Final Shadows starts off with a psychic named Henry McCord having been kidnapped, and he awakens in a confused state in an unknown place with someone named Juno Hicks contacting him telepathically to give him some hope. We soon discover that these two are psychics who were previously on the watch list of one Noah Bishop, an FBI agent in the Special Crimes Unit who protects psychics, and is one of a powerful bonded pair of psychics with his wife, Miranda. It seems "The Others" are at it again and have kidnapped more psychics, presumably to do horrible and torturous research on them in their attempts to create psychics of their own. Then the unthinkable happens - psychics around the country who work with Bishop are awakened violently in the night when they psychically sense that unborn psychic babies are being burned alive in Charlotte and are reaching out for help. Rapidly, Bishop's team gathers back in Charleston.
Bishop and Miranda, John Brodie and Tasha Solomon, Tucker and Sarah Mackenzie, and a young psychic who has recently come to live with them named Annabel, as well as Annabel's psychic cat Pendragon, are all part of the team headed up, in essence, by Murphy, a strong, quick-witted psychic young woman who will stop at nothing to end a war that has been raging for many years between psychics and those who protect them and The Others. Murphy has crafted a tentative and dangerous working relationship with Duran, a man who heads up one of the two factions of The Others, but can he be trusted?
When another psychic, a 16-year-old girl named Emma near and dear to Bishop's heart, suddenly goes missing and is presumed dead, at least based on the "car accident" and matching burned corpse that is found, the team is spurned into further action. They must discover who is responsible for the heinous arson in Charlotte that claimed the lives of a dozen unsuspecting innocent mothers carrying psychic babies, and also rescue the psychics that are being held, before they undergo more torture that could break them mentally or even kill them.
Final Shadows has lots of twists and turns, but make no mistake - it is the endgame for Murphy and Bishop's group. The characters are introduced in rapid fashion from one chapter section to the next and my head was spinning to keep up with them, although I assume this would not be the case with a veteran reader of this series. I did eventually figure out who the most critical ones were and it worked out fine, but this book assumes you have a fair amount of prior knowledge coming in to it and, if you don't, you'll be lost for a while. Everything does wrap up in a neat little package by the end and it is quite a satisfying conclusion, but I do imagine a good part of the joy comes from the journey itself, so I feel like I really missed out in coming in with Final Shadows. I don't think I'd go back and read the previous books at this point, because I already know how things play out and that takes the air out of the proverbial balloon for me, since it is a fairly shocking conclusion. If you have interest in thrillers with a sci-fi and psychic bend to them, you may be interested in The Bishop Files and Special Crimes Unit, the latter of which is an ongoing series, but do take my advice and look into the first two books (and possibly the SCU series as well) before picking up Final Shadows. That will give you a much better experience.
