Shadow Honor 1. The Trial

I found half-a-dozen typos in 26 chapters. From a technical point of view, that makes this story one of the best I've read on GA. Not many will care, but I do. I'm jealous.

The alternate world the author has created is fascinating. Three castes of inhabitants share it and must defend it from demons? Reborn after 800 years of imprisionment, their initial appearance serves to test the mettle of three young men and bring them together.

Styx, Kirra, and Max become a triumvirate at the end of the book, but dark forces are at work that will test the three. I look forward to reading the next installment in the series.

Cynus has created an interesting world and populated it with some great characters! Styx, a young theif from the Shade, is caught up in an ongoing battle. There are secrets and powers and magic and double-crosses enough to keep the reader guessing. I really enjoyed reading this. I especially enjoyed the tattoo magic!

Cynus has created an epic adventure in a fascinating alternate reality. The society we see has been separated into three classes who rarely interact with each other. We have the Everbright City where the immortal and mysterious King Neredos lives with the higher classes and his functionaries. It is a fabulous place in the clouds supported by great pillars from below. The city of Pentalus lies below and this is where the regular populous lives. Below Pentalus lies the Shade, where criminals and the outcasts of society live. It is ruled by its own king called the Underking. Blazed across this landscape we have magic, demons, fantastic creatures blended with action and romance.

Reading this story, I got the hint of rot behind the veneer of normalcy in the tiers of the normal societies above ground. The people of Pentalus remind me of peasants in Imperial Russia, who believed if the Father Czar knew of their travails, he would fix them, but he was far away in St. Petersburg. At the same time there was a saying, "God bless the Czar and keep him far away from us." You get the same sense of ambivalence here. In Pentalus, the Knights of the Firmament, who function as Neredos' army and law enforcement, are both respected and feared. In the caverns of the Shade, the scorn toward Neredos and his reign is open and intense. He is the one keeping them oppressed and in the shadows. It is a more uneasy balance between these classes than it first appears. 

When we first meet Styx, one of the main characters, he seems nothing more than a lowly thief, but we and he slowly learns there is much more there than we can see. A very motley crew of characters assemble in an unlikely alliance against a threat to all humanity. We have a thief, a bounty hunter, a healer, a warrior monk, a knight, and an Under Prince. It is a strange cocktail which provides a heady dose of mystery, suspense, action, and romantic entanglements. It is all an enjoyable read and will keep you going from one chapter to the next all the way to the end.