The Angel Experiment Sporkings: Introduction and Prologue

I’ll admit it: The premise of the Maximum Ride books really excited me at first. This series had a lot of potential to be great, and that’s exactly why I’m sporking it. James Patterson is a Big Name Author, with almost a hundred books published. While I don’t claim to have read every single one of them, I know enough to say that Patterson can definitely do better.

The story starts off with this note from Max:

WARNING
If you dare to read this story, you become part of the Experiment.
I know that sounds a little mysterious, but it’s all I can say right now
—Max

You know, if James Patterson was writing, say, middle-grade fiction, I could see him getting away from this. It’s the thing that maybe could draw in a ten-year-old.

But this isn’t middle-grade. I went to two libraries and a major bookstore this weekend just to check this out. In all three locations, the series was classified as YA.

YA. Young Adult. As in, for teenagers.

Trust me, teenagers do not have the attention span of a squirrel. Patterson, you just wasted an entire page on a useless statement. I understand that it’s supposed to sound mysterious and create suspense to draw readers in, but it just really fell flat.

Also? It’s not all you can say right now. The rest of the book is right there.

In short: From the first page of the book, it can already be inferred that Patterson has no idea what age group he’s writing for.

Let’s move on, before I start crying and banging my head against the keyboard.

So there’s this prologue. The first few paragraphs use the same middle-grade writing tactics that might draw in a ten-year old. Do not put this book down, your life depends on it, blah blah blah.

Then things get interesting. Or at least Patterson thinks that they do.

Max, our main character introduces herself to us. She talks about her family, which she calls her “flock”, for a while, then goes on to describe how they’re not normal. You know, in a very vague sort of way

That’s how we get this gem:

Basically, we’re pretty cool, nice, smart – but not “average” in any way.

Besides the fact that Max is pretty much talking about how much of a speshul snowflake she is, this is a really awkward sentence. That “pretty” really didn’t need to be there, and my brain just keeps stumbling over it for some reason. It’s probablu a personal issue, but it’s driving me crazy.

And then we get a lot of backstory.

Max talks about how her flock was trapped in a lab called the School where evil scientists kept them in cages and studied them or something. There are also these wolf/human hybrids – called Erasers – that act as guards at the School. The flock is being hunted by these, apparently.

And that’s pretty much it for the prologue. It spanned about two pages. Now, James Patterson is notorious for his short chapters, but I really don’t feel that the prologue was necessary.

Here’s why:

A prologue is supposed to inform us of events that happened before the start of the story. Okay, check. I mean, I guess that the story starts after they’ve escaped from the School, so…

But another, unwritten, law of prologues is that they don’t really have to be there unless the reader is being told information that the narrator doesn’t have or can’t fit into the story.

Let’s think about this. This prologue was basically a giant infodump of backstory. “Hi, I’m Max, here’s my family, here’s why I’m special, and here’s my past.”

Could this have been worked into Chapter One or dispersed throughout the story? Absolutely.

My second qualm with the prologue is that it’s very vague. A few choice quotes:

We’re — well, we’re kind of amazing.

Are you going to tell us why? Oh, no, wait. We have to get through the rest of this paragraph until we get our next snippet of how special you are.

The six of us […] were made on purpose, by the sickest, most horrible “scientists” you could possibly imagine.

I guess that I’m going to have to imagine, then. There sure is a whole lot of telling here, but not much showing.

[…] we ended up only 98 percent human. The other 2 percent had a big impact, let me tell you.

And that’s the last we hear of the flock’s genetic mutations for the prologue. If the infodump must be there, then it should at least tell me what’s going on with my main characters.

What was the big impact? Why should I even care?

Is anyone going to answer my questions?

Also, on a slightly related note, Patterson seems to think that he’s being very dramatic with his vagueness and cliffhangers. He’s trying too hard, and it shows.

To sum it up, by the end of the first three pages, I:

Next up: Imminent death, kidnappings, and extremely small chapters

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Comment

  1. Soupnazi on 14 October 2012, 19:15 said:

    Aw come on, I just finish sporking the first three books and now I have to spiritually go through them again?

    Well, good luck with this endeavor! You’ll have a lot of headsmashing moments ahead, but plenty of material (honestly, I think my sporks were only really funny at all because of the insanity of the source material) to work with. Maximum Ride is not a book for the faint of heart!

    And I still won’t get over the ridiculously short chapters. Given that they take up half a page (not even counting the end-of-chapter gap) just for a number, James Patterson essentially wastes over a hundred pages in two or three books.

  2. Tim on 14 October 2012, 19:46 said:

    If you dare to read this story, you become part of the Experiment.

    This reminds me of that utterly ridiculous bit in House of Leaves where Truant is telling you the monster is behind you omg don’t look it eats you if you look.

  3. Master Chief on 14 October 2012, 19:48 said:

    I read the third book one, and my brother read 1&2. I do not think the author was even thinking five seconds ahead when he plotted this out. It reads like he literally made everything up as he went along.

  4. swenson on 14 October 2012, 20:14 said:

    it’s all I can say right now (and then all the other lines where things are hinted at but not said)

    I would just like to say that I automatically dislike books that have anything like this in them, either from the narrator to the reader or between characters in a book. If you can’t say anything about something, then don’t hint at it or say parts of it, just don’t say anything about it. And if you’re going to tell everything later on anyway, then just come right out and say it. Pointless secrecy drives the plot of about ninety-five percent of stupid books out there. I don’t like books where it’s like, teeheehee, let’s keep secruds from the audience! No, you idiot, just come out and tell me. You’re trying to build suspense, but I can already guess what’s going on (probably from the back cover blurb). So stop being coy and just say things.

    Quite frankly, I consider it a very cheap way to build suspense. You’re trying to disguise the fact that your plot isn’t very interesting, or maybe that there’s not much to it, or maybe that it’s not all that secretive anyway, so you hide it behind coyness. Stop it.

    @Tim – House of Leaves at least has the excuse of being completely insane.

  5. Azure on 14 October 2012, 20:30 said:

    @Soupnazi: I think that I read your sporkings once? Your website looks strangely familiar. At least I’m not alone. The chapters are so short that I can combine chapters 1-5 into one (slightly long) section!

    @Tim: I never read that book, but I feel as this is an accurate description.

    @Master Chef: It becomes more blatant in the later books, but even some plot details in the first one are driving me crazy. I mean, can he spend five minutes describing how their wings work?! I just can’t figure out how they hide them.

    @swenson: You took the things that I was trying to say and put them in a coherent sentence. I applaud you.
    Actually, I have a novel from sixth grade that uses those exact same tactics. That’s the level of writing I’m seeing here, Patterson.

  6. Pryotra on 14 October 2012, 21:45 said:

    Oh boy, THESE. I was considering a review of this series.

    If I remember, the first three were, to my teenage mind, uninspired and kind of annoying, but not terrible. The next ones Jumped the Shark into epic failure after epic failure.

    Also, I thought that Max was a really annoying narrator and Patterson ignored some potentially interesting aspects of the book in favor of having stuff randomly happen.

  7. Ryan McCarthy on 14 October 2012, 21:56 said:

    Glad you are doing a sporking of this series. I read some of the third book and did not finish it when I was fourteen. You know a book is a failure when even a teenager can recognize the fact that the book is basically stringing you along.

  8. HimochiIsAwesome on 14 October 2012, 21:59 said:

    I vaguely remember seeing this in my schhol library, and not being interested enough to read past the back cover. I guess that’s a good thing, haha.

    WARNING

    This is not going to be good I can tell already.

    If you dare to read this story, you become part of the Experiment. I know that sounds a little mysterious, but it’s all I can say right now.

    Well then, that’s that sorted! I’ll not read it!
    //closes book
    Don’t want to become past of the EXPERIMENT, oh gosh no.
    Now, I fancy a cuppa…
    //wanders off and never looks at this again

  9. Forest Purple on 14 October 2012, 23:02 said:

    This is why I never finished Maze Runner- because the author kept so many secrets, shrouded everything in confusion, and made sure that the few answers that were actually given made no sense whatsoever. It just shows they’ve got no confidence that their plot or characters will keep you reading, and the only thing left to do is make you desperate to find out what’s going on. It’s frustrating, not intriguing.

  10. Danielle on 15 October 2012, 01:25 said:

    I always wondered if anything good could come from a book advertised in TV commercials.

    We’re — well, we’re kind of amazing.

    Look, kid. If you’re gonna be vague about how awesome you are….you know, don’t be vague about how awesome you are. It doesn’t make you sound modest; it makes you sound like a middle schooler introducing her friends at a talent show.

    The six of us […] were made on purpose, by the sickest, most horrible “scientists” you could possibly imagine.

    Why is scientists in air quotes? Is Patterson trying to avoid offending the science community? If a person uses science to find a cure for cancer or a cheap, reliable way to deliver clean water to third world countries, that person is a scientist. If a person uses science to experiment on kids and give them bird wings or whatever, that person is still a scientist. Depending on their motivation and whether or not the kids consented to these experiments, said scientist can be either good or evil, but they’re still a scientist.

    we ended up only 98 percent human. The other 2 percent had a big impact, let me tell you.

    …..

    Am I the only one who read that as a poo joke?

    Yes?

    Okay…moving on.

    I agree: this prologue is too vague, too gimmicky, to be any good. Patterson should’ve cut it.

  11. Tim on 15 October 2012, 02:34 said:

    Depending on their motivation and whether or not the kids consented to these experiments, said scientist can be either good or evil, but they’re still a scientist.

    Well, it depends. If you run high voltages through people because you’re trying to test human pain response and take careful notes regarding what you’re doing, you’re an evil scientist. If you run high voltages through people just to see what happens and say it’s science, you’re not a scientist, you’re a serial killer with a crappy justification for what you do.

    Also, we’re talking about the victim of their experiments, so I don’t think they’re make that distinction. “So-called scientists” would work better to get that across, though.

  12. VikingBoyBilly on 15 October 2012, 03:03 said:

    If you dare to read this story, you become part of the Experiment.

    See this? Right from the get-go, the author is hinting that this is bad on purpose. To see your reaction. And you fell for it.

    ….. man, what an awesome world it would be if that were true.

  13. Master Chief on 15 October 2012, 09:03 said:

    The 2% mutation gives them hollow bones and wings so they can fly.

    Why don’t those bones break upon them entering any sort of combat?

    and for that matter? Why doesn’t a big game hunter ever take a shot at them when they are alone in the wilderness?

  14. Shy on 15 October 2012, 09:09 said:

    The prologue is giving me Animorphs flashbacks.

    Animorphs started out each book with the whole ‘warning’ scenario. The thing is, it worked with Animorphs. You have no idea who is the enemy and who is safe in the books (with the Yeerks/body-snatchers). The Jake and Co. can’t trust anyone and yet they are fighting to save the entire world. There is a realistic danger and the warning never came off as corny to me.

    With Maximum Ride…Ugh. I don’t know, but right from the beginning Max strikes me as being an obnoxious little snot. Maybe it’s the way she goes on about how ‘cool’ she and her little freak family are. Maybe it’s how she treats the reader like a dumb shit that needs to be force-fed every bit of information, only Max isn’t going to say everything all at once because she has to be mysterious.

    With Animorphs, there was no sense of being condescending with the reader. The group was genuinely trying to warn others about what was going on, without giving away too much that would lead to the Yeerks finding out who they were. While Max thumbs her nose at the rest of us for being normal and oblivious.

  15. HimochiIsAwesome on 15 October 2012, 11:11 said:

    and for that matter? Why doesn’t a big game hunter ever take a shot at them when they are alone in the wilderness?

    Off the top of my head, I can think of at least one story where someone with wings has been shot at.
    And it was a fanfiction.
    Doesn’t bode well when fanfics make more sense than published books.

  16. Tim on 15 October 2012, 11:22 said:

    and for that matter? Why doesn’t a big game hunter ever take a shot at them when they are alone in the wilderness?

    I don’t think even the finest pith-hat-wearing, shooting-things-what-ho stereotype would shoot at something without bothering to establish what it even is first. Waste of ammo and what-not, don’cha know.

  17. Soupnazi on 15 October 2012, 11:34 said:

    I mean, can he spend five minutes describing how their wings work?! I just can’t figure out how they hide them.

    Their fourteen-foot wingspans fit into indentations in their backs. Nod nod

    Though how this coexists with the larger lungs I believe they have, I’m not sure.

  18. Kyllorac on 15 October 2012, 12:25 said:

    A prologue is supposed to inform us of events that happened before the start of the story.

    I’d disagree with this point. Many prologues inform us of events that happened before the start of the story, but prologues in general are not required to. Some prologues take place after a story (a storyteller relating a tale to an audience), some during (Twilight’s prologue is an example), and some aren’t even part of the story at all (like an excerpt from another source). So long as the prologue provides context that couldn’t otherwise be provided in the story, then it works as a prologue.

    Depending on their motivation and whether or not the kids consented to these experiments, said scientist can be either good or evil, but they’re still a scientist.

    Technically speaking, they’d be either ethical or unethical. Science is amoral, and so it’s considered good practice to avoid describing it in moral terms. I shall invoke Godwin’s Law to point out that, while the experiments Nazi scientists conducted were horrifically unethical, the data they collected, especially with regards to human metabolism, is extremely useful and rigorous, which is why that data is still used in the sciences today.

    /quibble

    I don’t think even the finest pith-hat-wearing, shooting-things-what-ho stereotype would shoot at something without bothering to establish what it even is first. Waste of ammo and what-not, don’cha know.

    This.

  19. Pryotra on 15 October 2012, 14:55 said:

    Their fourteen-foot wingspans fit into indentations in their backs. Nod nod

    Though how this coexists with the larger lungs I believe they have, I’m not sure.

    And they have hollow bones, which makes them unable to stand as much pressure as a normal person.

    Really, this would make more sense as a fantasy novel, but for a sci-fi novel, my disbelief can’t be suspended with this kind of thing.

  20. Apep on 15 October 2012, 16:02 said:

    One of my cousins was kinda into this series. From what I’ve heard, I’m glad I passed on them.

    James Patterson is a Big Name Author, with almost a hundred books published.

    Yeah, but I have to wonder how many of those he actually wrote. A lot of the books on his Amazon page list him and someone else as the authors. Seems most of the books he’s written solo are the Alex Cross series… and these ones.

    Guess there’s no one else to blame, then.

    YA. Young Adult. As in, for teenagers.

    To be fair, YA books (at least in my experience) are aimed at anyone from 11/12 to 14/15, with a little wiggle room – they’re too old for picture books, but not quite ready for the really heavy stuff.

    re: general vagueness. It’s the same problem with Twilight – the big shocking reveal is spoiled by the blurb on the back. And yeah, the “oh, we are so awesome, you wouldn’t even believe how awesome we are” thing is pretty annoying. You’d think a published author would understand “show, don’t tell.”

  21. Fireshark on 15 October 2012, 16:14 said:

    I thought these were tolerable until Book 4, when it became Captain Planet.

  22. Pryotra on 15 October 2012, 16:20 said:

    I thought these were tolerable until Book 4, when it became Captain Planet.

    This.

    The whole thing was cliche, but it could be mildly entertaining. (Than again, I tend to be easier on books I get from the library.) The next books were a moronic green Aesop that felt a lot like Captain Planet’s parts. Only…without the hammy acting that made the thing sometimes almost funny.

  23. NeuroticPlatypus on 15 October 2012, 17:05 said:

    Seems most of the books he’s written solo are the Alex Cross series… and these ones.

    I believe that these begin to have co-authors around book four, at which point they get much, much worse.

    I thought these were tolerable until Book 4, when it became Captain Planet.

    This too. It wasn’t even just that it turned into Captain Planet; it turned into Captain Planet and then pretended it had been Captain Planet the whole time, which it just wasn’t.

  24. Tim on 15 October 2012, 20:04 said:

    I shall invoke Godwin’s Law to point out that, while the experiments Nazi scientists conducted were horrifically unethical, the data they collected, especially with regards to human metabolism, is extremely useful and rigorous, which is why that data is still used in the sciences today.

    Well, yes and no. Some of the data was gathered under rigorous scientific methodology (eg the data on decompression effects and the hypothermia experiments) and is indeed useful despite how it was gathered, but some wasn’t. Mengele, for example, didn’t even approximate science and was basically just doing whatever hideous thing came into his head that day. There is some difference between a scientist and a torturer who happens to wear a lab coat.

    Of course since the quote-unquote scientists here actually managed to science up some winged people I’d say their methods must have been at least reasonably close to valid.

  25. Azure on 15 October 2012, 20:47 said:

    I’m amazed at how many people agree with me! As Patterson is a popular author, I thought that I was alone in this opinion.

    Re: Max’s wings: Soupnazi, where exactly did Patterson say this? I remember lungs and air sacs and hollow bones, but nothing about indentations on their backs. Either those are some pretty deep indentations, or their wings have a crapload of joints and fold up like accordions. Because thirteen-foot wings clearly fold up nearly on your back.

    Re: Vagueness: This was the main problem with the introduction and prologue, I feel. It kind of alternated between infodumps and being too vague. Like, one minute we’re told about their family and how they escaped from a lab and how special they are, and the next, they’re back to being vague and mysterious about how their life is in danger and such. If I’m making sense here.

    Re: Cowriting: Yeah, Patterson’s written a lot of books with other authors. They tend to be his more tolerable books. Mostly. As NeuroticPlatypus pointed out, the Maximum Ride books started to go downhill with the coauthors. Still, you’d think he’d have learned something.

    Re: Prologue: Kyllorac, I agree with your disagreement. If that makes sense.

    I was kind of on the fence about including that line. There is really no rule to writing anything, and I didn’t want to come across as saying such. Your point made a lot of sense. I guess what I was trying to say is that there really didn’t need to be a prologue.

    Re: ‘Scientists’: Oh, gosh. Where do I start here?

    Easy question first. I have no idea why “scientists” is in air quotes. Like Tim said, if Patterson was trying to convey that the scientists actually just wanted to torture people, he could have written it as “so-called scientists”. Without the quotation marks, Patterson. Without the quotation marks.

    Um. I can really only answer the ethics question pertaining to Maximum Ride, but here goes.

    The scientists seem to have some objective of gathering data for an experiment on their agenda. Later on in the book, they’re shown running tests on Angel. I recall them trying to see how far she could run and exclaiming about her lungs.

    At the same time, some of these tests were unnecessarily cruel. There was a maze that would shock Angel if she stood in one place for too long, and they forced her to run on the treadmill until she collapsed.

    On that train of thought, the scientists didn’t seem to view Angel as a person. When we get snippets of their thoughts, she’s an “it” to them, like an animal.

    I don’t have my copy of the book with me right now, so I’ll give some actual quotes from these scenes later tonight when I do.

    I apologize for any typos that I’ve made. I’m typing from an iPad, so autocorrect mangles my spelling.

  26. Kyllorac on 15 October 2012, 20:52 said:

    There is some difference between a scientist and a torturer who happens to wear a lab coat.

    No arguments from this corner.

  27. Azure on 15 October 2012, 21:56 said:

    Thoughts from the scientists:

    “Oh my God, three and a half hours * And its heart rate only increased by seventeen percent *[…]

    The scientist seems strangely detached from the situation, like Angel is only merchandise. There’s actally another quote saying just that — that Angel is the merchandise — later on.

    Okay, two more blood samples and the glucose assay will be done. Then we can do the EEGs.

    So the scientists are obviously gathering data for something.

  28. NeuroticPlatypus on 15 October 2012, 22:04 said:

    I remember descriptions of them hiding their wings with jackets. I always imagined that they kind of draped the jackets over the folded wings without putting their arms through the sleeves. It still doesn’t sound like that would work well, but that’s what I thought for some reason. I don’t remember any back indentations, but I haven’t read them in years.

  29. swenson on 15 October 2012, 23:00 said:

    Wait, and how long are these wings supposed to be, again?!

    Maybe they just have hammerspace pocket universes stapled to their backs… or their wings are like those shirts that scrunch up really tiny, but stretch out to normal size.

  30. Mingnon on 16 October 2012, 05:44 said:

    Well, I wanted to mock/rail on how vague the intro/prologue was, but then everyone beat me to it. D:

    …Oh well, I’ll do it anyway!

    “Oh hey! As you start reading this book, you’re already part of some secret conspiracy!! I shouldn’t tell you more though or else— NO DON’T PUT THE BOOK DOWN EITHER!! We need you here, you know, because we like you even though I don’t really know who you are! Anyway, I COULD tell you more, but I don’t feel like it!

    …I can already tell I’m wasting your time.”

  31. Soupnazi on 16 October 2012, 11:44 said:

    To be fair, YA books (at least in my experience) are aimed at anyone from 11/12 to 14/15, with a little wiggle room – they’re too old for picture books, but not quite ready for the really heavy stuff.

    I dunno, my experience is that you have picture books for kids 8 and under, books for the 8-10 crowd, books for the 10-12 crowd (sometimes those two will overlap), and then teen/YA books that are targeted at the 13-16 crowd or so. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book other than Maximum Ride that was called YA but targeted at preteens.

    Soupnazi, where exactly did Patterson say this?

    Lessee… Aha!

    “What’s—” Ella’s mom said, her fingers skimming along the edge of my wing where it foled and tucked into an indentation next to my spine. )

    Max actually does liken her wings to accordions early in the first book. XD I also still have no idea how they get their wings out—a bit after that quote Max gets a sweater with slits in it for her wings, so I have to assume they get their wings out via the slits, but in order for these slits to be big enough to let the wings out the wings would be visible, and in order for it to really be possible to get their wings out the wings would have to be sticking out a little, and never mind how they’d manage to get them back in. Urgh.

  32. Forest Purple on 16 October 2012, 22:56 said:

    There’s also the fact that lungs and air sacs and hollow bones, not to mention wings, sounds like a lot more than two percent.

  33. swenson on 16 October 2012, 23:39 said:

    Well, on a genetic level, birds and humans do have a lot of common genes. Both birds and humans are warm-blooded four-legged vertebrates, etc. And consider the vast differences between chimpanzees and humans, even though 99% (some sources say 95%, some say 98%, whatever) of our DNA is the same. So I dunno, I might be able to accept that.

    I’m still not certain how a functional human being could have enormous wings, hollow bones, air sacs, etc., though. You aren’t human at that point. You’re something entirely different, and I’m not sure the basic human body structure would even support that.

    Like what about muscle power? Can human shoulders work wings? Can we work wings that big, even? Look at birds, they’re basically round balls of muscle with a pair of wings stapled on. The two major muscle groups that birds use to fly (pectorals and the supracoracoideus) make up fully 25-30% of a bird’s body weight. I don’t care how much you work out, no human’s pectorals are anywhere near that large!

  34. Tim on 17 October 2012, 03:28 said:

    And consider the vast differences between chimpanzees and humans, even though 99% (some sources say 95%, some say 98%, whatever) of our DNA is the same.

    Yeah, but a lot of DNA is non-coding anyway, so it’s rather like saying Harry Potter is very similar to Lord of the Rings because you’re counting all the blank space on the pages as being the same in both. You share about 85% of your DNA with a cabbage.

  35. Tim on 17 October 2012, 03:34 said:

    Whoops, hit submit before doing this:

    I’m still not certain how a functional human being could have enormous wings, hollow bones, air sacs, etc., though. You aren’t human at that point. You’re something entirely different, and I’m not sure the basic human body structure would even support that.

    Yeah, unless you had a literal pigeon chest the only way to do it would be to have some wanky super-strong synthetic muscle fibre that has ridiculously higher contractile strength than normal muscle mass-for-mass. Which might be possible to sell to me*, though unless it’s also implausibly energy efficient it’d have the side effect of making them need to eat like bears before flying.

    But I imagine the author just didn’t bother thinking about it.

    *Suspension of disbelief should never be assumed, it’s a business transaction between the writer and the reader. Put simply, I won’t buy it if you don’t sell it to me.

  36. swenson on 17 October 2012, 08:10 said:

    Yeah, but a lot of DNA is non-coding anyway, so it’s rather like saying Harry Potter is very similar to Lord of the Rings because you’re counting all the blank space on the pages as being the same in both. You share about 85% of your DNA with a cabbage.

    That’s my point, that just 2% really could have a drastic effect.

    I totally agree with you on the topic of muscles and eating, though. Now that my interest has been piqued, I’m kind of fascinated by trying to work out how this could work in the real world—would everyone end up with these enormous chests? Is there any possible way they could still look like normal humans? Or would they look completely different?

  37. NeuroticPlatypus on 17 October 2012, 10:17 said:

    Interestingly, I think they do have to eat a lot more than normal people in the books. They’re also really tall for some reason.

  38. Soupnazi on 17 October 2012, 11:16 said:

    Interestingly, I think they do have to eat a lot more than normal people in the books.

    What’s odd, though, is that they eat more, but that’s all it is—they take a normal diet and add extra food, not extra calories, which are what they need. I don’t believe it’s ever explained how they handle the extra food in their stomachs or why their guardian, a scientist, never handled that more efficiently.

  39. Tim on 17 October 2012, 18:02 said:

    Now that my interest has been piqued, I’m kind of fascinated by trying to work out how this could work in the real world—would everyone end up with these enormous chests? Is there any possible way they could still look like normal humans? Or would they look completely different?

    It’s been a long time since I did biology, I’ll admit, but as I recall the form of a bird’s chest is caused by needing two things:

    1. Long, large muscle fibres for flapping the wings downwards (up is easy, all the forces involved in flight already want them to go up).
    2. A solid attachment point for the chest muscles. People often forget that muscles are worth jack if you’re attaching them to a skeleton that can’t take the strain; having cyber-legs strong enough to jump off buildings, for example, would mean nothing if you didn’t have a cyber-pelvis and cyber-spine to transfer the force of jumping off a building to.

    Effectively, asking to have wings without a deep chest with a big ridge to anchor the flight muscles is like trying to give someone the bite strength of a crocodile with a human jaw form. You might be able to dick your way around 1 with super-strong synthetic muscle with ridiculous contractile strength, but for 2 you’d also need either a super-strong skeleton which was also very light or to be a bug-person so you could stick some of the muscles to your exoskeleton.

    Then you get to the question of how big the wings need to be: as I recall the only creatures with human-sized bodies that have ever flown are pterodactyls, which were more like vultures than your classic
    ooh graceful agile angel-person.

    Now, if this is handwaved I wouldn’t mind it as much, but when you say it was scienced into existence you should probably at least try to make it resemble science, or just say it’s magic and be done with it.

  40. Azure on 17 October 2012, 20:48 said:

    @Soupnazi: Thank you! I’d read that part, but hadn’t realized that she actually put her wings there. It’s…a little strange. Like, she has these big lungs (in spite of those gigantic indentations?), then these air sacs in her stomach area, and everything else is…?

    I mean, I’d assume that she needs a pretty big stomach if she needs to eat a lot. Where is that? Where are the rest of her organs?

    And I’m always as puzzled as you when it comes to folding wings up inside a shirt. I can see them being pushed out of a shirt with slits kind of okay, maybe a little awkwardly, but I’d imagine that they’d get tangled in the slits when being folded up.

    New theory: Max’s wings are retractable and have elastic that pulls them inside her shirt.

    Also, for those wondering about how the anatomy of a birdkid works in general, Patterson actually based Maximum Ride off of his adult novels When the Wind Blows and The Lake House. I haven’t read them in a while and while they’re certainly not perfect, I feel that the writing was a bit better than it is here.

    Anyways, my point is, the Max in that book has better anatomy. Again, I haven’t read the book in forever, but I recall her being described as having a large chest to support the muscles necessary for her to fly. She also wore a long white dress a lot — I can’t remember if she used it to hide her wings or not.

    So, yeah.

  41. Finn on 17 October 2012, 23:56 said:

    I had some friends who liked the graphic novels/manga of these. They only had up to volume 3, though, and from what I’ve heard,the series gets seriously worse after that. The art was pretty though~