Rating: 
Summary: Easy to get into.
Review: The story goes very fast, shifting from one point of view to another every chapter. The lengths of the chapters mislead you into thinking you're getting farther in the book than you really are. If you're not hookes in the first two pages, there's something wrong. Some parts of the story sickened me, and other parts nearly made me cry, the story was so real. I borrowed the book from a friend, but I will most likely be buying other James Patterson books. This book was fantastic. I would reccommend it to any sci-fi/mystery/conspiracy theory fan.
Rating:
Summary: Top class. A five star book.
Review: This book, an adventure novel that faithfully includes part espionage, part medical reality, is a roller coaster ride for people who are not really into adventures in the fiction area of reading. Frannie O' Neill, a leading veterinarian who owns the Inn-Patient, a B&B that also looks after sick animals, is grieving due to the death of her husband when a 'hunter', Kit Harrison arrives, with guns and a hard look on his face. But secretly, he is not what the reader thinks he is. He is Tom Brennan, a leading anti, and a top class FBI agent. He's on a mission to find the lethal and ruthless scientists that are endeavouring to experiment on humans to create the perfect human: one that can do anything and be perfectly intelligent. One night, Dr. O'neill comes across a bird-girl, an avian with homosapien qualities. She has escaped from the School, a place where the government funded scientists are creating the perfect person: illegally. But what happens next? Few people remain living, and even O'neills closest friends are not what they seem. Even her husband was a murder victim... why? Was he one of them as well? Patterson, a leading suspense novelist keeps the reader hanging on, keeps the reader on the edge of his seat until he reaches the last, unbearably fantastic chapter. How he can keep a reader waiting with the help of short and sharp chapters is almost impossible, and he deserves all the credit he can get. A truly moving novel, and as it is so close to the truth, he really is a true and proper novelist.I'll award this book five stars, because I read the book in three sittings, and it even puts the likes of Cornwell and Archer down a few levels in the writing scene. Well done Patterson, yet another brilliant book.
Rating:
Summary: This is one of the greatest books I have ever read!!!!!!!!
Review: This book was amazing! Never have I been so captivated in a book. Out of all of the books that I have ever read, I have never been so hooked on a book before. I couldn't stop reading it. I read the book in three days, and I would've finished it earlier if I had the time. Thats the fastest I've ever read a real book of this kind. The first book I've ever encountered thats a real page turner. For all of you who have read other James Patterson books, such as Along Came A Spider, Hide and Seek, Cat and Mouse, this is nothing at all like them. It doesn't have to do with murdering psycho-paths and gore and total killing. There's a few murders but none really explicit. I have to admit compared to the other James Patterson books, this one does seem a little childish, but still it is a great book. I recommend that you read this book it is amazing!
Rating: 
Summary: everyone will like this book
Review: I have read most of Patterson's books. This one I enjoyed the most, so far. I think because it was the only one to really creap me out. Others were creepy in a I'm reading about a creepy guy kind of thing. This one actually creeped me out while reading in the dark.
Rating:
Summary: one of my favorite books ever
Review: this is definatly new ground for patterson. He usually worte about some of the worst serial kllers. but now he has entered into the sci-fi realm. He succeeded effortlessly.
The characters, the plot , the ideas. Powerful. I cannot even begin to discuss the book. I hope it is made into a movie and done properly.
Rating: 
Summary: OK BOOK
Review: THIS BOOK WAS OK, I FEEL THAT IT COULD HAVE BEEN HANDLED BETTER WITH THE PLOT AND EVERYTHING, BUT THE BASIC PLOT WAS BRILLIANT.
Rating:
Summary: AN ASTONISHING STORY READ WITH PANACHE
Review: Classically trained actress Blair Brown has earned a reputation for taking on challenging parts. Versatility is a quality she has in abundance as may be noted in such disparate roles as the comedy series "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" and her portrayal of Jackie Kennedy. Ms. Brown knows how to entertain an audience, and she does it well in James Patterson's suspenseful and fanciful tale. Frannie O'Neill is a young and dedicated Colorado veterinarian whose husband died a mysterious death. She has a new boarder - Kit Harrison, an FBI agent, who not only arrives with the usual baggage but also personal baggage of his own. He's not there for the reasons he gives and perhaps he's not who he says he is. Add to this Frannie's shocking discovery one night - a young girl whose description baffles and astounds. Bestselling author Patterson has created an original, astonishing story; Blair Brown delivers it with panache. - Gail Cooke
Rating: 
Summary: disappointed
Review: I saw the sequel to this book listed among the best sellers in the New York Times Book Review and so took it into my head to read the thing. Finding that it was a sequel and having never read anything by the author before, I decided to read the original first, as it had actually gotten better reviews. I listened to the book in audio format, and, to be fair, this is the abridged version. However, I listened to the book on a long car trip, and anything even slightly interesting should have held my attention. This book, however, was a yawn from start to finish. The pitiful part is that I think Patterson's plot could have been really fascinating in the hands of another author. The basic premise is that scientists are trying to breed super-humans, the next evolutionary link (yeah, yeah, it's been done to death, but...) And they're breeding for longevity, so they choose birds (who have long lives for their size). The intermediary phase of the breeding produces kids with wings, a couple of whom escape and are found by a veterinarian and rogue FBI agent. The agent has been throne off the case, but is following the trail against orders (oh, the melodrama!). The scientists, kids, and two adults play hide and seek. Eventually, everything goes BOOM! And finally everyone is saved and lives happily ever after. There are NO surprises. Really. The one and only event that I found clever and unpredictable was when Max (the bird-girl) escapes from a hunter by vomiting on him. Max is also the only remotely redeeming character. The narrator praises the FBI agent's looks and daring until we hate him. We are told how sensitive, handsome, rule-breaking, fair, kind, loyal, etc. he is with only a few events to illustrate any of this. (A good example of what NOT to do along the lines of the writer's "show, don't tell" principle.) The veterinarian is frankly nauseating and unconvincing. She spends paragraphs of mental dialogue discussing her soap-operatic sufferings over her dead husband, her school-girl crush on the FBI agent, whine, whine, gripe, gripe. Furthermore, I have spent a semester at veterinary school, and I can assure you that this character never has. Necropsy (that's animal autopsy) labs have such a horrible stench that some students wear gas masks. Just the anatomy lab--with the corpses of horses hanging from hooks in the ceiling and the reek of rotting flesh (b/c it's so hard to properly emblem a horse)--is enough to make most students want to vomit. And you never escape it. It seems to get into your clothes into your skin. You live with this stench day and night until you are more or less immune to being "grossed out" or disgusted. My point is that this gushy, romantic woman with a weak stomach is just not a likely product of veterinary education. She's easily disgusted and nauseated. In fact, the universal character response to stress in this story is trembling, nausea, and weeping. Men, women, children, cleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholy, makes no difference. They all respond the same way. The author utterly failed to make me care about these people. I found myself hoping someone would shoot them and put them out of my misery, but alas, they persisted to the bathetic finis. The technical descriptions of the biology of the bird children WERE interesting and should have been downright fascinating, but they were punctuated by too much melodrama, and Patterson seemed to throw his medical terms around as though he were showing them off, not as a real scientist or doctor would talk. Anyway, I was disappointed. Obviously some people enjoyed this book, or it wouldn't have made it to the New York Times list. If you are one of these people, try Michael Crichton or Robin Cook. You'll find all the elements you loved in this book with very little of the poor writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Blah...
Review: It's unfortunate that the most believable parts of this yarn are the flying children. The plot is trite and obvious, and there's little in the way of surprise. Patterson picked a great topic, but his storytelling is unconvincing.
Rating:
Summary: Amateurish writing & 1-dimensional characters
Review: It sounds like such a good story and I was so disappointed. It reminds me of bad fan fiction, the kind of stories lonely junior high students write about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Except the Buffy characters actually have some depth. The Good Guys are drippingly good - and good looking - and the Bad Guys are unadulterated Evil. The story line has problems too. Patterson has no grasp of subtlety; even comic book plots are more involved. And to top it all off, the writing is just weird. Clearly at some point in his formative years as a writer, somebody told Patterson not to use the word "said." He resorts to a lot of awkward and occasionally just plain wrong sentence structure to avoid the use of this horrible, terrible, no good, very bad word. There is some gratuitous cursing, though. Bottom line: save your money. If you want to read about animal experimentation, HG Wells did it better in "The Island of Doctor Moreau." If you want to read about adults misusing special children for their own ends, read Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game." Don't waste your time on this one.
|
