…I’m still alive! I’ve got a couple of other projects going on at the moment, so sporkings will probably be farther apart, if you hadn’t already guessed. It’s my goal to get at least one up a month, but we’ll see how it goes.
Chapter Sixteen
Otherwise known as “Nothing happening over here; move along now”.
We’re with Angel again. I hate Angel. Patterson has no idea how to write a six-year-old girl, so her narrative is very clinical and detached, with occasional “cute” things that he thinks a little kid would say.
The entirety of this two-page chapter can be summed up in a single paragraph:
Angel is running on a treadmill because the “scientists” want to…find out how long she can run without stopping, I guess. If she stops, she gets electrocuted. She passes out and dreams that Max is comforting her. When she wakes, up, the scientists are discussing how incredible she is and how they want to dissect her brain. Once more, we are told — in Angel’s own words — that the scientists don’t view her as human. Then she is taken back to her cage, where she notices that one of the two creatures from earlier is missing, presumably dead.
That is a waste of two pages. Max spends a good part of her chapters — I usually skim over them — wondering what kind of horrors Angel is being subjected to. So why not just leave it at that? All the suspense is being drained out of it if we already know that Angel is alive and (relatively) unharmed.
Chapter Seventeen
This bed was horrible! What was wrong with my bed?
In case you can’t tell by the whining, we’re back with Max.
I’m still not entirely sure of what Patterson’s going for here. If he’s trying to make us see how being an annoying whiny brat is one of Max’s flaws, then good for him! If not, then I would just like to remind y’all that not one chapter ago, Angel, who’s been sleeping in a dog cage, passed out from exhaustion.
And Max is whining about her bed.
Also, there’s a fair bit of repetition in the above quote. I would have replaced the second sentence with “What was wring with it?” or, better yet, just drop the sentences altogether.
And the rest of the quotes here speak for themselves.
I was in a…cabin. A cabin! Ohhh. A cabin. Right, right.
Would now be a good time to tell you that this book has four out of five stars on both Goodreads and Amazon?
Derp aside, I think that this might be slightly relevant later.
It was oh-dark-thirty […]
Yeah, I have no clue either.
[..] Obviously Fang, Nudge, and I had wasted precious hours sleeping!
Is anyone else getting the impression that Patterson is an eleven-year-old girl?
[In response to Fang asking what time it is] “Almost morning!” I said, terribly upset.
“I’m trying not to rip up this book!” I said, terribly enraged.
So Fang steals grabs (It’s fine when you don’t know the victims in question) a few cans of food, despite Max telling him not to. They all head out.
Chapter Eighteen
Pointless chapter break. It’s like a pointless scene break, but worse.
But still! How stupid was that? What kind of a loser was I, to let us fall asleep in the middle of a freaking rescue?
Maybe the kind who doesn’t want to get killed? I mean, they’d gotten beaten up pretty bad the previous day — Max had been kicked in the head so hard that she’d been unconscious for over a minute. That’s…pretty bad.
(We are so not talking about Nudge, okay?)
So, yes, I expect them to rest. Even if they did manage to drag themselves to the school, the best they’d have been able to do is stumble through the doors.
And Fang says almost the exact same thing, only in much fewer words. You know, strong and silent an’ all.
Or a Neanderthal.
“Me Fang. Me not like big words. Me need rest.”
Fang was right, of course — sigh — …
How dare he disagree with Max! I’m starting to sense a rivalry here. I mean, he never listens to her. They’re so dysfunctional that they can’t even work together in a crisis.
So, um, there’s some pointless blabbing while the audience wonders how it’s possible to talk in midair going ninety miles per hour. And then…
But if worst came to worst, I had a secret Plan C. If it worked, everyone would escape and get free. Except me. But that was okay.
I… I can’t even start with this. I mean, I know that we like our suicidal heroes and all, but this is a bit late to get the audience’s sympathies and all.
Fifty bucks says that she never even has to use Plan C.
Chapter Nineteen
Gah, more Max.
Blah blah blah, they’re flying and it’s so amazing, Angel is being tortured, there are lots of birds, for all Max knows her sister is dead by now, and all the cars look like ants, which makes me think that they’re really not flying so high that people can’t see them. I mean, if they can make out cars, then the people can probably look up and see vaguely humanoid shapes in the sky.
It was cool how some tiny thing, like a swimming pool, a tractor, whatever, would ratchet into focus.
I see! So eyes work like binoculars! That’s really cool; I’ll have to try doing it sometime.
At least those mainiacs at the school hadn’t had time to “improve” my vision like they improved Iggy’s.
Hands down, Max beats me in the “insensitive jerk” category. This is directly after that last qutoe, if you’d like the context.
So Max focuses on more random blobs and, suprise! It’s a group of kids! She immediately starts monologuing about how much better she is than the puny humans.
Those poor saps. While we were free, free, free. Soaring through the air like rockets. Being cradeled by breezes. Doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.
Pretty good, huh? I almost convinced myself.
…Oh, right! Forgot about Angel again. Sorry!
And Max looks again and the group of kids is a group of boys with a girl in the middle! This is automatically threatening, because Patterson’s only allowed one strong female character. The rest are just damsels in distress.
God, I hate to think what would happen if it was just a group of friends that happened to include a female. The universe would probably explode.
I made one of my famous snap decisions, the kind that everyone remembers later for being either that stupidest dumb-butt thing they ever saw or else the miraculous saving of the day. I seemed to hear more about the first kind. That’s graditude for you.
You mean that time Max strapped a bomb to herself to save a puppy from being killed wasn’t heroic? Ungrateful brats.
In all seriousness, every single decision that Max has made has ended in disaster so far. Good luck with this one.So, despite their protests, Max ditches Fang and Nudge (who’s been talking nonstop for three chapters) and goes to save this girl who she doesn’t even know. She’ll meet them at Lake Mead.
Probably.
Chapter Twenty
And back with Gazzy and Iggy! They’re making a bomb — ‘scuse me, Iggy is making a bomb. Now, there are blind people out there who can do some pretty amazing stuff, but there’s a reason why we only let trained professionals blow up things.
Iggy asks Gazzy what color a certain wire is. I don’t think that he’s even sure that any of the wires have colors, let alone different ones, but I guess that he knows, since he’s the one making explosives.
Gazzy replies that it’s yellow, and Iggy tells him that he must not confuse the yellow wire with the red one.
I get it now! They’re building one of those alarm clocks with dynamite taped to the side. In case the Erasers had their brains removed, it also has the word BOMB written on it.
And, just like I called it…
“Go get me Max’s alarm clock. The Mickey Mouse one.”
…Where did she get one of those?
swenson on 15 February 2013, 17:44 said:
I believe that means 12:30 AM in military time, but I don’t know why she’s using military time. Google says it can be used colloquially to mean “really early in the morning”? But I’ve never actually heard someone use it.
lol, really? Really? Was there any research done for this novel at all?
Azure on 15 February 2013, 23:46 said:
I was only half-joking. It’s a mess. Just wait until they hardwire the car! (I can hardly wait!)
Also, thanks for the info on military time. I thought that Patterson was just being silly, but my guess was that he thought that it sounded cool.
Juracan on 16 February 2013, 08:38 said:
o_O
Iggy. Is building a bomb.
Did I miss something? Since when does he know how to build a bomb?
Brendan Rizzo on 16 February 2013, 12:13 said:
Since Patterson said he could, of course. Duh.
Juracan on 16 February 2013, 14:35 said:
…jog my memory. Has Iggy shown any kind of technological skill at all before this point?
Azure on 16 February 2013, 14:50 said:
…Actually, kind of. It’s been mentioned that he and Gazzy had built bombs before, though I kind of assumed that Gazzy did most of the work. Here’s a bit from earlier in the chapter that I thought I’d included, but I guess not.
Guys, Iggy’s a magician!
Oh, and he’s also the cook, which I’m slightly more willing to believe.
Flurrin on 16 February 2013, 15:08 said:
Can we talk about the canned food Fang steals? To bring along on their flight? Canned food is kind of heavy and having a human light enough to fly is already stretching it, but adding canned food to the mixture?… Wouldn’t it just be smarter to stop and dumpster-dive every once in a while? They’re not picky about it later.
Azure on 16 February 2013, 15:21 said:
You know, Max did nix the food for this reason, but Fang just ignored her anyway. So Patterson was actually aware of the problem but did nothing to fix it.
Pryotra on 16 February 2013, 17:08 said:
Honestly, even if the people didn’t notice them for some reason, the military would. They’re flying rather close to an Air Force base that would be very interested in knowing just how those kids got wings.
I can’t really excuse Patterson for not knowing this either. There’s been very little actual research done in this.
Literary gold here, people.
I’ve used it, but my family have been in the Air Force, so it’s not surprising. I’ve never heard someone without the background use it before though.
The same place that she’s gotten everything else since the guy who was supposed to be looking after them vanished.
Brendan Rizzo on 16 February 2013, 18:20 said:
Actually, that was just my way of saying it was a total Ass Pull. Sorry for the confusion.
ScarletSpecter on 16 February 2013, 21:47 said:
Ah, my old enemy. We meet again. Gah! I couldn’t stand this book. I was super hyped and excited about it at first, expecting a kind fun teen Sci Fi novel akin to Animorphs. Instead, what I got was crap. Pure and utter festering crap.
Yep. That’s often the problem with “Teen-Speak” books (The Hunger Games and Divergent come to mind). Useless info dumps mid-paragraph. Reactionary observations. The heroine telling us every trivial detail only for it to be contradicted a couple of pages later. Basically the “prose” reads like the petulant ramblings in a teenage girl’s diary. It doesn’t make it sound deep or immersive like the author may have intended. It only serves to trivialize everything…even when you’re about to be sent off to your death; or when your little sister is captured by a bunch of pervs who want to experiment on her.
This probably leads to my third-person limited bias. So far, one of the only few first peson POV books I’ve read and liked was The Bartimaeus Trilogy. Bartimaeus’ narration is everything Max’s tried (and failed) to be. Witty, sophisticated, and outrageous; but, instead, Max’s narration comes off as a man in his mid-40s
lazilytrying too hard to sound like a teenage girl.Forest Purple on 17 February 2013, 13:24 said:
If this were written well, the first-person POV could show us how Max is still a teenager that makes stupid decisions no matter how much she tries to be a “mother” to the flock. However, as in most first-person novels, the author seems unable to realize how immature their characters actually are.