a late-life degree, leaving him alone in his sprawling suburban home. With too much time on his hands, he broods on the state of the world, obsessively following the worst of cable news and the Internet. Increasingly angry at the state of affairs, he nurtures a fantasy that a dark lord from another realm has foisted these problems on humankind. If only he could transport to that world, he'd confront the demon and use the magic found there to defeat the beast and end despair forever.
On a particularly bad news day, while housebound in the midst of a snowstorm, he retreats to his study to shut out the world and immerse himself in his books. When, on a whim, he lights a candle purchased in an obscure Prague curiosity shop, a magical guide appears and offers to take him on whatever quest he chooses. When he asks to become a hero in a fantasy realm, he discovers a more complex world than he expected, and battling evil with magic turns out to be far from his greatest challenge.
This book was an adventure of a man straddling two worlds… a real one and a fantasy one. In the fantasy world, he seeks to learn the source of all despair, and to save a woman and her children. However, the two worlds tend to blend together and what he does in one affects the other. The prose was brilliant the descriptions of things and places were very well done. However, I did have trouble at times understanding what was going on, what certain things meant or represented. I think my take away is that the fantasy world helped the narrator to gain appreciation for what he had in the real world, and to ultimately cherish it.