The Angel Experiment (James Patterson) 1

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Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
James Patterson

Continuing with my YA reading… I got 54 pages into this book before I started skimming.

The pros:

Max, the Maximum of the title, is actually a girl. And it’s not a big deal, just slipped in detail by detail.

The cons:

"Yes, you, standing there leafing through these pages. Do not put this book down. I’m dead serious–your life could depend on it."

Does that sound familiar? Like, 54-book series familiar? Even now, when I can laugh at the clunky writing of the Animorphs series, I never forget how heartbreaking they are. In comparison, this book seems half-hearted, or maybe dumbed down.

"Chapter 2: I jolted upright in bed, gasping, my hand over my heart."

Yes. Yes, she woke up and Chapter 1 was All A Dream.

"Wincing, I pushed downward with all my strength, then pulled my wings up, then pushed downward again."

If I were writing a book about bird-children, I would research the mechanics of avian flight. The power stroke is forward as well as down, and the back stroke is, as the name implies, back and up. Plus, she’s jumping from a cliff, so this shouldn’t be flapping flight at all–she should be going right into soaring flight.

""He was my son!… You killed your own brother!"

These are a page apart, but clearly they add up to "No, I am your father."

I think this might have been a lot stronger if the book had started in the cages, at the School. I’m thinking of Colfer’s The Supernaturalist here, and how starting at the orphanage put the entire book in perspective. But The Angel Experiment starts after they’ve escaped and are hiding out, and while they talk about how horrible the School is, it’s not real to the reader.

I might recommend this book to very young readers, or maybe I’d just tell them to read Animorphs instead.

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