To Kill a Shadow

Fifty years ago the sun goddess Raina vanished, and the realm of Asidia has lived in permanent moonlight ever since. Each year the Calling conscripts boys into the Knights of the Eternal Star, the order that ventures into the Mist — the accursed land beyond the wall — looking for answers that never come.

When Kiara refuses to let her brother be taken, her defiance draws the attention of the Hand of Death, the Knights' commander, and she is drafted in his place. Years of quiet combat training have prepared her for the Mist better than anyone expects. They have not prepared her for Commander Jude Maddox, or for what the Knights already know about the shadow eating their world.

Katherine Quinn opens the Mistlands duology with a fantasy that leans hard on horror imagery and a slow-burning antagonism between soldier and commander.