Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson: Review

Supposedly a book.

Spoiler free review.

Like many 20 something white girls, I've taken up the bad but so good habit of reading young adult fiction. And there is a sort of magic that happens when the prose is so easy you slip through the plot like a hot knife through butter. The plot unfurls around you like a garden finally free of a pruning shears, or a flock of birds that moves organically, fluidly to the climax of so many plot points and character arcs.
But this book? What is this? Is it a secret garden or a flock of birds?

Metaphors are flocking.... flocking this way.

I'll save you the trouble of reading my version of a synopsis.
Here is Amazon's take on it:
"In James Patterson's blockbuster series, fourteen-year-old Maximum Ride, better known as Max, knows what it's like to soar above the world. She and all the members of the "flock"--Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman and Angel--are just like ordinary kids--only they have wings and can fly. It may seem like a dream come true to some, but their lives can morph into a living nightmare at any time...like when Angel, the youngest member of the flock, is kidnapped and taken back to the "School" where she and the others were experimented on by a crew of wack jobs. Her friends brave a journey to blazing hot Death Valley, CA, to save Angel, but soon enough, they find themselves in yet another nightmare--this one involving fighting off the half-human, half-wolf "Erasers" in New York City. Whether in the treetops of Central Park or in the bowels of the Manhattan subway system, Max and her adopted family take the ride of their lives. Along the way Max discovers from her old friend and father-figure Jeb--now her betrayed and greatest enemy--that her purpose is save the world--but can she?"


This book is a disaster. One of the worst young adult fiction books I've read. And I've read some bad ones (I'm looking at you Shiver).

• It has a bad narrative style. Supposed to be from the point of view of a 14 year old girl. But it sounds like Patterson imagined a 10 year old who imagined what a 14 year old would sound like. Very immature, inappropriate for the situation and jarring.This strange narrative style is made even worse when its used to describe violent death sequences.
• The plot is driven by the Erasers pushing and not by the main characters desires or needs.
• A few plot points and stops have zero effect on the overall plot and appear to exist only to extend the length of the book.
• Far too many section breaks. Section breaks in the middle of conversations. Sections breaks that don't add tension or interest.
• Too many members of the "flock." Angel, Max and Fang are the only characters that are really necessary and no one else is interesting enough to justify their inclusion in the story.
• Jokes are not funny. I can't see kids thinking these jokes are funny.
• No one in the story is ever particularly interesting. Maybe Fang eventually.
• Science as the progenitor of all the characters problems makes me sad.
• Science in this world doesn't actually make any sense. I wish these kids had been winged with magic or something else (divine intervention? aliens?). My suspension of disbelief comes much easier if you don't chalk up the fantasy element in the story to SCIENCE IS BAD.

I am reading the sequels, and they do get better.So maybe its worth slogging through this one to get to the rest. But the sequels do have problems. Maybe you should just...

Avoid this one and move on to a better series.