The Shadow Thieves (Cronus Chronicles, #1)
by Anne Ursu

2 out of 5 stars

Charlotte’s cousin Zee comes to visit from England, and he is terrified that a mysterious illness has followed him across the ocean to America. When their friends at school start getting sick, Charlotte and Zee are determined to find out what is wrong. Their search leads them to the evil plans of a demi-god from Hades who is stealing shadows to create an army and take over the underworld. Charlotte and Zee have to journey into the underworld and find a way to stop the shadow army before all their friends die!

This book has some dark magic, since the villain uses a spell to syphon some of Zee’s blood. Then he uses the blood to animate the shadows and control them. Pretty gruesome. But what I really hated was that Zee later finds his way into the villain’s evil lab, finds all these jars of blood, and uses the same dark magic to animate his own shadows to control and fight back against the villain. Since when do heroes use dark magic?!? It didn’t seem right for him to control the shadows of his own friends while they are sick and dying, even if it was ultimately for a good purpose.

And Charlotte is the most awful liar! She lies to her teachers to get out of doing homework. She lies to her parents all the time. And this book treats it as some great skill to have – so useful to be able to lie with a sincere face and think on your feet to make up deceptions that will fool everyone. Zee encourages her to lie to her parents. The book says that Charlotte is remorseless. She never goes back and apologizes or tells the truth to the people she has deceived. I thought she was supposed to be the heroine of the story! I guess not. Not with poor moral choices like that.
I thought this adventure was good guys vs. bad guys, but it’s actually just bad guys vs. worse guys. The villains lies to Charlotte and Zee and deceives them, and they do the same to other people.

I’m just so disappointed in the poor moral fiber of the “heroes”. They are all bad guys in this book, except maybe Mr. Metos, their teacher, who seems like an actual honest person. Imagine that. Honesty! What a concept!

The adventure is fine, but nothing special. It just feels like a poorly-done mimic of Percy Jackson.
The writing is fine, not great. It could have been more concise.
The characters have almost no development because they are too busy making bad choices. They find some courage while they are in the underworld, and Zee gains some confidence, but that’s it.

Overall, even without all the poor morals, this book is nothing special.

This book has been screened on the Screen It First website. Check it out to see all the sensitive and objectionable content, including lying, mild violence, and dark magic. https://screenitfirst.com/book/the-shadow-thieves-cronus-chronicles-1-1877985