YMMV / Shadows over Meridian

• Author's Saving Throw: Chapter 11 provides Caleb with a Freudian Excuse for his below-mentioned Ron the Death Eater interpretation, after multiple readers expressed their dislike for him as a result of his characterization up to that point.
• Jerkass Woobie: Caleb and some of his rebels, like Vera Bexley, have sympathetic reasons for their hatred of Phobos and his loyalists, but their refusal to give up on past grudges and consider trying to fight the Shadowkhan is a likely suicide is leading them to risking their comrades' lives and infighting with their less extreme friends.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The Warden of Cavigor goes against Vathek and the other less extreme rebels' wishes by ordering his men to murder all the defenseless prisoners – who are not all even guilty of real wrongdoings – in order to prevent them from being freed and recruited by Frost's army that's about to breach Cavigor. When he's confronted by Vathek, he's self-assured Elyon would approve of him doing what's necessay to protect the kingdom from Phobos and his monsters.
  • Jax, one of the Warden's lieutenants who happily carries out his order to kill all the prisoners, snaps when Frost's army enters Cavigor through an underground tunnel, blames Vathek and Drake for not agreeing with the Warden's extreme measures and killing Phobos and Jade in the first place, and decides to kill them both before going down himself.
• Ron the Death Eater: Caleb's canon stubbornness and short temper are dialed up here, with him becoming virtually a Knight Templar who refuses to believe that Jade/Kage was innocent of working for Phobos and that it's his own fault she ended up with the Knights. As mentioned above, part of this is stress from everything he experienced in the war, and having his hopes of a happy future with Cornelia snatched away, as well as his belief that his mother is dead thanks to Phobos's forces giving him a borderline Irrational Hatred of anything that's remotely associated with the Prince.

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