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I have a love-hate relationship with this book. It took me a long time to get through it, compared to other books I've read (partially because of an out of state move). "Dark Shores" is a dense read. There's so much going on and the world we've been dropped into takes some getting used to. It's not a graceful drop. It feels like Jensen expected us to have some prior knowledge of the world, since many of the references didn't make sense at first. Context clues were enough in some cases, but I had to utilize the glossary in the back of the book often throughout the first fourth of it to understand what was going on.

While we're on the subject of additives, she could've used a map. Some authors do this and I find that I don't need access to maps in those stories. This one would've benefited from some point of spacial reference. I'm big on not treating the reader as if they're stupid, but when you're building a world, it's important to explain details to your readers. Despite the world-building confusion, the setting was still well developed. The individual settings were well described and I could picture them easily in my mind's eye. I think the setting issues stemmed from their connectivity. I had no idea where we were in some parts of the book because I didn't know how /this/ setting related to /that/ setting (if that makes sense).

However, the plot was fantastic. There were many manic page-turning scenes in there, as well as plot twists that literally had me gaping at my page. I loved the plot.

Until the end.

I'm not a fan of the ending. I'm not going to spoil anything for you, but it felt as though Jensen left the book unfinished. Not in the cliffhanger style, either. There were many lose ends that needed tying and if she was trying to set up for a sequel, she didn't do it right.

I loved the characters. I fell in love with both Terriana and Marcus, as well as various other characters that blessed these pages. Terriana is a spit-fire and she's super relatable. Marcus is a hard-ass and he's super relatable.

I really liked how Jensen let us see things from both of their perspectives (in third person, by the way!). I've never seen that before. In all my years of reading, I've never seen a book that switched point of viewpoints while remaining in third person. As a writer, I'm envious of this skill that Jensen has.

This book kind of reminded me of "Children of Blood and Bone" mixed with "The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe." If you liked either of those, you might want to give this one a read.