Book Review: Dark Shores (Dark Shores #1)

Dark Shores
Danielle L. Jensen
4/5

This review is a little biased because I don't feel like I could hate anything with pirates in it. I mean, well-written pirates. Plus, you have to add in the whole Romanesque Celendor Empire and a tastefully done romance, there's all the best elements of a great series. Teriana is the daughter of a Maarin ship captain, sworn to keep the two halves of the world separate from one another. The system of transport is super cool, like underwater tunnels to get from the East to the West, I hope the transport system gets more focus in the sequel because wow. The POV alternates between Teriana and Marcus, he's a solider of the Celendor Empire trained and programmed to kill and conquer. Obviously, things pick up when the Celendor Empire realizes that there's a whole other half of the world to kill and conquer.

It's a little cliche as initial plot lines work, but I feel like it has enough moving parts and completely separate elements to prevent it from being boring. The dichotomy between the strength of a military leader and the weakness of chronic illness, like wow that's some top tier stuff. The bonds between the crew members, amazing. Just the relationships in general were really well done, the romance had a lot of buildup without it feeling like overkill, it felt pretty natural. I'm so excited to see where this goes because there are so many open story lines that could be explored. We haven't even gotten past the surface of all the conquering, all the magic, all the mythological battles of the gods that could occur in this series.

The only problem I had with it was how little there was about the pirates despite it feeling like the central part of the story. That leaves a lot to build off in the second book, so there's obviously a lot of potential there, but I would have like a little bit more about Teriana's pirate life before the whole being conquered part. I'm kind of excited to see what happens with the second book, because I just saw that it's going to be about Lydia and another character rather than Teriana and Marcus. I usually don't like series that leave their main characters in alternating books, but I'm super invested at this point.