Too Horrible to Bear

[mrissa]

My grandfather lent me James Patterson's Maxmium Ride: the Angel Experiment, because it's an SF YA by one of his favorite authors, and I like SF and YAs.

Um.

I can't say for sure whether James Patterson is patronizing because this is a YA. I've never read his other stuff. For all I know, James Patterson patronizes all his readers, not just the young ones.

But this book, this book, oh. So very bad. I quit about a third of the way in, and I'm not going back. There has just been a major plot twist, and I don't even care, because this book is so bad. So there's the patronizing tone, which is bad enough -- readers can never infer how someone is feeling, we have to be told -- and then there's the science. These kids have wings. Huge wings that they can actually fly on. That fold up tightly enough that they can pass for normal until they have their shirts off. Uh-huh. Right. Go read Laurel Winter, for heaven's sake. And also they have really light bones but are amazing good fighters, because having bones like a bird would not matter in hand-to-hand combat between preteen bird-boned people and adult men. Light bone density, as we all know, is only an advantage, never a drawback.

And there are all the Teenage Perspective, Dammit clichés, and then, oh, oh, oh. The Evil Scientists? Apparently they know even less science than James Patterson. Because here is their reaction when one of the bird-kids does something really cool: "Amazing. Cognitive ability. Interpretive skills. Creative problem solving. Dissect her brain. Preserve her organs. Extract her DNA." Um...riiiiight. Because 1) you have to kill things to extract their DNA and 2) preserving organs is of more scientific interest than watching them work and 3) you get a lot more data from a dissected brain than from a functional brain. Yes. The minute scientists see creative problem solving in something, they want to kill it! kill kill kill! because they are scientists, and scientists like killing stuff! Science is really all about killing stuff, and not about figuring stuff out at all!

Life is too damn short for you to read this book.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Heh. My "Heavy Things" was in part my reaction story to Growing Wings in particular (because I happened to be in the process of reading it) and people-with-wings books in general.

Humanswithwingsdonotgettofly. That is all.

(Well, that isn't all if you're really clever and fancy about it. But if they're just plain ol' humans with wings? That. Is. All.)

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Susan Vaught's STORMWITCH is the one I've been pimping, that I haven't heard a lot of people talk about.

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

Heh. I almost bought it for the same reasons. (SF YA can't go too wrong, RIGHT?) But then I read a few pages.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

All of James Patterson's stuff reeks.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I think we need to add a rant category about when celebrities/adult writers try to write for young people.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Gosh, that sounds horrible. Don't you get the impression that Patterson thinks DNA is sort of like tendons and can only be "extracted" by being pulled out strand by strand with pincers?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The one what?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Quite possibly. Although I write for both, and some people I really respect write for both.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, just so. I think he's confused about the nature of DNA in general, actually, about whether the kids in this book have altered DNA or whether they have had bits of it spliced on or what. Also he seems to think that a combination of wolf and human DNA would allow for shapeshifting. As I said, confused.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I used to hope that my middle name meant that I was secretly a werewolf.

No dice yet, but maybe soon?

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Is your middle name loup or something?

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry! The YA book. It's a fantasy set in 1960s Mississippi.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Wolf.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, that's /much/ more straightforward. Don't mind me...

(Being a were-being of the non-traditional sort would be fun. I don't want to, say, lose control of myself at the full moon, or what have you.)

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

All of Patterson's books are that bad. That's why he's so popular!

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

It's my mom's maiden name, which is allegedly how I got it...but my way would be so much cooler!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, you are clearly an adult Hannah, so puberty isn't the trigger. Could be pregnancy, menopause, something else entirely non-hormonal....

Maybe you'll be bitten by a radioactive spider and have to change your name.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Alas, my Dinosaurs&WorldPeace friend has the monopoly on that one. He wanted (still wants, I'm sure) to be Spiderman when he grew/grows up.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, clearly you can't be Spiderman. You'd be about as good a Spiderman as I would be a cabana boy for retrobabble. But Hannah Spider Bowen, maybe.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Many of my favorite authors are good writers period without respect to genre or age group. That's no excuse for Madonna, however.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

They need to dissect the brain to check for rabies... or better yet, vCJD? ::giggles:: because clearly the wings are a symptom of some kind of brain disease.

Or possibly they're zombie scientists? Because science is all about the zombies. ::giggles more::

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My secret reason for leaving physics revealed: the braaaaaain eating just got to be too much.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

"You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!"

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

So, is this like the feeling one gets when trying to read Robert Jordan?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Life is too damn short"? Yes, that's generally my take on Robert Jordan.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

On Robert Jordan books, I should say, as I have no opinions on Robert Jordan as a person.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about Gertrude Stein.