"Fly? Me? Nah."

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
By James Patterson

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you genetically altered kids with wings, a chase across America and a strong, feisty heroine. What’s not to love?

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment is the first book in a series of eight. Max is fourteen, and is the leader of her flock, including fourteen year-old Iggy and Fang, eleven year-old Nudge, eight year-old Gazzy, and six year-old Angel. Max and the flock live like any other normal kids – except they have wings. Escaped products of genetic experiments, they now live relatively normally. One day however, Angel is kidnapped by the scientists they escaped from and their half dog-half human “Erasers” and the flock must go on a hunt to bring her back.

Max is a very strong character who fits my criteria for feisty heroines perfectly, and always has a witty comeback handy.

“The next morning-at least, I assumed it was morning, since we were all waking up- I felt like one of those twelve dancing princesses, who danced all night, wore holes in their shoes, and had to sleep it off the next day. Except, oh yeah: a)I'm not a princess; b)sleeping in a subway tunnel and having another brain attack aren't that much like dancing all night; and c) my combat boots were still in good shape. Other than that, it was exactly the same.” 

James Patterson is better known as an author of thriller novels for adults so it’s pretty safe to say that he’s good at cliff-hangers. There were some patches where the writing felt uncomfortable, but overall it was pretty good. The same with the plot; there were some predictable parts, but it moved along at a good pace and had some nice twists.  The writing is very comfortable and incredibly funny.

“Did I want a dog? No. Did I need a dog? Also no. We were six kids running for our lives, not knowing where our next meal was coming from. Could we afford to feed a dog? Wait for it—no.” 

One thing that did annoy me was that all the characters talked older than they were. Now, I’m all for smart characters, but when a six year-old is talking like a 20 year-old, it’s just really weird. I think it would have been easier if everyone had just been a few years older. That also would have made the character development a bit easier to believe. That being said, the books are very good, and very hard to put down.

The ending doesn’t really tie up all the loose ends; however, all the books have been out for a while now and the second book picks up where the first left off. So if you have a free weekend, you can pretty much just plough through the entire series. This book is recommended for any readers who like their heroines on the sarcastic, feisty, take-no-prisoners side.

Feisty Chick-O-Meter: 10/10

Age rating: 13+

Rating: 8/10

Book or audiobook: Book

Stand alone or series: Series

Last word: Max

Length: 464 pages

You knew this was coming, didn’t you?

The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones.
Starring Lilly Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower and Robert Sheenan

I have decided to become a Book Slapper. What is a Book Slapper you ask? A Book Slapper is someone who is on the set of books being adapted into films. Their job is to hit the director with the book every time they say "But what if we just change this to..." Guess which book I'm kicking off my career with? You guessed it, The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones.

I think by now it’s pretty obvious that I love Cassandra Clare’s books. If you haven’t gotten that, I suggest you go back and read my other two posts (here and here); I guess you missed the two sets of 10/10s and raving reviews. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

You back? Let’s continue.

I had seen so many good reviews, watched so many promos, and it looked really good. Granted not as good as the books, but movies very rarely live up to the books, no matter how amazing. Safe to say, I was looking forward to seeing it. Oh how misguided I was. The movie is, quite frankly, a slap in the face to the books and all the fans of the series. This isn’t a matter of the characters not looking like I imagined them; the movie is genuinely bad, complete with bad acting, ridiculous music, and ridiculously major deviations from the book.

All my issues with this movie could be compiled into a book of its own, so let me just cover the six main ones.

1. No one can act. No I take that back. There is one good actor in the entire movie: Jamie Campbell Bower. I know, I know, acting is such a trivial matter, silly me, but seriously, every single other actor is on a scale ranging from Iffy to Oh-My-God-Please-Stop-Talking-Now

2. Clary is pathetic. Was it not Cassandra Clare who said in an interview with The Mary Sue that she wanted to write a series with a female epic hero character who discovers she is a chosen one figure? Then why is Clary a complete wimp in the movie? Excepting the final battle, she spends every single fight screaming, hiding under/behind tables and other pieces of furniture, or running away, and even then she has three moments of feistiness and then returns to her previous position of patheticness. Am I the only one who doesn’t want to watch a movie about a heroine who has to be rescued EVERY. SINGLE. TIME?

3. The music sucks. This seems trivial but it’s not. Part of it is dubstep playing during fight sequences and the rest sounds like fairy princess music playing in the background.

4. Major plot elements are revealed. Okay so you have a huge plot twist that will last over three books. What do you do? Do you a) play it out like it is in the book or do you b) reveal it even before it happens, destroying all chances to spread it out over two more movies? Guess which one the director chose?

5. Everyone has British accents. There are a couple of people for whom it makes sense, but seriously, the movie is set in New York and you only have three characters with American accents. Are you seeing the problem here?

6. I like to call this last one "The Ridiculousness Effect". These are the things that just make the movie look really stupid. Primarily a) Valentine who has now been dubbed (by me) "The Magical Evil Wannabe-Goth Padawan,"* and b)the magical flowers* (the medianox plant). Yes, these are flowers that bloom at midnight. That in itself is perfectly fine, except in the movie they look like something out of a Barbie fairy adventure. These things completely undermine the credibility of the movie even further, and make it look ridiculous.

I have decided that The City of Bones is still an amazing book, and The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones is just an awful movie. They both just happen to share a title, characters, and some basic plot elements. That is all.

But Teya, how do you really feel about the movie?
Haha NO

~~~~

*I tried really hard to find picture, but to no avail. Read the book. Love it. Watch the movie and mock it alongside me.


Feisty chick-o-meter: 3.5/10
Age rating: 13+
Rating: 4/10
Number of explosions: Shoot, I forgot to count. More than one and less than five. Pick a number.