A Review of "The Shadowverse"

Introduction

When author John-Clement Gallo emailed me and asked me to review The Shadowverse, he mentioned that he'd found me by reading my review of Control Freakz by Michael Evans and offered a free .mobi file in exchange for an honest review. I was excited to dive into this alternate reality superhero fiction, as it's one of the first books of its kind that I've been able to review, but there were several issues that I feel need to be addressed in order for my review to be accurate.

My Rating: ★★★

Synopsis: "Regarded as 'captivating' and 'one-of-a-kind', The Shadowverse is a Science Fiction Superhero thriller with hints of the Young Adult genre. It is a story of destiny--that no matter who you are, where you are, or what your past is like, you can always achieve greatness.

Johnny Sparks longs for a greater purpose. After an encounter with a mysterious stranger, he and his friends are imbued with incredible powers--at last giving his life meaning.

But this dream soon disintegrates once one of the friends is taken by an alien warlord named Titan. In a rescue effort, the remaining group is sent across the galaxy in search of the only possible aid--an ancient, immortal warrior missing for centuries.

To succeed, the team must join forces to save their friend and stop a sinister scheme devised against humanity by Titan and his empire. The conflict for the soul of the universe is set in motion, but even if the group prevails, they risk losing what it means to be human." (via Goodreads)

Thoughts and Comments

Pros

The plot is interesting and does well at captivating the reader, which I feel is the most important part of the book--in my opinion, the characters, grammar, setting, etc. mean nothing without a good plot to carry all of it through, and The Shadowverse certainly was an enjoyable classic group superhero story with a bit of a twist.
The cover design is professional and attractive, and I believe that it will do well in peaking a reader's interest if they're skimming for books to read.
Most of the characters are likable, which is important to me, as it is very difficult for me to get through a book if I don't like the main character(s). However, none of the stars of the novel rubbed me the wrong way, which was really nice, especially for a book in the YA genre.

Cons

In many scenes, I had a tough time figuring out where I was spatially as the reader, which made it difficult at times to picture the scenes in my mind.
The prologue was especially confusing--it took a bit to figure out what was going on, and two or three pretty major missed opportunities were present that vaguely explained how the situation in the prologue arose in the first place. It made me wonder if those missed opportunities could have functioned better as a prologue and, instead, have the written prologue serve as chapter one.
There were quite a few grammar and syntax errors in the novel, and I believe it could stand to go through another round of developmental editing as well.
The main characters in the novel were stated to be in college, but the entire time I felt that they were in high school instead. I would often forget that I was supposed to be reading from the narration of twenty-something-year-olds rather than teenagers until it was explicitly mentioned.
The descriptions in the novel could be more fleshed out--the lack of detail brought about more imaging issues that made it difficult to picture scenes and spaces.
Similarly, the physical descriptions of the characters are repeated far too often throughout the novel--you can hardly go a page without reading about someone flipping their dirty blonde hair or batting their bright blue eyes, for example. Specifically in the beginning of the novel, there's a lot of paragraph grouping as far as the appearances of the characters are concerned. Perhaps these descriptions would have been more effective if they were subtly and sparingly placed throughout the novel?
The narration is often confusing. The overarching narration is supposedly a semi-close third person, but often, we will see a much closer view of the characters than even the paragraph beforehand--to the extent where we'll even hear the character's thoughts, which seems abnormal in the regular narration--and it easily pulls the reader out of the scene in confusion.

Conclusion

If I had to conclude this review in a sentence, it would be that The Shadowverse has a lot of work to do, but it certainly has a lot of potential as well. I do still think that any fan of superhero fiction should give it a shot! Mr. Gallo, thank you for the opportunity to review your work. I look forward to seeing more from you in the future!

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