The Zodiac Legacy: Convergence by Stan Lee

Over the summer I got incredibly hyped over the upcoming novel by the master, Stan Lee, featuring POC characters, a good guy with stretched lobes (we're always evil) and a focus on Chinese history. However, when that book came out, I was filled with disappointment. Now don't get me wrong, overall it wasn't a bad book, I just can never as a Children's Bookseller give this book to anyone under a high school age. Riddled with typos, this book excuses misuse of 'know' and 'now' even 'they're' and 'there' issues, also at one point a sentence is just repeated in someone's dialogue. Those instances through a book throw me off the story every time, so it was a little difficult to get through and took me longer to read than I expected.

Steven Lee is a 14 year old boy on a class trip to Hong Kong. Steven always feels a little awkward, never feeling quite American enough... and now not Chinese enough. While touring a museum with his class he hears a scream come from a restricted area. He follows it and gets sucked into a world he would never have imagined existing, now imbued with the power of the Zodiac Tiger, his life has completely changed. Steven meets Jasmine, his new ally that once worked for his new enemy, evil millionaire Maxwell. Jasmine teaches Steven about Maxwell's horrendous past, including the eradication of an entire city, Lystria, all because he simply made a mistake. Beams of Zodiac power have gone to seek their hosts, so Jasmine, Carlos, a tech genius also gone rogue from Maxwell, and Steven head off to seek out those filled with new uncontrollable power before Maxwell can take them. They find Roxanne in France, Liam in Northern Ireland, Duane in South Africa, and Kim in America. Now faced with a changing world, danger and incredible powers this rag-tag group heads off to Greenland - Jasmine's central base in her efforts to defeat Maxwell. Maxwell's group, called Vanguard, track down our heroes and attempt to capture them all so Maxwell can control all Zodiac powers himself. Of course, his plan is thwarted, only temporarily however. We come to find there are more players in this Zodiac game than we could have imagined.

The premise of the story is great, I think perhaps it was too rushed and would've drastically benefited from a bit more attention. I'm giving the series the benefit of the doubt and hoping as more books come out hte story gains a bit more foothold. Wit ha great idea backing this and some stronger execution this series could really be top notch. Beware of typos, some story inconsistencies and accepting outrageous plot changes with no background information but try to enjoy yourself.