Title: Herald of Shadows

Author: PhoenixBMeadows

Genre: Fantasy

Quick Summary: The shade brings a plethora of body horror.

Thoughts: 

Like with most books, a round of edits would take this book from "this seems like a decent concept" to something that could be a phenomenal read. But that's... if we got a real sense of what the book was about.

By no means do I expect we as readers know every single thing about the book right off the bat. I'm a fan of being able to piece things together. However, there are six chapters and, honestly, not TOO much happens? One character overhears a council meeting and learns he's expected to be a sacrificial lamb, runs away. Another character/s are moving down a path and attacked by shadow creatures. And we understand some sort of world-destroying decay is spreading, but that's about it. I honestly expected a bit more content than what I was given.

And of course, the six chapters are all that's available thus far, but I really wish I had learned a bit more by now about this world and what the plot is about. Perhaps that is just me. 

There are a couple of things that made me raise my brows. Fantasy novels are not short of many "outlandish" concepts that readers are expected to just kinda shrug away. And transport on fantasy creatures is one such thing. However, while I found gryphon flight interesting, I also found it a bit... I don't want to say convoluted, but it seems to me that there's a much better way to fly. But that's just me.

Related to editing, I noticed the author had a propensity for over-description and recycling the same concepts and words multiple times in one scene. This is certainly something that can be cleaned up in post - I lost count how many times we used "cold" or "warm" to describe something, especially in relation to something else. The first chapter is a good example of this, where the author clearly wanted to show the difference between one character's "cooler" temperment versus the other sort of "firecracker" character. And of course, I'm a fan of "foil characters" and comparing and contrasting, but the reader gets the point after a certain point, and the author went way further than they needed to.

I really want to know more about the magic system. One character swallows lead/something lead adjacent to access magic [walking through walls] and it's oft talked about how mages are dead or dying. If the two are related, it isn't hard to see why. It's an ingenious take on magic use and systems and we really don't see a lot of it. I want to know more!

In its current state, I don't think this is something I would keep reading, but I am intrigued and if the author shapes it up with some edits, I would love to see it again.