Dark Shores is a story about two people, both with secrets, brought together in an unlikely alliance in order to protect the people they love.

I confess that I got off to a shaky start with this one.  Ultimately it redeemed itself and was an entertaining read but it was touch and go there for a while.

Dark Shores brings to us a world divided into East and West.  The Celendor Empire in the East is heavily inspired by Ancient Rome, particularly it’s desire to conquer and become rich on the spoils.  It remains oblivious to the West however and particularly to the ways to reach it’s shores, until that secret is spilled in a moment of unguarded naivety.

The tale is told from two POVs.  Teriana is a young woman of the seas.  Her mother is captain of the Quincense that regularly travels between East and West bearing goods for trade.  Teriana is one of the Maarin.  The Maarin are devoted to their Gods and indeed protected by them for keeping the secrets that prevent the ambitious war mongering East from discovering the rich plunder on the soils of the West.

Marcus is the commander of the infamous 37th legion.  A legion that is well known for their ruthless tactics in conquering the East.  Marcus has something of a history with his own family, who gave him up as a tithe to the Empire, but all isn’t quite as simple as it may at first seem – the family are keeping a secret that could lead to their downfall and the problem with secrets is they have a way of coming out of the woodwork.

I’m going to start this review with why I struggled at the start.  Firstly, as the book began I found Teriana a little annoying – simply put she came across as very immature which made it difficult to buy into her being the Second Mate on board a ship particularly when her actions serve to put everyone and everything she knows in danger.  On top of that the initial chapters felt too modern – Teriana and her friend acted like teenagers from the modern era – not one that is akin to a civilisation from many many moons ago.  Okay, I don’t expect the language to be all ‘ye olde worlde’ but I think there has to be some sort of nod to the fact that this isn’t a modern world and attitudes might not be quite as they are today.  The other area that I took issue with was the Celandon empire, trading on a regular and quite long standing basis with seafarers from the West, and yet never having turned their attention in that direction – until a certain secret is spilled.  In fairness, the reasoning behind why the Celandon Empire couldn’t conquer the West becomes more apparent as the story unfolds so I advise patience on that front.

I’m not going to give too much more away about the plot other than to say that Teriana and Marcus are thrown together and in spite of their mutual distrust have to learn to rely on each other if they’re to succeed in keeping the people they love alive and, after a shaky start, I found myself enjoying the story more than I’d expected.

In fact I think that I enjoyed the story more once the protagonists left the shores of Celandon behind.  I enjoyed the adventures at sea, the choppy waters and the dangers that had to be faced in order to find the route to the East.  I enjoyed the way the Gods play into the story with their meddling and I enjoyed discovering more about the West.   I thought that what was really well done here was that although the Celandon’s are trying to conquer in some respects they didn’t really come across as the baddies.  I liked the way the legion comes into their own displaying their discipline, tactics and loyalty, setting up boundaries and establishing a strong foothold.

Now, you may be able to see a romance in the offing between our two main characters and that is the case.  Fortunately this isn’t rushed and in fact when the two do eventually give in to their own feelings they still have a good deal of trust issues to work through.  I liked that they didn’t overnight forget their bad history.

Overall this was a fun read that I found more enjoyable than I expected to following the opening chapters.  I would advise that if you’re expecting a world of really rich world building based on history then this probably isn’t the read for you but if you’re in the market for an adventure and a budding romance then this could be just what you’re looking for.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publishers, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.