Customer Reviews

The Angel Experiment: A Maximum Ride Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a teenager, I always look for a book that has a bit of everything: romance(just a bit), action, adventure, suspense, and mystery. And Maximum Ride had everything I was looking for, without being too overwhelming.
In summary, the story is about a group of six kids who can fly, and all have amazing abilities that they discover. There's Max, fourteen, the oldest, and the leader,Fang, only four months younger, Iggy, six months younger, and also fourteen, and then there's Nudge, eleven, Gazzy, who's eight, and Angel, who's only six.
Then Angel is kidnapped, and their once-peaceful world is turned upside down- again. So Max and the rest of the "Flock" must go and rescue her from the horrible place they had once fled...facing questions like: Will I survive to see tommorow? Will I ever be normal? What the heck is NORMAL like?
James Patterson weaves a splendid tale of growing up and what family really means, and leaves a satisfying ending open for the next book.
It's full of wit, humour, and lots of kick-butt action. I'd recommend this book for ages eleven and up.

Maximum ride is a story of its own. It's a story about 6 young kids all under the age of 14 trying to survive on their own. Max, also known as Maximum Ride, is the leader of them bunch. Max, 14, who is also the oldest, has a mission in life, which she does not know about at the beginning. She must save the world. Meanwhile, the other kids -which are known to her as family are Fang and Iggy, both 13, Nudge, 11, Gazzy, 8, and Angel, 6- have a mission as well. To find their parents. But there is one problem. These kids aren't just normal you and me kids, but are 98% human and 2% bird... which means they can fly. The have the ability to fly. There are also another type of species known as erasers, which are part-human, part-wolf. These beasts are on the evil side of the kids, but the kids have one advantage. They can fly and the erasers can't. At the beginning of the book, while the kids go for a stroll, Angel, the youngest of the flock gets captured by some erasers, and gets taken back to "the school". The school is where the kids became mutant. The kids, which do not know, were handed from their parents to the school to become mutant when they were babies.The group of kids quickly go and find the school with obstacles of their own to look after as well. Finally, they get Angel and go to Manhattan to another "School" called the institute. Where they have all little children, becoming mutant held hostage. They free the kids, blow up the intstitue and go lok for their parents. Unfortunately, Max does not have any information about her parents... what will happen next? Read the book and find out!

Maximum RIde is a very good book about six kids,Max Fang and Iggy are 14 Nudge is 11 the Gasman is 8 and Angel is 6,who can fly. They were kept in cages until Jeb, a whitecoat, kidnaped them and looked after them for 2 years. Until Jeb mistiriosly vanishes so the Flock is by them selfs for the next 2 years. One day Erasers,half humman half wolfs, kidnap Angel... Thats when the story begins.

This book was the best book i have ever read. I encourage others to read it too.

I have a few of Patterson's books and this series is way out there. 6 kids that can fly - cool. They have a few different powers that have not all been discovered yet.

This is the beginning of the series, an intro I guess you can say. The kids do find a few answers to a few questions but its only the beginning. Thanks to Mr. Patterson, I will need to buy the next books to find out what happens next, like will they find the lab, find their real parents, what is the story about saving the world, and so on.

It is a fast read and very enjoyable!

RECOMMENDED

- Michel

I read this book because I knew people who were fans of it, and because i'd read James Patterson's adult books, and some of them were pretty good. However, this book was slightly disappointing to me. It didn't have the grip that a lot of books do, or that it should've, and I found it ran on in places. It somethimes felt that he'd dumbed down some of his speech and made his characters seem very immature just to make it readable for teens, which, as a teen, I found insulting. It wasn't super interesting, but worth getting through. If you make it to the end, the last quarter of the book was fairly good, and the second book was a vast improvement over this one.

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, 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.

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I absolutly love Maximum Ride. It is my all time favorite. I love Max's sarcasme and how she has feelings she refuses to admit! This book is like a ride that just gets better and faster every second. A real accomplishement for James Patterson.

I have read MANY of James Patterson's books and i am a huge fan of his style of writing, this book however just became my all-time favorite! I LOVED the way he wrote this story and the characters that he developed, i was enjoying the book so much that i did not want it to end and therefore would only read two or three pages a night.

I am not normally one to like a sci-fi twist on things, but he so beautifully created and molded this story that to me it felt completely believable and possible. I even found myself chuckling out loud on the bus during certain parts and obviously recieved a few inquiring looks as a result. This book is heartfelt and touching with light and enjoyable humor dispersed throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and i was even more excited to find that there is a sequal!

Mr. Patterson said this was one of his favorite books to write and it has definitely become one of my favorite books to read!

This book is so amazing. It is jam-packed with action, adventure, even some comical parts. It is based on a group of 6 hybrid kids, led by 14 year old Maximum Ride. After an attack by wolfmen, they are thrown into the adventure of a lifetime to get back a loved one who was taken away. They are all led to the palce they hate the most, the School. This is where they were turned into the mutants that they are, 98% human, 2% avian. What a big difference that 2% can make!! This book is superbly written, and is a very entertaining novel, for any ages, not jsut teens. I would recommend it to anyone...If you're reasding this, then go out and buy it!

James Patterson enters the young adult fiction arena with a whimper, with this far-fetched sci-fi saga which borrows heavily from the recycle bin of Dean Koontz. The titular character (Yep, "Maximum Ride" is a character in the book) is the leader of a group of six children who call themselves "The Flock". Each child has been subjected to genetic experimentation at a place called "The School", where evil scientists have "improved" them with avian DNA. This has resulted in each child growing a pair of wings large enough to take flight, as well as a number of other "side effects" which the children are now discovering.

Max is fourteen years old, and can fly at supersonic speed using her thirteen foot wingspan. Amazingly, she can fold away her wings somewhere in the framework of her 5' 8" body so that she appears to the world as a normal teenaged girl wearing a hoodie.

Fang is the tall, dark and handsome one who is amazingly strong and resilient.

Iggy is blind, due to the scientists' failed attempts to improve his night vision. His talents include making explosive devices and cooking. His other senses have been sharpened to compensate for his lack of vision.

Nudge is the talkative one, and also a computer hacker with developing psychic powers.

The Gasman a.k.a. Gazzy is a flatulent eight year old, best friend and co-conspirator to Iggy and the biological brother of Angel.

Angel is the baby at age six, with eight foot wide white wings. She can read and manipulate people's minds, and we learn that she can also breathe underwater using invisible gills.

The school has also produced another species called "The Erasers", who are children who have been "enhanced" with wolf DNA. This is a handsome species, until they start morphing into super strong werewolf-like beings. The Erasers are the security force for The School and are licensed to kill if necessary.

Anyway, after you've swallowed all the above, I won't burden you much longer except to say that Max and rest of the Flock originally escaped The School thanks to a scientist named Jeb, who set them up with a safe house and lived with them for a while before he disappeared. Their happy home is thrown into disarray when Angel is kidnapped by the Erasers, and the Flock heads out into the world on a search and recovery mission. This leads to a quest for the meaning of life, and ultimately to New York City, where Max begins hearing voices.

Having plowed through more than 450 pages of this kind of fluff, the reader should logically expect a conclusion, but Patterson fails to deliver even this, leaving ends dangling untidily all over the place, with no ending in sight.

I had a hard time with this one, and if your teenager has an enquiring mind I'd advise them to look elsewhere for their Sci-Fi / Fantasy needs.

Amanda Richards