Book Club Pick: February 2018
Book Details:
Title: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
Author: James Patterson
Series: Maximum Ride series (Book #1)
Country: United States of America
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – Hachette Book Group
First Published: 2005
Pages: 432 (hardback); 448 (paperback)
Publisher’s Description:
Her full name is Maximum Ride. And the girl can fly.
Max’s Missions:
- Protect the rest of her gang – Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gasman, and Angel – from a pack of half-wolf, half-humans with a taste for flying humans.
- Rescue Angel from a crew of wack-job kidnappers.
- Infiltrate a secret facility to track down her friends’ missing parents.
- Get revenge on the one person she thought she could trust.
- Discover the best chocolate chip cookie in New York City.
- Save the whole world, for crying out loud.
Not necessarily in that order, of course.
Review:
The novel follows six children – Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gassman and Angel, who have escaped a facility known as ‘The School’. It is here that genetic experiments were performed on the children. They were injected with avian DNA (98% human; 2% bird), meaning that each child has wings and is able to fly.
The group is being hunted by the Erasers, a group of half human / wolf mutants from The School. When the youngest Angel (age 6) is captured the rest of the group must save her.
14 year-old Max is the leader of the group and novel is written from her point-of-view. The novel uses a third person perspective when the Max is not present.
The chapters are very short (2-5 pages) making it an easy read. The short chapters also give the narrative a fast-paced, action-packed feel.
While there is a lot action there is very little character development, and the ending leaves a lot of unanswered questions to be explored over the series.
A film adaptation was released in 2016.
Links:
James Patterson Official Website
Source: I borrowed this book from my public library.
