Amari Kato is the last of her kind, running on borrowed time and the promise of revenge. Taliya Camry is a street thief and hired blade, raised in the cityâs underbelly and loyal only to herself. When Amari makes a mistake too big to ignore, the second is sent to eliminate the problem.
But things donât go as planned. A bigger threat looms, one that neither can look away from, and soon, taking sides isnât so simple. The city is on the verge of something dangerous, and whether they like it or not, they are caught in the middle.
Amari Kato is the last of her kind, running on borrowed time and the promise of revenge. Taliya Camry is a street thief and hired blade, raised in the cityâs underbelly and loyal only to herself. When Amari makes a mistake too big to ignore, the second is sent to eliminate the problem.
But things donât go as planned. A bigger threat looms, one that neither can look away from, and soon, taking sides isnât so simple. The city is on the verge of something dangerous, and whether they like it or not, they are caught in the middle.
Amari Kato turns a corner at neck-breaking speed and nearly runs straight into a pole before slipping around it. She weaves through pedestrians and jumps over or slides below any obstacles in her way. Her small size helps her in this instance, letting the girl escape her pursuers more quickly than it would be otherwise. Her ram horns scrape the underside of a table as she drops down and past it.
The backpack, tightly strapped on, weighs heavily on her in more ways than one, especially as she notices the heads of people she passes turning in her direction. Are the guards still chasing her? How close?
Her sense of hearing has been terrible now for years, but it still makes Amariâs heart race in moments like this.
Thankfully, she has more than the standard five senses to rely on.
An instinctive warning is all she gets before she has to duck a flying net. It hits the wall where she had just been, and she feels the cement reverberating with the impact. Even she hears the screams of alarmed bystanders that follow, muffled as it is.
The danger is mounting, and Amari keeps running through the streets of Castorâs Merchant District as she follows the whims of her instincts. Theyâve kept her out of the guardâs claws so far. She has to slide beneath a cart as someone lunges from an alleyway.
How long can Amari keep this up? Relying so heavily on magic only works for so long before thereâs a steep price to pay. The girl already feels pain sprouting in her mind, a full-blown migraine all but imminent.
An urge to move in a specific direction comes over her so strongly it nearly throws Amari off her feet. Instead of questioning the magically spurred idea, she ducks into the alleyway it leads her down.
Only to see a brick wall a dozen meters down. Too high for her to climb with the time she has, and she would have stopped running if her feet werenât practically being moved on their own. She closes her eyes as she approaches the wall at full speedâ
âand then trips over a tree root, falling onto her face into a soft grass field.
Amari is the last of her kind and she is running critically low on borrowed time. When she commits a grave error, Amari finds herself in the crosshairs of skilled assassin, Taliya, who knows the streets as well as she does. As Amari fights for her life, the two unravel a looming threat that could reduce the magical city of Castor to ashes, proving that hiding is not an option.
From the very beginning, readers are immersed into a world brimming with errant magic, where Rooftop Kings run the streets. B. R. Michaels masterfully crafts a vibrant landscape, contrasting the dilapidated streets of the impoverished with the magically maintained suburbs of the elite. Amari guides us through a colorful realm filled with intrigue. One particularly striking moment occurs when she races past a magically volatile street, feeling the magnetic pull of the magic itself.
â[Magic] clings to the streets like an errant spark, unpredictable and often as dangerous as it is useful.â
The world-building is, for me, the most captivating aspect of the story. The most memorable scene is when Amari describes her pieced-together home and her ghastly roommate. This seemingly simple moment is so visually appealing that I found myself wishing Amari would return there just for the pleasure of revisiting it.
In this novella, we encounter a fascinating array of characters that rule, live, and thrive in this world - âbound magicals,â âRooftop Kings,â and more. I appreciated how the story reveals details about Amari gradually, rather than overwhelming us with information upfront. Although I typically prefer a more direct approach, this technique worked well in the narrativeâs favor â especially since some of the attributes are so critical to the story. My only minor complaint is the ambiguity surrounding the ages of the main characters. While this is a personal preference, I like to grasp the relative age range, especially when characters are young.
Overall, I recommend âShatterpoint: An Amari Kato Novellaâ to anyone seeking an adventurous escape into a richly diverse world.