And Death Dreamt Us All [Kindle Edition]

Cheryl Anne Gardner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Rowan lives at the edge of reality. After witnessing a terrible childhood tragedy, her life has evolved into a shifting state of death and decay. Barely a night without restlessness, barely a breath without torment, she exists in the periphery, her mind merely a footfall away from the abyss. Within that abyss stirs a creature so vicious, so evil, and it lies in wait, staring back at her, waiting for her to fall.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 207 KB
• Publisher: Twisted Knickers Publications (January 6, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B006V5A72O
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #519,122 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Cheryl Anne Gardner is a writer of dark, often disturbing art-house literary novellas and abstract flash fiction. She is an advocate for independent film, music, and books, and when at all possible prefers to read and review out-of-the-mainstream indie published works, foreign translations, and a bit of philosophy. Her love of literature began at an early age with Bram Stoker's Dracula. Captivated by the Gothic and Dark Romantic stylings of Poe, Lovecraft, Kafka, and de Sade, her passion for the macabre manifests itself throughout her own work to this day. She lives with her husband and ferrets on the east coast USA, is an enthusiastic gardener, and her micro-flash can be found at Apocrypha and Abstractions Literary Journal where she is a contributing editor. Her flash fiction has been published at Dustbin, Dark Chaos, Carnage Conservatory, Pure Slush, Negative Suck, Danse Macabre, and at The Molotov Cocktail among others. When she isn't writing, she likes to chase marbles on a glass floor, eat lint, play with sharp objects, and make taxidermy dioramas with dead flies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can a madman know they're mad?, February 10, 2012

By 

Shannon L. Yarbrough "Shannon L. Yarbrough" (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: And Death Dreamt Us All (Paperback)

Having read almost all of Cheryl Anne Gardner's books, I always look forward to a new one and try to approach it with a clear mind and give it my full attention. This is because Mrs. Gardner's novellas are often philosophical, poetic, and downright challenging to read. Her prose are full of lyricism and imagery that you will find both stunning and disturbing. And Death Dreamt Us All is no different.

Our protagonist is Rowan, a crime scene photographer, who convinces herself that she is numb to what she captures through the lens. She attempts to remain undisturbed by the human horror and atrocities that she snaps photos of. However, Rowan is instead disturbed by her ability to see evil, envisioning the killers right there who have committed the brutality, seeing everything through their eyes.

In real life, Rowan is sleeping with her therapist, Killy. It's a love-hate relationship fed my liquor, pills, and intense sex. Those who easily blush might want to turn on the fan and pour themselves a glass of ice water before sitting down with this book.

Gardner makes no apologies for the way her characters treat each other, emotionally or physically. But she does have a sense of humor at times which cannot go unappreciated. There is one chapter where Rowan visits a strip club which had me laughing out loud. Her use of the most foul images and descriptions of not just a stripper's body, but of the clientele who frequent this place, right down to the gay Adonis bartender, read so vividly like I was right there in the middle of it all.

Never one to be wax-poetic, the author gives equal treatment to the beauty and the grotesque. At times reminiscent of Poe himself, visual sketches themselves would practically rob you of the sheer essence in art with words that Gardner has such a talent for. There is one scene where a raven actually lands on the hood of Rowan's car. Those well versed in the classics can easily see where Gardner draws her inspiration. Here talent is evident in quotes like this from her lead female character:

"While wallowing in the chaos of my life, I've come to know one true thing. I have seen the world. I have seen the demons: Formless. Timeless. Faith in absentia. I have seen absolute darkness. This is the only reality, the only truth I know. I feel as if I am just beginning to see a faint glimpse of the future - the real future. The end of days. I'm not getting it in any finite detail, but it is perceptible even in the dim light. I can see the action, the reaction, and the consequence, and I have become dreadfully aware of everything around me. I've always feared that someday I might be plagued by madness. It happens often enough in my profession, but I don't think this is madness. One cannot be self-aware and mad at the same time. Can a madman know they're mad?"

And some may think, like her characters, this author is mad. Her writing is definitely not for the faint of heart. Like Poe, like Shirley Jackson even, she celebrates and studies the human condition, whittling it down to the bare bones and blood drops that frighten us but remind us what we are all made of.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Psychological Depths & Psychic Mysteries-a "Don't Miss", January 28, 2012

By 

Mallory_Supernatural Aficionado (Montezuma, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: And Death Dreamt Us All (Kindle Edition)

Review of And Death Dreamt Us All by Cheryl Anne Gardner

Immediate thought: oh! Lyrical prose! Next: Supernatural! On both counts, I was delighted within the first paragraph, realizing: "way more than I expected!" Third consecutive thought: I want to read about 50 books by this author-right now!! If you love good fiction, GRAB THIS BOOK! If you love lyricism, poetic imagery, and superb writing, GRAB THIS BOOK! If you want an author to take you by the hand and gently explain life to you as you rock on a swing in the sun, this is not the book. But if you want a book whose mystery calls to you like a siren from the first paragraph, GRAB THIS BOOK!

As a civilian free-lance forensic photographer, Rowan forces herself almost daily to view some of the most horrific sights imaginable. Yet the crime scenes she captures on film, and attempts to explicate as she reasons them out for her friend, Inspector Reed, are still not the worst of it; for she is psychic, and considers herself somehow linked to the killers-so that she "sees" them, while they also "see" her. These are not just psychic mental visions, but actual hallucinations or visions, in which she is part of the interaction with the killers. Her part-time therapist, who is also a police-contracted psychiatrist, is her lover-although love is not the operative word in their encounters.

Rowan is such an internalized person; as first-person narration, we see events and circumstances, individuals and situations, only through her perspective. First-person point of view is a difficult one for a writer to pull off, yet Ms. Gardner does it admirably. My point here is just that because we see only through Rowan's eyes, we see all through the equivalent of a widow's veil worn to cover the face at a funeral: all is shadowed, often misty, and the only clarity comes with Rowan's frequent psychic visions: the murderer peeking through her eyes as she glances into a mirror, the same individual "manifesting" in her vehicle, shadows with consciousness and raven familiars, and so forth. Her perspective is very, very, negative; not just "the glass is always half empty," but more like "the glass is always empty except filled with shadow, dark and dreary," kind of as if she lives out a series of poems by Edgar Allan Poe. But for readers, this is not so much a depressing or repressing view: Rowan's mental/psychic life is very active, probably in most part because her emotional and psychological life is so repressed. I'm left with the impression that if she did not have this psychic attunement, she would have become both promiscuous and a "cutter"-a self-mutilator who inflicts personal damage in order that the sudden physical pain numbs and deadens the emotional pain, or sometimes the physical pain awakens the emotional deadness and actually soothes the cutter.

For me, Rowan's personality, character, and integrity overcame even my usual need to follow the Supernatural theme; I found myself intrigued to the maximum with Rowan, wanting to discover her more deeply and to learn why her character had formed as it did. I highly recommend this book, for inquisitive readers, for those who love imagery, and for all who enjoy psychological puzzles.

And Death Dreamt Us All