The Shadow Society wasn't the best book I've ever read, but it wasn't bad, either. I had hoped it would be better, of course (I hope that every book is really good, obviously) and it let me down a little. Although, it did improve a lot between the beginning and the end.

This book has extremely fast pacing, which made everything that happened seem really rushed. I don't know if it's the pacing alone, or the style of the writing which makes it read quickly, but I felt like everything was rushed. Part of the problem was that the scenes didn't really fit one after another. They jumped around in time (sometimes even making reference to an earlier event, and then throwing is into that earlier event) and there was a lot of summary between the scenes. That rushed feeling is what made the Darcy/Conn (and Darcy/Orion) stuff seem like insta-love.

One of the other problems (which affected the pacing) was also one of the things that had make me want to read the book, which was disappointing. The fact that it's a stand-alone drew me to it, but I think that's something that made the story (and the relationships) so rushed.

About the writing technique--which I didn't love, but I also didn't hate--there were a few times where it really bothered me. There are things you're allowed to do once in a book, but if you do them again they seem like a gimmicky space-filler, and I noticed a few of those. Things like spending a whole paragraph listing off types of food, or the repeating a word three times thing. (I hate, hate, hate that)

The two biggest problems I had with the book, though, we're the romance and the lack of answers.

The romance was awful. I didn't feel anything for Conn and I felt less than that for Orion. Let's start with Conn, he was always weird and he seemed to be the love interest that is interested in the main girl for almost no reason at all. I don't like those. What reason was there for him to like her? And then we learned what it was, and that only made it worse. He was basically seducing her so he could kidnap her (oh, but he was just doing his job! Well, that's not good enough) Plus--on the topic of his job--how old is he? 17? 18? 25? He's supposed to be some kind of super agent, but he's high school age. That doesn't work for me. There is no way he'd become that good at that job after only a few years.

Then there was Orion, who is barely call a love-interest. He likes her, but she obviously doesn't like him. So he's just there to make her seem... What... Better? More desirable? Less realistic? I'll go with the third one.

Then there was all the questions I had. I liked the plot (even if it didn't make total sense to me) because it was original. And there was an attempt made to explain it all, but I just felt like it wasn't enough. There seemed to be a lot of plot holes, and very poor world-building. So, alternate Chicago; dimensional split during the Great Chicago Fire... That was basically all we got. What are Shades (maybe that was explained--but if it was it wasn't very noticeable)? Why do they always use magnetic power in Conn's world? Why don't more Shades go into the Alter--where people don't know they exist and they are treated like anyone else?

It didn't feel like the events that happened in the book happened because of any sort of natural progression. It felt like they happened because Rutoski needed them to happen, so she made them happen, even though they didn't seem to fit together quite right.

In the end, I was glad it was a stand-alone. I didn't mind it, but I'm not sure I would enjoy having to read anything else from this world/set of characters.