Book Brief - The Angel Experiment: Maximum Ride, Book 1

The Angel Experiment: Maximum Ride, Book 1
James Patterson
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (April 1, 2007)

“The thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.”

With an opening line like that I had “maximum” expectations for this book. Unfortunately, the “ride” goes downhill from there.

Max and his “flock” can fly, literally. They are unusually strong and have other talents that are emerging as they grow and encounter trials in their “flight” from home. It soon becomes obvious that they are the result of some recombinant DNA technology by scientists from the School. The youngest of the “flock” is captured and the rest of the novel relates the tale of her rescue as Max and the others try to save her, and themselves, from the scientists and their henchmen, a human/wolf mutant species known as the Erasers.

There is really nothing new here, at least compared to the typical, “written like a movie”, young adult fare of today. Parents are “total scuzzes”. “Grown-ups are the ones destroying the world...” and kids are the only ones that can save us. When they do they are going to do it in their own independent, crude (just think of the word and they use it), blasphemous (once again, almost any one you can think of), and violent way. They will go to any extreme including dishonesty, “Honesty is always good, except when it’s better to lie.”, stealing, “Are we stealing that car?...No, we’re sort of thinking about borrowing it.”, and lot’s of violence. Can’t we do better than this?

If you can get past all of the above, not to mention the lack of logic (Angel can’t read the thoughts of everyone?), one redeeming feature that could be used by parents in discussing this novel is around the use of genetic technology. This is just another reminder for us of the danger and potential for evil as we play “god”.

“The “scientists” back at the School had been playing with risky stuff, combining human and non-human DNA. Basically, the spliced genes started to unravel after a while, and the organisms tended to, well, self-destruct. The flock and I had seen it happen a million times: The rabbit-dog combo had been such bad news. Same with the sheep-macaque monkey splice. The mouse-cat experiment had produced a huge, hostile mouse with great balance and an inability to digest either grain or meat. So it starved to death.”

Even if, pragmatically, the technology works at some point, there are other reasons to hope that any DNA experimentation, in real life, is soon starved to death.

Rating: Avoid