What I’ve really enjoyed about Shadow Slave has been the diversity of worlds that the characters explore. In volume six of Shadow Slave, Sunny and his cohort challenge the Third Nightmare, located in the Tomb of Ariel, where the River of Time stretches from the distant future to the very beginning of time.
We are introduced to Ananke, a priestess of Weaver who was born in the Tomb of Ariel. She assists Sunny and Nephis with travelling to Grace, the last bastion of humanity in the Tomb of Ariel. Since Ananke was born inside the Tomb of Ariel, her age is determined by how far along the River of Time she is. As she travels upstream towards the future, she ages and so when she first meets Sunny and Nephis she is an elderly woman. As they travel further downstream towards the past, Ananke slowly gets younger until she is simply a child, but nevertheless she perseveres in navigating their boat through storms and other dangers. The author continues to break my heart when their boat is met by a time storm. Sunny and Nephis do everything in their power to survive the storm but Ananke perishes within Sunny’s arms with the boat having travelled too far downstream.
Having the River of Time be a literal river with currents that influence the passage of time is an idea that the author explores throughout this book. I enjoyed how we discovered that Jet and Effie were stuck on an island in a perpetual groundhog day time loop because the water beneath the floating island was swirling in a whirlpool. Having such a clear in-universe explanation for how a time loop could occur was fascinating.
We further learn that the River of Time itself flows in a continuous circle, meaning that the time within the Third Nightmare also functions as a time loop on an incredibly large scale. Shadow Slave Chapter 1487 - The Source is such a mind-blowing chapter. This entire time, Sunny has been travelling from the distant future into the distant past to find the Estuary, the source of the River of Time to conquer the Nightmare. However, since the River of Time is a circle, the distant future is closest to the distant past. When Sunny first entered the trial, he had left the Estuary. We also learn that Sunny has been looping through the Third Nightmare for an unknown number of times, and his past self, the Mad Prince, has schemed for his victory.
The next part of the book sees the cohort travel to Twilight where they hope to rescue Mordret and Kai, and hopefully find an army in Twilight to help them. Here, we encounter an area where the water is not moving and so time, in turn, is frozen. This is another really interesting way that time has been altered. In the fight that ensues in Twilight, Sunny battles the Dread Lord by using the enchantment on the Crown of Twilight, which sends him into an uncontrollable fury. I love some berserker action so Sunny’s battle is very entertaining to follow. On the other side of the battlefield, Nephis is a storm that cuts through the endless minions of Soul Stealer before finally destroying the entirety of Twilight within an explosion by igniting one of her soul cores. This was a very awesome battle and it has reaffirmed that I just love the fights in this series.