First: I LOVE this cover. It's perfect. (And I have a thing for tall, dark, and blue eyes.) Anyway... 
 So, the story starts us out with Kendras, an injured mercenary who has been sent away from the battle (so that the King doesn't have to pay the mercenaries for their service) and separated from his unit, the Scorpions. He runs across another man, a man with grey eyes named Steel, who sees an opportunity with Kendras and takes advantage of the poor situation to put Kendras in his debt. Steel doesn't exactly want a slave, but he does want Kendras to be indebted to him. Steel thinks that he can buy that indebtedness, but at the first opportunity, Kendras takes off to go look for his unit. (He did tell Steel he was going to. Steel just thought he could forbid it. That should've been his first clue.) 
 Through a flashback, we learn about the Scorpions and "the officer" who leads them, and who first found Kendras and thought him fit to join the unit. We learn that the group is what is left of a legion from an Empire long since deceased. The officers of the unit have kept a "memory" written of the members and political machinations of many decades (centuries?) and they use that information to determine which side they will align with (even if the price is lower). The comrades will live and die for each other, and to Kendras it is unthinkable not to go back and find out what happened to his comrades and the officer. 
 To shorten up the plot synopsis, the officer is a hostage and Kendras winds up embroiled in a political mess he never dreamed of while trying to rescue him. Even if they rescue the officer, it becomes clear before too long that the unit might not get the officer back, which troubles Kendras in a variety of ways. 
 I think that's enough of a recap for me to be able to say what I want to say about the story. 
 Kendras sort of bothered me because he seemed to waffle between weak and strong, or rather he was weak in some ways and strong in others (which a serious feat to accomplish so well in writing in the first place). Don't get me wrong: I like the character and love the story, but I was sort of left wondering if he really had what it takes in the end (view spoiler)[to be the new officer of the Scorpions once Adrastes, the officer who found Kendras, decided he needed to return to that which he'd run away from initially. I mean, let's face it, from the moment Kendras picks up the memory, you know that's what's coming at the end of this story (hide spoiler)]. I began wondering if Kendras would have been strong enough to carry on (view spoiler)[if Adrastes had been killed, or if Kendras had had to leave the man behind instead of being offered the position as head of his Guard (hide spoiler)], or would he have given up, as he did a couple of other times in the story. Is he really the right person? Because he sure doubts himself a hell of a lot. (Then again, we don't see inside the officer's head, so we don't know how his insecurities compare to Kendras's own, so there's no telling. We see the officer through the rose-colored glasses that Kendras wears.) 
 Aside from the feeling that Kendras seemed to be getting weaker in his sense of self as the story progressed because he was in WAY over his head politically and depended on the officer to guide them on the right path (and that kept me from feeling like Kendras belonged where he finally ended up), I thought the story was fantastic. The world was interesting and the main characters really had depth that I enjoyed. 
 Oh, and while I talk about Kendras being over his head politically, the story is not a lot of thick court intrigue. I don't mean to give that impression. It's more action. I mean to say that Kendras just doesn't think along those lines. (view spoiler)[You can see Adrastes grooming him for it. Kendras was the last to realize it, too. He wasn't kidding when he mused to himself that his men understood things before he himself did, and it might keep him humble. More power to him if that actually works for him and he can maintain leadership that way. (hide spoiler)] I thought that aspect of the story was well done because it didn't get bogged down in explanation of machinations. Because we're experiencing all this through the filter that is Kendras, it is much simplified. 
 In the end, I'm not sure I entirely bought into where Kendras ended up, but I didn't see better options either, and that was as happy as things were going to get. Is it truly HEA? Not in my opinion, because the whole situation is temporary. There's a lot of room for interpretation there. But it's not bittersweet either. I guess I'm happy with it because Kendras still needs some training to get where he needs to be to fill the shoes he found himself in, and I can live with that. 
 EDIT: After re-reading in Jan 2014, changing this from 4.5 to 5 stars. I'm looking forward to the forthcoming sequels to see how Kendras grows.