If you name yourself Maximum Ride, you better be prepared for something like that.

Hey guys! Been a while.

I’ve been having one of those too-young-to-be-having mid-life-crisis-y moments.  As a result, I’ve been feeling pretty small. It’s all go to do with my chemistry major – I always thought I’d end up loving what I study. Four years later, I’m still not feelin’ the love. And graduating with this depressed feeling is… well, not great. I feel kind of loose and direction-less and it sucks. Well, anyway, that’s why I haven’t been around. Been too busy thinking about this and surfing the web, talking to people, attending forums, hoping that maybe there’s a chemistry related career possibility that I could end up loving and embracing.

So, back to the books.

Title: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

Author: James Patterson

Genre: Science-fiction

Days to read it: One

Suggested reading atmosphere: Bored? Need some action and need it now? Well, get off your brain couch and exercise your imagination by reading this.

Review:

I finished reading James Patterson’s Maximum Ride: The angel experiment. It was quite the adrenaline ride.

Humans and animals – what’s with our overwhelming desire to transcend the inter-species boundary and see what we get? A pig-snake? A snake-pig? An unethical mess?

Max Ride and her crew are scientific success stories. With a retractable package of wings, hawk vision and other powers, they could pretty much go and do whatever they like. But the baby-stealing mad scientists of the book would rather shock them to test their reaction time, run them to exhaustion to test their stamina and, oh yes, to keep them sleep deprived and antsy by sending other genetically modified dog-people with no morals after them. The relentless march of visionaries!

At the same time this is all happening, Max, the oldest of the gang, tries to fill that missing void in their lives – family. A place to put trust and love. Who can they trust in this world? Good looking people with honey sweet voices? White coats with curious, unfeeling eyes and syringes? What starts out as a rescue mission slowly becomes a quest to discover the truth of their birth, a quest to figuring out why they were made, heck, a quest to find real homemade cookies. It’s that ultimate need to belong. To be able to crash on the couch and watch after school TV programs, receive a goodnight’s kiss from a loved one – to be accepted. But someone with wings can only be a flying freak show, right?

In this novel we have a glimpse of this on-the-run lifestyle from inside Max’s mind the most. She must make difficult decisions that could lead the others – her family – into danger and worse. Not only does she have to be on constant alert for very large dog-like mutants with bad breath and smug one-liners, she has to think of basic survival necessities – which dumpster has food that’s still relatively fresh? Which hole in the subway also has good escape routes? And things keep getting worst. As a mutant she has no idea how long she’ll last before her brain implodes from the instability of the avian DNA. And someone or something keeps hinting that she has a huge quest to save the world, to boot. But she’s tough, and she’s determined and she has a strong sense of justice. I like her.

The other characters are equally endearing. Fang, the second oldest – most in tune with his animal half, just as tough as Max, silent and broody and single worded. Iggy, the bomb building geek who lost his sight due to an experiment gone wrong. Nudge who feels the strongest need to search for her family as well as the strongest need to fill up the silence with chatter. Gazzy, a little hero in the making whose courage outweighs his fears. And, Angel, a sweet little girl with crazy powers. With such a big quest on everyone’s mind, they’ll need all the solidarity they can get.

Be prepared for surprises, on-the-tip-o-your-toes action, dry wit and a really, a pretty good story. The ending is a cliff-hanger, and I’m left wishing I had bought the book after this (but knowing that I should probably be doing some work, now).

Excerpt:

Hours went by. In the dictionary, next to the word stress, there is a picture of a midsize mutant stuck inside a dog crate, wondering if her destiny is to be killed or to save the world.

Okay, not really. But there should be.

If you can think of anything more nerve-wracking, more guaranteed to whip every fiber in your body up in a knot, you let me know.

[…]

When Angel whispered, “Where are Gazzy and Iggy?” I just shrugged. Her face fell, and I looked hard at her. They got away. They’re okay.

She read my thoughts, gave a tiny nod, then gradually slumped against the side of her crate, worn out.

After that, all I could do was send meaningful glances.

For hours.

My headache was back, and when I shut my eyes all these images danced on the backs of my eyelids.

At one point a whitecoat came in and dumped another “experiment” into the crate next to mine. I glanced over, curious, then quickly turned away, my heart aching. It looked enough like a kid to make me feel sick, but more like a horrible fungus. Huge pebbly growths covered most of its body. It had few fingers and only one toe, suck onto the end of a foot like a pod. Senseless blue eyes looked out at me, blinked.

Sometime in the next half hour, I realized the “experiment” was no longer breathing. It had died, right next to me.

Horror-struck, I looked across at Angel. She was crying. She knew.

Rating: 4.5/5 teddy bears dressed as angels

Other Reviews:

– Darla at Books and other thoughts: “The book ends with a few questions answered – but those questions all raise new issues, and challenges, for Max and her friends, and I will definitely be continuing with the series so I can accompany Max on her further high-flying adventures.”

– Nish from Nishita’s Rants and Raves: “And you know what, this book was not too bad. I can’t say I loved the book or the writing. But, I did like the characters and the concept. The book drags strangely in places (the numerous narrow escapes from sticky situations got real tired real soon). I also did not like the concept where each time they are in a spot, one of the kids discovers some strange power within themselves to solve the problem.”

– Enna Isilee from Squeaky Books: “I really enjoyed this book. I’ve heard bits and peices about it throughout the years it’s been out, but I’ve never had the interest to pick it up myself. I’m really glad I did.”

– Not Nessie from Today’s Adventure: “In summary, this is a great book, I will for sure be reading the rest of the series if I can ever snatch them before those sneaky teens at my library get their grubby hands in there.

– Sandy from You’ve GOTTA read this!: “I was mildly entertained by this audio. I would not put it in the class of The Hunger Games, but would liken it more to the Pendragon series.”