I found the writing of this to be very immature, even for young teens.

The story was fairly predictable but the characters lacked depth.

This does hold promise but was not for me.

DNF 23% I just couldn't get into it. It was rather boring , I'm sure someone else might find it entertaining.

In The Shadowverse by John-Clement Gallo, a teenager named Johnny is given magical powers, gifted to him through a strange energy known as the Ooris. Johnny and his friends--Ryan, Dustin, Sam, Jane, and Rose must use their skills and abilities to divert a major intergalactic crisis. Their enemy is a being named Titan who sees himself as a savior and who also believes emotions are useless and only get in the way of progress.

I'm sorry to say this book didn't appeal to me. The concept was interesting, but the writing didn't hold up. The narration and dialogue feel stilted and forced; it gives the impression of a work-in-progress rather than a finished product. There are a lot of shifts between character POVs, between limited and omniscient narration, and even between tenses. Grammar errors are frequent, including unnecessary capitalization, missing commas, and comma splices. New characters are introduced in a heavy-handed way, sometimes with their entire backstories. Instead of characters discovering relevant information in an organic way, they're often told info by another character or they simply "feel" something is true, even when they have no evidence to back up those feelings.

Some characters are less than respectful in the way they're handled. For example, a character named Kevin is shown to have a stuttering issue, and rather than diversifying the cast, he simply annoys Ryan, as if stuttering is something a person can control or does on purpose. Similarly, Jane and Rose are largely introduced as subjects of romantic tension and awkwardness. When Jane misses a reference to two Mortal Combat characters, it's pointed out that "no girl Ryan had ever met knew those names." It just seemed silly to push the old, tired idea that girls rarely enjoy video games. (This coming from a female gamer who unlocked every Soul Calibur IV achievement on the XBox 360.)

I have no doubt the author put a lot of love and effort into this book, and I completely acknowledge that tastes are subjective. It just felt like a little more love and effort, along with more objective readers prior to publication, would have gone a long way.

John-Clement Gallo writes an exciting adventure in The Shadowverse. As described, the book is an enjoyable combination of young adult literature and science fiction.