Angel by James Patterson - A Review

Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why do I keep reading books by this author when they drive me to distraction? Well I’ll get on to that later but in the meantime, as you might have guessed, I've got another James Patterson novel to review. This time it’s ‘Angel,’ the seventh in his Maximum Ride series.

Now I’m not entirely unbiased in this review. I didn’t come to this book expecting nothing of it. I firmly believe that the series should have stopped at the third book, ‘Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports.’ I don’t think that it should have continued past that.

And yet here we are. At number seven.

Well let’s take a look at it then.

First off the beginning is a bit naff. James Patterson’s standard opening for this series seems to be, ‘They were shot at. Chaos ensues.’ This is itself stupid but when the attack on them comes after getting in a plane with those who were trying to kill one of them last book you start banging your head off the wall. It is made borderline plausible later on but it’s still pretty dumb.

Then you have the main villains in the book. Again, there usually doesn’t seem much point to them after the third book, apart from a few that have just been randomly tacked on. But these ones really take the biscuit. For one thing they pick the sublimely subtle name of ‘The Doomsday Group,’ which was so under the radar that Fang decided that they were the enemy after seeing them on the Evening News. This group appear to worship Maximum Ride and all other mutations, which is odd considering they appear to try and kill them in the first fifty pages.

And then you have the style of writing. James Patterson seems to be trying to leave every chapter on a cliff-hanger. Which is fine in principle but when your chapters are only two pages or so long it kind of leaves everything a bit highly strung. And also some of the methods used to do this are out of place and unexplained. Bombs go off that seem to have no purpose what-so-ever. They get attacked by random people. More random people appear who might have some significance but then again might not. And so on.

Finally the ending. Is annoying. Period. It doesn’t make sense for one thing. The whole scheme sort of comes together but is nowhere near as big as expected. The continuality seems to go. At one point I swear that someone pops out of a hole, hits a few bad guys then jumps down the hole again. And more pointless drama.

So that’s the annoying things about it. Let’s look at what it does well.

Ok, the romance and the fighting.

Maximum Ride has always had fighting in it, with the Flock seeming to be able to take out literally hundreds of foes at a time. Happily this time is doesn’t seem to be quite so ridiculous and what fights there were had been done well. So that’s a point in its favour. And then the romance. Frankly this is what I usually get the books for anyway. Fang, the previous book, ended with such a sweet letter that it completely made up for all the other discrepancies that that book had had. So I was looking for a follow up in this book.

Did I get it? Sort of.

There was a fair bit of the soppy stuff in it but it seemed more muddled and half hearted. One of the problems I’ve had reading these books is that it seems very of the cliché American Teenager. Lots of high-fives and ‘dude!’s. That isn’t really anyone I know so I can’t really relate to it. So while the relationship stuff was alright it wasn’t great. Which kind of summarises the whole book really.

And yet, when the final one comes out in February I’m still going to buy it. Why?

Because I do actually like the premise. I like a lot of what goes into the books. I don’t think they’re very well done and they make me as annoyed as anything but in parts they’re still enjoyable to read. So I’m giving this a five out of ten and hoping that it gets better for the finale and that James Patterson clears up some of the many, many loose ends that he’s left lying around.

And if you want to buy the book, here’s the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maximum-Ride-Angel-James-Patterson/dp/1846054664/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325203974&sr=1-4
If you want to see my more off the cuff review then click this link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibenoRw5lgM&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL