The Shadow Project

Herbie Brennan
Balzer + Bray (2009)
ISBN 9780061756429
Reviewed by Dylan James (age 13) for Reader Views (03/10)


Danny is a skilled thief and, one night, he breaks into a rather strange house. There’s a secret door and, on impulse, he goes through it. There is an elevator that goes down deep under the house and Danny finds himself in the midst of a very complicated secret building. He gets caught and imprisoned within it, and soon he finds out it is the base for The Shadow Project, a CIA organization that can send people out of their bodies to spy on others. Danny has a natural talent for it, and eventually he is made an agent and entered into a deathly war.

“The Shadow Project” by Herbie Brennan started out fast-paced, extremely exciting, interesting, and funny. From the very first pages, it has all the elements needed in a fantastic book. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on those key elements of an adventure book, it begins to drop them later in the book.  Up to about page 200, it was a brilliant book. Then, at about that time, something called “sohanti” is explained in detail and made to sound as if it would be used.  The main character apparently is “sohanti,” but for all this explanation and leading up to, it is only made use of once or twice. It also begins to talk about the Bible, heaven, hell, God, and how this all has to do with the war between the realms.  Used as an explanation, it seems fine, but page after page of slowly and dully talking about God when just a few pages before there was an insane battle seems rather out of place. It also explains this other realm the reader hasn’t heard about yet in great detail, and I significantly lost interest there. You can write a book to do one or the other, but to have an exciting adventure book up to page 200 with no action in the rest of the book does not work.

For the confusing plot and ideas, I wouldn’t recommend “The Shadow Project” by Herbie Brennan to anyone under age 13, but there is nothing inappropriate for ages 11+.  The first 200 pages are great, but it just goes downhill from there.

 

 

 

Reviewed by Ben Weldon (age 11) for Reader Views (11/09)

“The Shadow Project” by Herbie Brennan is the story of teenaged Danny Lipman who, when burglarizing a house, stumbles across a secret government project.  Danny Lipman is a thief and a good one at that.  Danny lives alone with his grandmother and has to find some way to pay for her soaring medical bills.  When Danny enters an old mansion trying to find something to steal and then sell, he finds the door.  It is a not-very-well-hidden secret door, in his opinion.  Danny enters and finds himself in the headquarters of the Shadow Project.

The Shadow Project is a secret British-run MI-6 project, and Danny has just stumbled right into the middle of it.  As would be expected, they are not happy about it.  The Shadow Project uses psychically-tuned teenage operatives who are capable of having out-of-body experiences.  The operatives’ astral forms (out-of-body selves) are sent around the globe to gather information on terrorist encampments.  But when a particularly valuable operative’s astral form is captured by mysterious means, Danny has the choice to either help the Shadow Project or go and rot in jail for the rest of his life.     

The Shadow Project uses a special chair that looks an awful lot like an electric chair to boost the psychic power of the operatives and to send them to different locations around the globe. The operative’s body remains in the chair but his or her mind goes off to gather information.  The first time Danny saw someone in one of the chairs, he thought for sure the “victim” was about to be killed.  Danny, attempting to save the “victims,” attacked the controller and naturally all of the people working at the Shadow Project came running and Danny got arrested.

Little does Danny know that he is so powerful compared to the other operatives that he doesn’t even need a chair in order to project his astral body.  This power of Danny’s will come in very handy.  Danny later learns that he (because of his special power) is called “sohanti” and that he actually has more than just one power; he has many.    

I would recommend “The Shadow Project” by Herbie Brennan to people who like action, adventure, and science fiction.  This was a really good, fast-paced book that was full of intrigue.  The book was a real page turner and you won’t want to put it down until you finish it.  Elements of this book were actually based on real history.

Make comment on weblog