Monday, September 1, 2008

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by: James Patterson



Total: Three stars.

Max is not your average fourteen-year-old. She has wings and the government doesn’t acknowledge her existence. Along with five other wings-having misfits (loner boy Fang, blind Iggy, talkative Nudge, The Gasman - whose name explains everything - and sweet, mind reader Angel), she is part of The Flock.

The Flock who will stop at nothing to receive answers about their parents, their real families.

When Angel is kidnapped, Max and the gang have to willingly go back to the one place they thought they would never return to - School. No, not regular school with pencils and teachers and recess. They school where they were experimented on.

This is a relatively quick read, helped along by short and snappy chapters - typical of James Patterson, though Maximum Ride’s chapters are shorter than I expected. It has everything that reluctant readers could want: non-stop action, (some) character development, government conspiracy plots, several settings. It’s quite low on descriptions of appearances - especially of The Flock - but I would count that as a “plus” point. It’s refreshing to simply imagine how they look.

By the end, I had zero answers to the questions asked towards the beginning of the book and only got more questions. It’s perfectly set up for a sequel or two or three.

The driving force keeping The Angel Experiment away from four or five stars is the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it romance element. (SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT) With Fang and Max, near the ending. They share a kiss that I would never have foreseen had I not Wikipedia’d the series before buying this book. There are no indicators beforehand and while I like them together and apart - it just seemed so rushed. Especially for James Patterson.

That being said, I’m going back to the bookstore today (hopefully) to purchase the rest of the series. MAX RIDE FANS: How many books are there in the series? Three, right? I’m a tad confused.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wikipedia huh?
You must've been one of the lucky one's who wasn't misinformed about some sort of information. Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source for information.