Herbie Brennan (1940–2024)

Herbie Brennan's Shadow Project is unique and intriguing, but it simply lacked the depth I felt it needed to earn a higher rating. However, I did really enjoy it!

Hmmm...I'm not quite sure what to think of Herbie Brennan's Shadow Project. I felt it was like a roller-coaster ¹; but overall, despite its flaws, I quite liked it.

¹The beginning started off well - with fair writing and an exciting premise, but the middle dropped and became preachy and somewhat average. However, the ending

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revived the story - being fairly solid and interesting.

The plot is pretty interesting as well and should captivate a multitude of sci-fi fans. The story starts off interestingly as readers follow young Danny Lipman, our protagonist - who just so happens to be a thief. Until one day he attempts to steal from from a top-secret spy agency... (Just his luck, right? Luckily, the agency directors choose to give him a choice: join the agency or go to jail.

Sounds interesting enough, right?

        And it is. The plot isinteresting, it's simply the writing and characterization that I personally didn't enjoy.
        The writing is fairly average for YA sci-fi; the book is written in simple sentences with a fair range of vocabulary. However, the author seems more focused on the plot than polishing the writing ¹ - as the quality of the writing doesn't quite match the creativity of the plot.

¹ It seems as if the author had so many great ideas in his head, but he struggled to write them on paper fast enough - thus neglecting other (vital) literary elements.

Another concern I had with Shadow Project was the lack of characterization. I felt all the characters were one-dementional, and that they lacked the depth I needed to emotionally connect with them. I never really felt for them, and this disappointed me. Even the supporting characters didn't seem quite likeable enough for me to truly say I liked them.

Yet, with all these critiques, it may seem I despised this book. On the contrary, I didn't. I really did enjoy it - especially the beginning and the end. I just simply wouldn't call it one of my "favorites." I'd still highly recommend it to fans of sci-fi / fantasy. show less

I definitely enjoyed it. It was a very good mix of scifi, fantasy, and real life similar to Artemis Fowl but still different.

I was not expecting Henry's personal life problems, but they added so much more to the story. It made Henry very real. His return to real life at the end, with just a bit more confidence, is very nice as well.

Henry is my favorite character, but he spends a surprisingly small amount of time in the story. It's a little odd, since he is set up as the main character in the show more first few chapters, only to be cast aside in favor of Pyrgus and Blue. Pyrgus is okay, but I'm not fond of Blue. Every time they had a scene, I was mostly just hoping Henry would be next.

The plot itself is very interesting, if a little complicated. I got the three villains all mixed up, which made the plot twists a little confusing. They were also all very stereotypical villains, with none of the depth given Henry or Mr. Fogarty.

I'm also not entirely sure what age group this is for. The stereotypical villains and the age of the main characters make me think it is for pre-teens and maybe young adults -- and yet there is a lot of stuff directly referencing sex. No explicit sex scenes of course, but there are quite a few references -- from Henry's parents's problems to Henry seeing Blue in the bath. And yet the story itself does not seem complex for or written for young adults.

Despite all of this, I really did enjoy it, and definitely recommend it. show less

Okay, I'm going to give my critique! I still am glassy-eyed from staying up *literally* all night to finish this book! When you cannot pry a book from your fingers, that means it's good, right? I certainly think so. - To be fair: This is a down-the-line sci-fi/fantasy, IMO. As someone who has extremely little patience for and limited understanding of fiction technology, I could have done with less "science" but that's a person-to-person thing. My little brothers read this series and show more recommended it to me, and they both loved it for these aspects. I give the author props for just being so darn creative! Creativity, to me, should generally outweigh and outshine the more technical aspects of writing, like your "literary elements" and your actual writing style. This is most certainly a "third person omniscient" story in that you as the reader follow literally EVERY character. Most 3rd persons don't do this: they pick one or two characters to follow and you learn about other events through their subsequent discoveries. Sometimes I felt a bit overwhelmed by the back-and-forth coverage, but as the story progressed, it became very necessary to see the plot unfold from different directions. So bravo to that, Brennan! It just took me a few hundred pages to get used to! - Characters: I tend to like "good" good guys and "bad" bad guys, so when I read other reviews that criticize Brennan for not being "complex enough," I dont give those much weight. Evil is very one-dimensional. The baddest villains are the ones that really have no complexity: they're just bad to be bad. And thank god, not every protagonist is Holden Caulfield. I found the main protagonist - Henry Atherton - very enjoyable and relatable, if not a little dorky. He reminds me of a modern Taran from (IMO the greatest childrens fantasy EVER) The Chronicles of Prydain in that he's sweet but maybe a tad dorky (girls, we all know boys like this!). I can certainly deal with the "lovable loser" character type. **I feel like I do need to address this aspect of the story, as everybody does** - Umm okay I found the series in the YA section, and to me that's a very appropriate place. This is a very action-packed series, and yeah there's conflict: and not wishy-washy glossed over conflict, either. These are bad guys who do bad things. I wouldn't use the word "pervasive," but there certainly are violent aspects of the story. To me, I didnt find the violence out of place or even unnaturally heightened...it had a purpose: to be contrasted with good. To make the reader think: "Wow, these dudes need to be stopped". I wouldnt recommend this series for anyone under middle-school (with the exception of the above-average-intelligence 5th grader). CON: - Really, there's only one definite negative I have to gripe about: This is FANTASY--I don't want to read about melodramatic, "Eastender-like" family drama! It is necessary to a point to set up the emotional characterization of Henry: we need to see a bit of his background in order to understand and relate to his situation. What we dont need is over-the-top melodrama, which IMO is what we are given. It seems as though it's not good enough for Brennan to present a relatively normal family problem: he has to write a rather specific and uncommon family situation that to me was just put in to be a "shock factor." There's no development, no substance, because that's not the point. So why bother? Anyway, that's my beef.Overall? Excellent. I will proceed to the next book in the series promptly! This is not exactly a well-known series in the US, though a few of my English friends have read the books and quite enjoyed them. If you are reading this review, give the FAERIE WARS CHRONICLES a try! show less

Reviewed by Candace Cunard for TeensReadToo.com

To call this book a "Narnia movie tie-in," as some of the publicity has, is selling it short. The sixteen essays in this book cover all seven of the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, and although there are several that deal exclusively with Prince Caspian, the movie of which is to be released this May, there are also insightful essays about the other novels in the series. In fact, one of my personal favorites dealt solely with THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER show more (which was always my favorite book in the series, as well). And the depth of these essays moves them beyond the realm of the typical movie tie-in into a place of enthusiastic scholarship.

This is not a book for those unfamiliar with the Chronicles, but if you've ever fallen in love with Narnia, the perspectives these authors offer will be a nice complement to your enjoyment. The essays are at their best when their authors start with a personal obsession and go from there to discuss its thematic relevance to the Chronicles as a whole.

Diana Peterfreund's "King Edmund the Cute" starts by discussing her childhood crush on Edmund, but goes deeper than that to trace his character through the Chronicles to show why Lewis intended him to be an attractive character; having once turned traitor but understanding the error of his ways, he can now lead others on the right path. Diane Duane, a self-proclaimed "foodie," tackles the topic of "Eating in Narnia" from a background that discusses both Lewis's own experiences with rationing during the wars but also goes further to suggest the impact food can have, not just on the body, but on the soul.

I really enjoyed the essays' treatment of Lewis's Christian background. While many of them acknowledged Lewis's goal to create a moral allegory that could lead people to a better understanding of Christianity, this was not the focus of any of the essays.

Sarah Beth Durst's "Missing the Point" argues that Lewis's stories would be compelling even without the allegorical component, and O. R. Melling's "Being Good for Narnia and the Lion" discusses how the series presented her with a picture of being good that was more attractive than that posed by her childhood experiences with church. While I think it's impossible to say that a book on Lewis's work has been written from an entirely secular perspective, the treatment of the religious aspect of the Chronicles was deftly done. I was also impressed with the book's willingness to tackle difficult topics, like the accusations that Lewis's Calormen represents a racist depiction of the Middle East.

But above all, every essay in this collection reminded me why Lewis's works are worth reading for both children and adults, and why every foray into the land of Narnia is a grand adventure, for the reader as well as the characters. show less