Reviewed by: Rhapsody -- Score: 10

Alassante is an amazing author that I saw growing more in every story she wrote. Even in her older stories you can see the talent and inventiveness in her writing. Paradox is the story that she is working on currently, but besides that she has another alternate universe in the works, which shows her creativity and knowledge of Tolkien’s world. Add romance to the mix as well and you will find yourself reading story after story from her. They can be quite addictive! Her characters feel so incredibly realistic to you and you feel that you can sympathise with them easily, I know that Alassante spends a big deal on character development and fleshes them out with care: this most certainly shows in her stories. As for canon and following Tolkien’s ideas, in Paradox Al gives us a Valinor in the 4th age, which feels so realistic to you, even though we never read so much about that. In this sense, Alassante does a good job at world building in her story, she simply fills in the gaps or shows us how that world must have looked like. Even the canon characters have this unique feel about them and I often enjoy those written accordingly to her take on them. Al’s story techniques, especially in [Paradox of the fourth age] is something I never came across before, not even in original works. She simply writes the paradox in her story and not in a forced manner, but in a natural way that you can feel the consequences of the past, which is slowly being changed in the present. I simply marvel at such writing technique and how she pulls that off: simply thumbs up!