Coward is a promising dark fantasy novelette, written by Ayrton Silva. In such a short length, Silva manages to pack an incredible amount of emotional weight, in a story that combines a bit of coming of age with dark fantasy; telling us the story of Lina and Myria, and how their paths get crossed.

It's interesting how well developed both characters, Lina and Myria, are. Lina is opinionated, and I would even say brave; she seems to have a dormant talent for magic (or at least is hinted), and the attack of a monster and her posterior adventure only reinforces this idea of a strong character who feels a call for the adventure.
On the other hand, we have Myria, a beast slayer (as she says) whose real interests and aspirations are not revealed until half-way the novelette, showing how she is really appreciative of her family, having it as the number one priority; she's impulsive at some points, and that may bring her problems.

Some details of the world are hinted, such as there seems to be an illness that turns people into monsters, and how the beast hunting seems to be a quite frequent job (or at least, nobody is surprised by the apparition of both, the beast and Myria). We can also guess that the world is quite brutal and dark, especially with this plague of monsters.

Silva shows an interesting voice in this novelette, especially becoming great at describing battle scenes, without being shy of portraying the gory details; I would like to see a full-length novel, as there's much potential on this author.