The issue isn't actually a syntax error, the Hive ParseException is just caused by a reserved keyword in Hive (in this case, end).
The solution: use backticks around the offending column name:
CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE moveProjects (cid string, `end` string, category string)
STORED BY 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.dynamodb.DynamoDBStorageHandler'
TBLPROPERTIES ("dynamodb.table.name" = "Projects",
"dynamodb.column.mapping" = "cid:cid,end:end,category:category");
With the added backticks around end, the query works as expected.
IF, HAVING, WHERE, SELECT, UNIQUEJOIN, JOIN, ON, TRANSFORM, MAP, REDUCE, TABLESAMPLE, CAST, FUNCTION, EXTENDED, CASE, WHEN, THEN, ELSE, END, DATABASE, CROSS
Source: This Hive ticket from the Facebook Phabricator tracker