Maximum Ride series
I realise that Maximum Ride series is apparently a great sensation – earned James Patterson big bucks, got made into a movie, which the author himself wrote the screenplay for, yada, yada.
I absolutely hated it.
In fact, I don’t know what the editor was thinking when he approved Patterson’s draft. I don’t know what the publisher was thinking either when he agreed that this book had potential and ought to be published. The movie doesn’t even bear mentioning (I actually saw the first five minutes of it and I don’t know how they managed to do it, but it was even crappier than the books)
I sure as hell don’t know what I was thinking that I continued reading this book to the end, instead of tossing it.
So, yeah. I read this one to the end. And the next, and the next, and the next, until a self-disgusted epiphany (what am I doing with my life?) made me stop. Seriously. This series had a addicting effect – at least to me. I didn’t like the first book, in any way, and still I picked up the second. I finished the second and rated it a single star, and yet I took up the third. And so on.
And now I want the twenty wasted hours of my life back.
So what’s the story? There are this bunch of genetically re-engineered kids, who have like, 2% avian genes mixed in them, which caused them to sprout wings (W. H. E. E. Z. E. Let alone the sheer science behind this that I’m ignoring, what the author is trying to say is that apparently, wings make up only 2% of a bird. Or a bird-human, for that matter.) and they can fly, and they have this special powers as well. They escaped this place called School, where they were kept in inhuman conditions, and there is this other group of re-engineered kids who were mixed with wolf genes, called Erasers, who are always after them. And one of their members gets captured, and the flock goes to rescue them, and…
Gah. The premise itself wasn’t great or even original(apart from the genetic-re-engineering thing, which was just plain tacky), and the execution is even worse. The characters are flat, uninteresting, irritating; their names alone pissed me off(seriously. Iggy? The Gasman? Fang? Ugh. Who was tripping on what during the making of this book?) I don’t remember the particulars, but the whole book is anticlimactic. The action scenes look laughably forced, and the writing is stilted and horrible.
Grating, one-dimensional, half-baked and poorly written, Maximum Ride – The Angel Experiment is not worth one bit of the hype surrounding it. Don’t waste your time on this book. Seriously. Go pick up some boring history thesis instead – that would be a better read than this.
0 Comments