I first read this series last year and am currently working my way through it for the second time. As a result, I have kind of mixed feelings, as I remember LOVING these books the first time I read them, but am now not quite as enamored with them the second time around.

The raw materials are certainly all here, though. Ryland Miller is an army captain who's in a lot of trouble. He, along with a bunch of his friends, have volunteered to be enhanced, that is, to have their psychic powers unlocked by one Dr. Peter Whitney, working in cohoots with military brass who want to see him create the ultimate supersoldier. Unsurprisingly, the experiment goes very badly, the side effects are terrible, and nobody really cares what happens to the soliders, since they're viewed as lab rats and nothing more.

This is where Lily Whitney comes in. She's caring and sympathetic and pretty and smart and all the things that good little girls are made of in paranormal romance, and it doesn't take her long to figure out that her dad's experiments are not only veering into mad science, but that the soldiers are in terrible pain. She also has an instant connection to Ryland, which is confusing and concerning to her as her life up until this point has been pretty sheltered. When she finds out that her dad is a traitor and crazy, that the men he's working with are homicidal and crazy, and that her family history is absolutely nothing like what she's been told this point, Ryland is there to help her move forward and to start forming a new life and purpose for herself.

This book suffers, as many do, from being the first book in the series. The premise of the story has to be established, and since it's a series, a whole bunch of secondary characters who will eventually have their own books have to be introduced. We have to separate the good guys from the bad guys, which isn't all that hard. All of that would be okay, except the writing style here left a little bit to be desired.

Lily is an innocent; her father made sure that she didn't really have any concept of evil or what people were capable of. This means that she has a lot of processing to do once it becomes clear that, without getting too spoilery, her dad is a boil on the bottom of science. This means that there's a lot of angst, a lot of tribulation, and we as the audience get to read about it all. Ryland is no better; we have to read over and over again how his feelings for Lily were so sudden, how he feels responsible for what's happening to his men, and how he wants to protect Lily from all of these bad things. Are these reactions logical and reasonable? Sure. Did I need to read about them over and over again? Nope.

And another thing- what's up with the heroine having to think the hero's full name a million times, all the time? "There he was. Ryland Miller." Did we somehow forget what the guy's name was? I confess this happened so many times throughout Shadow Games that I ended up inserting other names into those spots. Ridley Porkchop. Miles Squeaktoy. Percival Pectoral. I get that the stage is being set for intimacy and sexy time, but it felt to me like we were just filling up pages.

While I didn't enjoy this story quite as much as I did the first time, I will keep going with the series, as now that the world has been established and the characters have been introduced, there's room for other things to happen.

Overall Grade: C

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