REVIEW: Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (book) by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Laura Park

Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life is middle grade humorous fiction.

Review:

Rafe isn't thrilled with the way his first year of middle school started. At the suggestion of his best friend, Leo the Silent (the guy who rarely speaks and usually communicates via drawings that are incorporated into the book), Rafe comes up with Operation R.A.F.E. (Rules Aren't For Everyone). The whole thing is based on the school rules. Each rule that Rafe breaks earns him points depending on the level of danger, the amount of planning that went into it, who saw him, and what happened as a result of his actions. He does have one limitation, however, his “No-Hurt Rule” - Rafe's actions can't hurt anyone but himself. Unfortunately, things don't always go the way Rafe plans.

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (book) by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X is action-packed YA science fiction. Or maybe middle grade science fiction. I'm not sure.

Synopsis:

When Daniel was only 3 years old, an alien known as The Prayer came to his home looking for something called The List and killed his parents because they wouldn't give it to him. The List turns out to be a computer containing The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma. Daniel's parents had not only been aliens, they'd been alien hunters.

Daniel is determined to continue their legacy. By the age of 15, he's gotten pretty good at alien hunting. His life is a little lonely, however. He spends a lot of time with his family and friends, all of whom he has created using his powers. When his latest target, Ergent Seth, prompts him to move to a new location, he decides to try going to school for the first time. School has its annoyances, but there are benefits as well: Phoebe, his first real friend, may soon become his first real girlfriend. Unfortunately, the alien hunting side of Daniel's life butts in, and Ergent Seth turns out to be far more dangerous than any foe Daniel has ever faced before. If Daniel doesn't find and defeat him soon, Phoebe and others may end up dead.

Review:

I'm not sure whether this was written for a YA audience or a middle grade one. Either way, it's a bad book. If it was written for a YA audience, it's quite possibly the worst traditionally published YA novel in existence.

When the Wind Blows (book) by James Patterson

I read and wrote an entry for The Angel Experiment a while back, but at the time I didn't realize that Patterson's Maximum Ride series actually had an earlier incarnation. When the Wind Blows features characters that readers of the Maximum Ride series will recognize, although, as flawed as I thought The Angel Experiment was, this book is much, much worse. I finished When the Wind Blows so that I could enjoy writing this post, not because I actually enjoyed the book.

My synopsis doesn't exactly lay out events as they happened in the book - Patterson took his sweet time with the plot on this one, and I'm going to try streamline things a bit better than that.

Synopsis:

Frannie, an animal-loving Colorado veterinarian who despises hunters, is horrified when she discovers that the man who is renting out the cabin she used to share with her husband (now deceased, murdered by someone who was never caught) is a hunter. However, the man, Kit, refuses to leave, so Frannie angrily puts up with him.

Kit, whose real name is actually Tom, is an FBI agent (or former FBI agent, I can't remember) who's supposed to be on vacation in an entirely different state. His boss isn't happy about his obsession with a case involving murdered doctors. Actually, Kit (or Tom, but he seems to be more comfortable with being called Kit) hasn't been doing well since his wife and child died in a plane crash. Now all he lives for is figuring out why these doctors are being murdered, and it's possible that Frannie knows more than she's letting on - after all, her husband is one of the murdered doctors. Without the knowledge or consent of his boss, Kit is continuing to investigate, and Frannie's area of Colorado seems to be the best place to do that.

And Kit's right - there's a secret lab, not too far away, that holds all the answers he seeks. Max, whose name is short for Maximum, escapes from that lab with her brother Matthew, but the two are soon separated. Max is almost caught but manages to get away at the last second - by opening her wings and flying. Max and Matthew are both part of secret genetic experiments that combined avian and human DNA, and the people chasing after them are willing to kill anyone and everyone who witnesses the results of these illegal genetic experiments.

Frannie can't believe her eyes when she first sees Max. Eventually, when she comes to trust Kit more, she tells him about Max, and the two of them convince Max to let them help her. What Max wants more than anything is to save her brother and the others at the School (the lab). She leads Kit and Frannie there, terrified of what might happen to them all if anyone found them. Things are relatively easy, at first. The School has been abandoned, the "imperfect specimens" left to die. Max is reunited with almost all of her friends from the School, and they all escape - but they don't get far before almost all of them are captured.

Frannie is shocked to discover that one of the primary people behind the experiments that resulted in Max and the others is none other than one of her best friends, Gillian. Not only that, it turns out that Gillian's 4-year-old son Michael, who Max and the others knew as Adam, is also the result of these experiments and has a projected lifespan of about 200 years. Their captors want to know who's been told about Max, so Frannie is questioned and Kit is tortured. Once they're back together, not knowing what the future holds, Frannie and Kit decide to give in to the feelings that have been building between the two of them and make love to each other (Breaking out of synopsis mode for a second: Kit is cut and bleeding everywhere and his nose is broken. Romantic.).

Little Adam comes to rescue everyone, but, unfortunately, Kit's boss shows up and tries to interfere - it turns out that the reason why Kit had so many problems getting support for his investigation of the doctors' murders was because his boss was also involved. Kit overpowers him, and they continue their escape. Everything goes to hell for the people involved in the School: an auction had just been held selling each of the winged children and their "scientific papers" (whatever that means), and the auction attendees now get to witness Kit, Frannie, and those children escaping; the occupants of a news helicopter film the children and their escape; and all the primary people involved in the genetic experiments and the School are killed in a car crash.

Frannie and Kit manage to get the children into hiding, away from the prying eyes of the authorities and the public. However, they can't stay hidden forever. When they're found, the children are all united with their biological parents, and everyone lives happily ever after, despite the fact that the world is probably not prepared for intelligent avian-human hybrids.

Commentary:

There are so very many things I didn't like about this book.  The writing was choppy and clunky, Patterson overused italics and exclamation marks, chapters were painfully short, and occasionally question marks weren't used when they should have been. If Patterson (or his editor, if he even has one) had ruthlessly cut out all repetitive wording, there would have been plenty of space to flesh out the things he should have fleshed out.

Some of the things Patterson wrote didn't gel with what I got from the descriptions. Over and over again, Patterson would write that Max was a beautiful little girl, superior in every way, and yet the actual descriptions of her would make everyone's first impression of her be the exact opposite. I couldn't quite wrap my brain around what she must have looked like or how her body worked (I still don't understand how her arms and wings worked, despite what I'm sure Patterson thought of as a painfully exact and logical explanation), but the general idea that I walked away with is that she would have looked a bit freakish, with feathers in lots of places, a massive chest, and an arm-wing combination that had to look strange as hell. However, Patterson tells us that she's beautiful, so of course she must be beautiful. Right. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

He also tells us that she's superior to both humans and avians, with the best features of each, but I somehow doubt that as well. Birds do better on the sky than on the ground, because they've evolved to get from one place to another mainly by flying, rather than walking (with some exceptions). Humans have our own adaptations. Max has escape options open to her that normal humans wouldn't have (flying), and she's supposed to be smarter than the average 11-year-old (although I'm doubtful of that), but nothing Patterson can say can convince me that she's superior to, say, a hawk when it comes to flight. Different, yes, but not superior.

Patterson's villains are supposed to be horrible, terrible people who will do anything to make sure there are no witnesses - and yet they allow some witnesses to survive. The one's I'm talking about are the two children Max spoke to and demonstrated her flying to - away from their mother's hearing, the person talking to the children threatened them and their mother, but none of them were killed. It doesn't make sense. Also, leaving the winged children to die of starvation and dehydration also doesn't make sense when Gillian and the rest auction them off only a little while later - auctions take a while to arrange, with everyone needing to be invited and more, and an auction like that would take a particularly large amount of time, since they'd have to make sure that everyone would be able to come up with the money. Although how anyone could come up with the auction's required increments of multiples of 100 million dollars without prior warning is beyond me.

The sex scene between Kit and Frannie was badly timed and just...awful. Only a few paragraphs prior, Patterson wrote that Kit was bruised and bloody, with multiple lacerations, a split upper lip, and a nose that was probably broken, and yet suddenly he and Frannie are overcome with passion, kissing each other and having sex. One, I don't care how gentle they do it, this can't be anything but painful for Kit. Two, they're still in captivity, with captors who may come bursting into the room at any moment - their brains must be like Etch-a-Sketches in order to forget that detail.

Things like that are exactly why the characters in this book don't feel like people - they don't react like you'd expect real people to react, and Patterson can't even manage to write their thoughts and dialogue in ways that feel real. To make matters worse, Patterson attempted to write multiple perspectives in this book and failed miserably - some chapters were written from Max's perspective, some from Kit's, some from Frannie's, etc. If it weren't for Max's "I'm hyped on sugar and love words just for their sake alone" mental voice and Kit and Frannie's use of different kinds of job-related jargon, the various perspectives, particularly Kit and Frannie's, would have been indistinguishable. Someone should have helped Patterson out and headed each chapter with the name of the person from whose perspective it is. Plus, Patterson bends over backwards to avoid letting readers know pertinent details while still writing from these perspectives - all readers knew, for the longest time, was that Kit was pining over some event that happened several years earlier and crushed him emotionally, but it's not until much later that we learn that he's upset over the plane crash that killed his family. Patterson took the unnatural-feeling route of making Kit avoid thinking about such important details as "what happened" and "who it happened to," in order to up the level of suspense - unfortunately, it just comes across as bad writing.

This story wasn't very good, it was longer than it needed to be, the characters weren't enjoyable, and it held no real thrill and suspense.

Read-alikes and Watch-alikes:

• The Angel Experiment (book) by James Patterson - Like I said, as flawed as this book was, it was still better than When the Wind Blows.  Try reading about Max all over again.
• Maximum Ride: The Manga (OEL manga) by James Patterson and NaRae Lee - For those like me, who will try anything if it's presented in visual form, this OEL manga (or manhwa?) might be worth looking into.
• Dark Angel (live action TV series) - If you'd like another story starring a girl named Max who's been genetically engineered, has escaped the lab where she was born, and wants to find and save the genetically engineered kids she grew up with, you might want to try this.  I think there's even one point where it's explained that "Max" is short for "Maximum"...just like James Patterson's Max.
• The Maze (book) by Catherine Coulter - This is the second book in Coulter's FBI series.  If you'd like another thriller with an FBI agent and a bit of romance in it, you might like this.  It's been a while since I read this, but I also seem to remember that some aspects of Coulter's writing reminded me of Patterson.  Or maybe not.  Like I said, it's been a while.

The status of my reading, near the end of my big work project

I'm basically done with the enormous record maintenance project at work - all the editing has been done (4ish hours of work), and now they just need to be imported back into our system (5-10 minutes a day, with me resisting the urge to load more than our system can handle). I think the importing part will be done on Sunday. Yay!

In the meantime, I've been reading a book that has not grabbed my attention so thoroughly that I felt the need to skimp on things like sleep: James Patterson's When the Wind Blows. I figured that, since I read The Angel Experiment, I might as well read the book that inspired his Maximum Ride series. The Angel Experiment had some serious flaws, but When the Wind Blows is just plain awful: choppy, clunky writing, no real excitement (no, adding exclamation points and italicizing whole sentences does not equal excitement and suspense, Mr. Patterson), and characters who don't feel very much like real people. I wonder, if I read the two books back to back, would The Angel Experiment seem like fine literature in comparison? Anyway, I've remembered to put little sticky notes at certain spots so that I've got examples to talk about when I finally get around to writing what I'm sure will be one giant rant. It should be fun.

I've slowed down considerably on A Study in Scarlet, mainly because I own it, and therefore it has no due date. I've ground to a halt on Pattern Recognition, because it's been more than I could handle lately. Maybe once I finish When the Wind Blows I'll get into it again, in order to revive the brain cells that Patterson's book tried to kill.

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment (book) by James Patterson

Max and five other teens and children live alone, constantly on the lookout for those who'd like to either kill or capture them. All six of these children were genetically altered as part of some sort of experiment - not only did these experiments give them some of the features and abilities of birds (they have wings, they can fly, and most of them can see as well as eagles), most of them have other special abilities. For instance, little Angel, the youngest, can read minds.

Their relatively peaceful lives are disrupted when Erasers, vicious human/wolf genetic experiments, enter their home. The Erasers take Angel away, and the remaining children are determined to take her back. Max, the leader of the group by virtue of her age, makes two of the kids stay - the Gasman, because he's only 8, and Iggy, because he's blind. Max, Nudge, and Fang fly off to get Angel, who is being experimented upon the entire time the others are trying to get her back. Unfortunately, the rescue team is first delayed when they oversleep after stopping to grab a bite to eat and a nap. Then they're delayed again when Max separates from the group to help a girl in trouble. Max gets shot and recuperates in the company of the girl and her mother - Fang and Nudge don't know any of this and are left to wait for her and wonder whether they should go on without her. The two children who were left behind eventually join up with the rescue team after Erasers destroy their home. Once Max has finally healed up enough, all five kids are ready to get Angel back. Unfortunately, they're captured by Erasers first.

After they're captured, the kids discover that the man (Jeb) who originally helped free them from the School, who cared for them like a father, and who they thought was dead is actually still alive and has apparently betrayed them. He's now back on the side of those who'd like to experiment on them. He tells Max that she should trust him, that she is destined to save the world. Max, of course, doesn't believe him, and she and the others escape the first chance they get.

The kids no longer have a home, but they do know that there's an institute of some sort where they might find answers about themselves, located somewhere in New York. They fly over there, with Erasers occasionally making their lives difficult. New York, with all its people, is like nothing they've ever experienced. They have some difficulties, but they eventually find the institute and discover many more genetically altered beings like themselves. They also find out the names and locations of almost everyone's parents. Only Max, who has been hearing a voice in her head ever since they escaped from the school for the second time in their lives, still doesn't know who her parents are. However, after she accidentally kills an Eraser named Ari, Jeb, Ari's father, shouts at her that Ari was her brother.

I've never read any of James Patterson's books before, although I've read about his books on Sam Sattler's blog Book Chase. I didn't really like his fondness for short chapters - most of them are only 2 to 4 pages long, which is why the book has 134 chapters. I suppose Patterson figured it'd make the book seem even faster-paced than it already is - and I think he'd be right about that, although it does occasionally make for a somewhat jarring read (chapter one ends in the middle of a sleepy morning exchange - very odd). The book seems to barely give readers a chance to breathe - readers haven't even really gotten a chance to know the kids, who are still waking up and figuring out what to eat for breakfast, before Erasers come barging in to grab Angel. Then Max is organizing the rescue mission - it's as much action as possible, with as little backstory and character development as possible.

With all these characters doing things all the time, you'd think it'd be non-stop excitement, but that's not actually the case. It turns out that these kids have the attention spans of goldfish. I'll forgive them the oversleeping - they're just kids, and they were exhausted. However, Max, who tells us herself that Angel is her favorite and almost like her own child, who is supposed to be frantic to save her, takes a detour to save some girl she doesn't know. I'm guessing this is supposed to show us that she's the kind of justice-seeking girl who would do that, but it still struck me as odd. I wonder, too, if she had been killed, would Fang and Nudge have continued waiting for her, letting Angel be experimented upon until she died? It kind of seemed that way. Again, even though the kids say that the rescue mission is urgent, I'm not seeing this urgency in their actions. Don't even get me started on all the silly shopping sprees and splurges in New York - how much did these kids steal from that one guy's bank account, anyway??

The feeling that the kids were on some kind of pre-set course also bothered me, although I'm thinking that this, at least, was intentional. It's hard not to feel like the kids are being herded when Max is doing everything the voice in her head is telling her to do. If I were her, I don't think I'd be trusting a strange voice in my head, especially not one that's telling me some of the same stuff as Jeb, the guy she figures betrayed them all.

Despite all the stuff I didn't like about the book, I still read it all in a day. Do you know how long it's been since I've finished something that quickly outside of a holiday break period? Even as the non-stop action and Max's oh-so-snappy mental "voice" (by which I mean her thoughts, not the voice in her head) annoyed me, they also propelled me forward. I can't imagine ever spending money on this, but do I expect I'll be checking out the rest of the series? I'm embarrassed to admit that the answer is probably "yes."

One last thought: I wonder, did Patterson repeat Chapter 1's first line at the beginning of Chapter 64 on purpose, or did he just forget that he used those exact words before? Maybe he really liked those sentences?

For once, it was really easy to come up read-alikes. I would've also liked to add a couple comic book titles, Gen13 and The X-Men to the list, but it was difficult to decide which collected volume I should link to (especially since both titles can be considered to have more than one "beginning"). All I'll say about those, then, is that The Angel Experiment's pacing and super-powered characters made me think of a comic book - I was going to say that it wouldn't surprise me if the books were adapted into comic books, but then I saw this (I guess it's "cooler" now for something to be turned into manga, or at least something with manga-influenced art).

Read-alikes:

• The Strange Power (book) by L. J. Smith - This is the first book is Smith's Dark Visions series. Kaitlyn Fairchild is a psychic whose drawings predict the future. The only problem is, her drawings usually don't make sense until after whatever they predict has happened. When she finds out about the Zeetes Institute, a place where she can learn to control her abilities, she decides to go, but the institute may have have more sinister intentions than Kaitlyn realizes. Those who'd like another fairly fast-paced story with a menacing institute and teens with special powers might want to try this.
• Blood+ (anime TV series) - Although most humans don't know it, humankind and Chiropterans, monsters that feed on the blood of the living, are at war. An organization known as the Red Shield tracks down Chiropterans and exterminates them. Saya believes she is an ordinary high school girl until she comes upon several Chiropterans at school one day and is encouraged to fight them by a mysterious man named Hagi (sometimes spelled Haji, which I prefer) who claims to be her Chevalier. Saya, who had had no memory of her life beyond the past year, begins to re-discover her past and her role in the fight against Chiropterans. Unfortunately, her formerly peaceful and idyllic family life is gradually destroyed beyond repair. Those who'd like another story about a teenage girl who used to be part of some kind of experiment/project and whose job it is to save the world might want to try this.
• Catwings (book) by Ursula K. LeGuin - I've actually linked to the four-volume set rather than just the first book, because I couldn't find a page for the book in Amazon that didn't list it as "out of print." In Catwings, Mrs. Jane Tabby is surprised when she gives birth to four winged kittens. The city is not a safe and kind place, so Mrs. Tabby eventually tells her children to fly off and search for someplace better. The kittens have a tough time of it, but they eventually find a home where they can be happy and safe. Those who'd like to try another story about winged misfits who have a hard time finding a good place for themselves might want to try this. The kittens aren't running from anything in particular, and there's no "saving the world" aspect, but, other than that, I couldn't help but think of this book as I read The Angel Experiment. Winged kittens, winged children...
  
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (live action TV series) - Buffy used to be a popular cheerleader, until she discovered that she's the Slayer, the girl whose job it is to defeat the supernatural baddies intent on killing everything and taking over the world. She does her job with the help of her friends, her Watcher (her high school's librarian), and, eventually, a brooding vampire. Those who'd like another story with snappy dialogue and a super-powered teen who's supposed to save the world might want to try this.
• Night Pleasures (book) by Sherrilyn Kenyon - This book, as well as the series it is part of, is intended for an older audience than The Angel Experiment. Kyrian is a Dark-Hunter, someone who's given up his soul to the goddess Artemis in order to be able to exact vengeance after death. Part of the price he must pay is that he must continue to fight for Artemis, battling Daimons (a bit like vampires, only their main goal is to consume the souls of their victims). Kyrian meets Amanda after the two are attacked and handcuffed together. Amanda's never been one to believe in the supernatural, but seeing Kyrian fight Daimons shakes her world view up a bit. Along the way, Kyrian and Amanda fall in love, but they're going to have to get Kyrian's soul back from Artemis if they want to have any kind of a life together. Those who'd like another fast-paced story with characters who have snappy "mental voices" and dialogue might want to try this.