Anyhoo, I’ll post again once I get around to reading Skulduggery Pleasant. I’m hoping it will be bad.

Darkside is a children’s novel by Tom Becker. I bought a copy on that trip to England I keep bringing up because I was bored and it looked like it might be good. I’ll get the positive stuff out of the way first so I can get down to the bile and slander: the characters are interesting, the world is intruiging (if a bit over the top), ir’s not afraid to actually be dark as opposed ‘dark, but for children’ on occasion, and when I finished it I wanted to read the sequel. I suppose that’s a recommendation.

The book tells the story of Johnathon, a boy who skips school as often as possible while his father goes through periodic catatonic sessions, most of which land him in the local asylum. The whole set up is a bit like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (fuck you, I’m not using the American name), except more realistic and without a pussy as a main character. Johnathon’s father, Alain, calls these little spells ‘darkenings’.

With the house to himself, Johnathon decides to break into his father’s mysterious study and find out what he’s been up to all of these years when he should have been looking after his delinquent of a son, and finds bugger all. The house gets broken into in the middle of his search by the mysterious trio who kidnapped some random kid in the prologue, and therein lies the first of the book’s sins. I don’t know why authors feel the need to introduce a character in a prologue, build him up for a little bit, and then have something horrible happen to him. (Or her, obviously). It’s annoying and fairly pointless, since these prologues usually don’t contain anything that isn’t revealed in the first few chapters anyway. In this case it actually creates something of a plot hole, since the orange-haired kidnapper woman (whose name I have forgotten) is moved to the point of tears at having to kidnap Prologue Boy but doesn’t seem to have nearly as much trouble with Johnathon. Maybe she just thinks he’s a prick or something.

Anyway, Johnathon eventually finds himself in the titular Darkside, where he seeks out a friend of his father, a werewolf detective named Carnegie. Before you start rolling your eyes (Yes, I know, ‘werewolf detective’), you should know that Carnegie is actually pretty cool. The inevitable ‘I’m turning into a wolf now and I’m going to eat you because you were too stupid to run when I told you to’ scene is a bit over the top and he fills the wise-old-mentor role by never telling Johnathon anything useful until it’s too late, but he’s a fun character overall. Darkside itself is a more sinister  version of London (which is saying a lot), inhabited by various evil humans and even more evil non-humans. Some of its denizens are genuinely unsettling, like the pickpocket with a third arm protruding out of his chest, while never being too frightening for children. Kudos to Mr. Becker for pulling that one off.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of little things that hampered my enjoyment of the book. Becker’s writing is generally pretty good, but there are odd little mistakes here and there that someone really should have picked up on, including typographical errors and sentences that end with one or two words seemingly cut off. The book is also too damn short, something that I’d like to be able to say about a lot of other, crappier books on the market. The story ends abruptly with loose threads all over the place, and while this is the first in a series, it could have done with being almost twice as long. The metropolitan police subplot, while necessary, is also really, really boring.

The book also features a vampiric banker who would probably come off as cliched if not for the fact that he’s called ‘Vendetta’. He’s also terrified of getting a blood-based disease, which, we’re told, is what finishes off most vampires. Surprisingly, he’s still alive at the end of the book.

Overall then, Darkside is an enjoyable romp hampered by poor editing and being too short for its own good.  If you’re wondering why this post sucks so much, it’s because I wrote it in about ten minutes flat and I wasn’t feeling all that enthusiastic.

___

The gun that was being pointed at her at that moment in time was held in the hand, which was trembling, of an escaped lunatic from the mental asylum on Bridget Hill. She knew he was an escaped lunatic from the mental asylum on Bridget Hill because his asylum-brand overalls had the words ‘Bridget Hill’ written across them in 0.5 thickness blue thread, stitched, she thought, if she was any expert in the art of stitching, with a Branston-brand sewing machine.

“How did you escape from the mental asylum on Bridget Hill?” she gasped, her eyes widening in horror as the barrel of the gun was thrust in her direction.

“You should know by now that I can escape from anywhere!” he chuckled, while the gun which he was holding was pointed at her forehead. Just as it seemed inevitable that death would claim her in that moment of terror and tension, Deus, her boyfriend who she had not even considered thinking about for four years, screeched to a halt next to the escaped lunatic from the mental asylum on Bridget Hill and he proceeded to punch him. He fell unconscious next to the motorcycle.

With his girlfriend, who had not been his girlfriend for six years but who he still always thought of as ‘girlfriend’, saved from the escaped lunatic from the mental asylum on Bridget Hill, he turned on his motorcycle and drove away, never to be heard from again.

She sighed with relief and continued on her way to John’s house, who had a house on top of the cliff where she was walking.

___

I know what you’re thinking: good God, vitaminbook, with that kind of mastery over the English language, you should be signing lucrative book deals and sampling the finest drugs that Ireland’s festering underbelly has to offer! And you’re right, I really should. But, since this is the internet, I demand a cornucopia of positive comments in return for showing you all a few paragraphs of my hacked-together bullshit. (See what I did there?)

There used to be (and, to a smaller extent, still is) a kind of ‘apprenticeship’ system among authors of SF (speculative fiction). Young writers generally got their start in short-story magazines before moving up to publishing novels or weird transhumanist manifestos. Getting a few professional credits in Asimov’s was a great way of catching an editor’s eye and was guaranteed to put you on the fast track to reclusive-author stardom and whores. Just ask Arthur C. Clarke.

Now, thanks to such ‘web 2.0′ innovations as DeviantArt and fictionpress, anyone with a keyboard and a semi-functioning brain can put their masterpiece online for the world to read. If you’ve never browsed these sites, believe me when I tell you that doing so will leave you with an EMP fetish.

Have you ever gone into a bookstore and come across a full-length novel about painfully shy author-insert Mary Sues who get transported into an alternate Universe and have banal, derivative adventures with talking animals? Yes?

….okay, maybe that was a bad example. Have you ever come across a full-length novel about a group of talking foxes who have sex ten times a day and enjoy bouncing on over-inflating balloons to get their jollies? This is, believe it or not, an actual example of something I’ve seen on DeviantArt, and yes, it was as weird and off-putting as you’d imagine. There’s an entire Universe of bizarre fetish material out there, but that’s not what this post is about; that stuff might be awful, but it’s just too easy to poke fun at.

Instead I’d like to talk about the earnest young men and woman who really do want to write good fiction, but who are actually being held by the very tool that they use to promote their work – the internet. As much as I dislike websites like DeviantArt, they do have one huge, potentially invaluable advantage: they let writers communicate with their readers immediately, in a way that no other format can match. Before I start bad-mouthing this system, let me say that it can be hugely advantageous to young or inexperienced writers, and I’ve used it in the past myself.

With all of the potential on display from these websites, it’s disheartening to see it wasted to thoroughly. The vast, vast majority of comments out there are of the ‘omg I really like ^___^’ variety, and most writers will never get any sort of constructive or meaningful feedback. Worse, some of them assume that every sycophant who comments on their latest fan-fiction is actually being sincere when they say that it’s the greatest work of English literature in history, and so become intolerant of real criticism. When you desperately need to improve, and most of us do, the worse thing you can do to yourself is inflate your opinion of your own work to the point that it becomes immune to criticism from the unwashed masses. Doing so is a great way to ensure that you’re stuck writing bad Naruto for the rest of your life.

Oh yes, that’s another problem: the anime. A lot of the kids on DeviantArt (in particular) seem to think that watching a few Naruto fansubs is the same thing as taking a four-year creative writing class. Hey, it’s got ninja and super powers and lots of exciting shounen action! All I have to do is write something with ninja and super powers and lots of exciting shounen action and it will be great too!

No. First of all, Naruto sucks balls. Secondly, something that ‘works’ in an animated or visual medium is not going to automatically carry over to written fiction; it just doesn’t work that way. And, let’s face it, there are only so many ways you can tell the story of a bratty 12-year old ninja with a demon sealed inside of him before you start repeating yourself.

On DeviantArt you’ll find ‘original’ stories populated entirely with people who have Japanese names, in a faux-Japanese setting, with plots lifted wholesale from Japanese cartoons or comics. While you could argue that this is no worse than Christopher Paolini creating the most generic Western fantasy novel imaginable, Western fantasy at least doesn’t have hordes of thirteen year old fans who’ll go googly eyed every time they see the word ‘-chan’ attached to the end of someone’s name. What these people really want to do is make manga or anime, but since that’s really really difficult, they write bad fiction that’s like manga or anime instead. If you surround yourself with people who’ll say fantastic things about your work just because it’s ‘Japanese style’, you’re never going to improve.

I’d like to say that it’s only the lower-rung writers who suffer because of their dependence on internet feedback, but if I did that I’d be a filthy liar. I’ve come across a lot of good writers – great writers, even – who never quite broke out of the internet communities they flourished in. Maybe they’re more concerned with doing a short story for internet-based competitions than they are with finishing that novel they’ve put so many hours into, or maybe they become interested only in writing for their pre-existing fans and so (altogether now) never improve beyond a certain point. Whatever the scenario, it’s a sad state of affairs.

I’m going to make myself terribly unpopular here by saying that the publishing system in place at the moment, with all of its evil, soul-crushing editors and snooty New York agents, is a good thing. It’s not perfect, but it’s also not a torture machine strung together by Satan. There’s a reason why most writers keep their eye on being published by one of the big houses or signing a contract with a reputable agent. The system generally awards those who are good and casts aside those who aren’t, and while there are plenty of false positives and people left unfairly in the dust, overall it works pretty well. POD (print on demand) services, coupled with the immediate gratification of getting 10,000 pageviews every time you post a new short story, have led some people to the conclusion that they don’t really need to bother with the heartache of trying to get published. Hell, they already have fans! They can get their books published themselves! (For a small fee…) I disagree. If you want to improve, and especially if you want to make writing what you do for a living, you need to work with the system. Remember, publishing houses hire editors, experts who can look at your manuscript and tell you exactly what’s wrong with it and exactly why you have that niggling little doubt at the back of your mind about how good the last scene really is. Joe McRetard on DeviantArt probably doesn’t have the same level of expertise.

However, this stuff does have some potential bearing on my life even though I don’t live in that cauldron of insanity, so every now and then I like to chime in on a discussion about evolution or homosexuality or some other topic that always crops up whenever believers and non-believers butt heads. I tend to feel a bit two-faced about this, however, since in those discussions I try to be as down-to-Earth and objective as possible while on this blog I use phrases like ‘cock-waving’. I’m always a bit worried that someone will click on my name and discover that I’m actually a bitter, cynical walking steretype who turned his back on God out of petty malice rather than high-minded philosophical windbaggery. For the record, then, my persona during ‘serious’ discussions is far closer to the real thing than this one.

To be honest I’ve become a bit jaded with all of this internet ‘serious business’  stuff. The whole global warming debate is a perfect example: it’s become so political that people treat it like some sort of holy war, and with both sides frothing at the mouth and accusing the other of being lying scumbags it’s a bit hard to find anyone to talk to about it who you’d be willing to invite into your house without palming a kitchen knife first. Which is a shame, because it’s an important topic with potentially serious ramifications for all of us regardless of who’s right.

I’m tempted to say that the internet makes people act in ways contrary to their true nature, but I actually think it’s the opposite; the internet lets people act the way they wish they could in real life, but without running the risk of getting maced – which means that people are generally self-righteous, indignant pricks who can’t handle someone disagreeing with them without going into coniptions. Woe is us.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I mentioned before that I’m reading the ‘director’s cut’ version of The Stand, and I’m still reading it. It’s one long motherfucker, so I’ll probably still be ‘still reading it’ for quite a while. Or not – as much as I like King and his stories, and as fun as it is to spot all of the Dark Tower references, the pacing is really starting to get on my nerves. King has the remarkable ability to create a character that we actually care about in just a few paragraphs, but he seems to want to show this off at every oppurtunity. For example, when the superflu is finally starting to wind down after killing almost everyone on Earth (this is around page 400, by the way) we’re told that lots more people are being killed due to the aftermath – children falling down wells and people accidentally electrocuting themselves, that kind of thing. Fair enough, King’s got his eye set on realism. Now, I would have been perfectly content with this being shown by one of the main characters coming across the fresh corpse of a woman who accidentally shot herself, or spotting a starved child lying by the side of the road. Either of those would have demonstrated pretty clearly that the post-flu world is still dangerous to those who aren’t tough enough to survive. Instead, we get eight or nine little  mini-stories about a few random people dying through misadventure, complete with an unecessary amount of backstory and padding. This crap drags on a little bit too much for my liking.

Unfortunately, this is something inherent in King’s style. It’s never enough for him to show us that ‘John is an alcoholic author-insert’ by, say, having him wake up hungover for the tenth time that month. Instead he has to have a twenty-page flashback about how John’s drinking spiralled out of control after he got wasted on a high school field trip and all of his friends left him one by one and he let his mother down and he’s such an asshole and how many ways are there to say ‘this character is me under a different name’? I don’t mind it the first few times, but when it happens in every single book he writes it starts to get a bit irritating.

The Stand also suffers from glacial pacing. Most of the time the writing is good enough that you don’t care (like I said, King’s characters really are incredibly well made) but more than once I’ve found myself wishing there were less groups of characters and that the plot would move along a bit more quickly.

I’m going to stick with The Stand despite these complaints, and because there’s a character who sets giant fuel tanks on fire, but I’m starting to get a bit tired of King’s over-indulgence.

(DISCLAIMER: I know-diddly squat about Ron Paul and was just trying to make a cheap joke at the expense of an acceptable target. Please don’t include me in your conspiracy theories).

Many people are surprised to learn that I’m both Irish and a writer, yet I don’t drink anything harder than cranberry and pomegranate juice. This is genuinely unusual, given that most of Ireland’s writers are slightly deranged, overly-patriotic windbags who have their heads so far up their own asses that they’ve developed a method of inebriating themselves that involves pouring whiskey and guiness straight into their colons. Or at least, the ones they make us study in school are.

However, it is true (according to popular opinion) that a writer without an addiction is like a church without believers, which is to say greatly improved entirely pointless. I could raise my mistique by writing letters backwards or with the words looping around the page in weird spiral patterns like the tracks of a demented snail, but that’s hard work and, let’s face it, WordPress’s formatting tools aren’t quite that robust. Instead I’ve been cultivating coffee as my chemical crutch of choice, and was recently forced to leave my cave to restock. It was while I was trying to avoid frostbite from the fierce Irish Summer breeze that I was struck by an epiphany that hit like a jackhammer to the limbic system. I’ve been having great fun defecating all over other people’s work, but why not present some of my own to the baying public?

I mulled this idea over for a while and then tossed it out like the results of an unwanted pregnancy, afraid that exposing my writing to the world in its infancy might shatter my already glass-like ego. Instead I’m going to talk a little about my experience with writing a book and the many lessons I learn along the way. If at any point I start to take myself seriously, you have permission to nuke my house into oblivion George Bush style.

So, on to the book, then. I won’t say much about it now except that I’m currently at 23,664 words and am racing towards the halfway point faster than a horse on steroids. It’s set in modern day Ireland and England and has some ‘gothic undertones’. (They’re hidden beneath a ‘postmodern overcoat’).* I won’t go too much into the plot right now except to say that it’s a bit ironic, given how much I like to bash Stephanie Meyer. For future reference, accusations of plagiarism should be forwarded to a crater on Mars.

*I’m sorry, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever written.

Given that I have a dim view of humanity and Stephanie Meyer fans in general, my initial answer would be something like ‘people are stupid and Twilight caters to that demographic with the enthusiasm of a starving dog prostrating itself before a man with steaks strapped to his arms’. All right, that’s not entirely fair: if I’m talking from the point of view of someone who doesn’t go to sleep at night picturing Edward Cullen’s head on a spike, I have to admit that the books deftly combine romance and the supernatural in a heady cocktail whose appeal to…certain readers (look at that, I didn’t say ‘idiots’!) is obvious.

Mrs. Pub Rants (I swear I’ll learn her name soon) suggests that analyzing a popular work of fiction like this can help one’s own writing, and I agree. Most literary types (read: arseholes) like to make fun of writing with an explicit aim towards being popular, but ‘popular’ is what most writers really want to be. I’m not conceited enough to think that I’ll be remembered in times future as the next James Joyce or JRR Tolkien, nor do I particularly want to be; I’d take fame and fortune over having 5-credit college classes based on my work any day. So what can I learn from Twilight? Mainly that if you’re writing for a specific market, you may as well go all the way with it. Don’t give people half a story that they want and half a story that they don’t; in other words, as much as I hate to admit it, it was a good move on Meyer’s part to not include a bunch of adrenaline-filled fight scenes in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience. She told the story she wanted to tell rather than diluting it, and it worked.

Now, to make up for all of that, the Twilight movie trailer is the stupidest thing I’ve seen in years and the guy playing Edward has a moronic haircut.

On to today’s review! While in England last week I found myself desperate for a new book to read, and the nearest place that sold anything more than magazines was the local Sainsbury’s. Supermarkets aren’t known for their stellar selection, and this place was no different. I ended up buying a Sue Grafton omnibus for six pounds, which includes the first three books in her Kinsey Millhone, which chronicles the episodic adventures of a private detective. I wasn’t expecting much going in, but I actually enjoyed the books and finished the whole thing to the end. I know, I was as surprised as you are.

First, let’s get the good stuff out of the way: Kinsey is an amusing protagonist and she manages to be a strong female lead without descending into the ‘badass bitch’ stereotype that’s become so popular recently. Each story has the appropriate number of twists and/or turns, and the outcome can be genuinely surprising.

Now, on the far more interesting bad stuff! The writing is stiff and in some areas downright amateurish, as in the unfortunate paragraphs that read, essentially ‘I woke up. I went and made some coffee. I got into my car and drove to Suspect X’s house. I wasn’t looking forward to this’. I lost track of who several important characters were on a number of occasions, and while I wouldn’t want you to disregard the possibility that I’m just an idiot, I suspect it has more to do with the fact that they vanished for long stretches of time before popping back up again with no reminder of their relationship to the other characters. As well as that, the ending to the first book is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. We’re made to sit through a too-long and far too-boring chase scene across a beach which abruptly ends in Kinsey shooting the main suspect dead. It’s not surprising in the least when it happens because we knew a shooting was coming right from the start, and it makes the entire ending seem rushed.

Actually, that’s a problem in all three. Kinsey generally gets into a situation where she has to face the murderer one-on-one (something I really wish crime writers would stop doing) before abruptly either killing one of them or knocking them unconscious. Bang, end of the book. It’s jarring to say the least, and doesn’t really feel all that satisfying, but thankfully Grafton averts the tired old ‘I went into the store and bought a few objects, one of which was round and had an elephant painted on the front; this was certainly going to help me solve the case!’ routine. If you have to resort to your narrator being intentionally obtuse to create tension then you’re doing something wrong, especially if your story is being told from the third person.

Anyway, I enjoyed the Omnibus despite its flaws, and will probably pick up the fourth book in the series next time I see it. If you’re looking for a fun diversion with a detectiving flair (it’s a word, really) you could do a lot worse.

I’m not sure what the dealio is if you live in the US of A, but in Ireland and England there’s a huge market for sappy, glurge filled biographies about people who had spectacularly abusive childhoods. The whole trend kicked off with A Child Named It by Dave Pelzer. Now, in Europe-land the book has a soft-focus photo of a child staring morosely out at the reader, something which has (unfortunately) become the template which all other books in the ‘genre’ are now designed around. According to Amazon, though, the American version sports what may be the stupidest looking cover I’ve ever seen – kind of like a mixture between a self-help book and one of those embarrasingly cheesy Christian pamphlets that appear in your mailbox from time to time. You can compare the two here and here if you’re interested.

Up until now these books have been a mildly irritating addition to the Cosmic Annoyance Background Radiation that I deal with every day by being forced to interact with the world, but on my latest trip to England things came to a ridiculous head. I went into a WH Smith, the English equivalent of Eason (the Irish equivalent of whatever crappy, stationary-and-magazine-filled ‘bookstore’ exists in your part of the world) and found an entire section that was actually called ‘Tragic Life Stories’. It was filled entirely with books that, if laid out end to end, would not only circle the Earth twice but would also look very much like one gigantic, unholy series. Or possibly a ‘Cycle’, since these things should be listed under ‘fantasy’.

Please, put down the pitchfork; I’m not saying these things are made up (although I doubt every publisher on Earth has been able to resist the temptation entirely), but they really are a form of twisted fantasy novel that people with ordinary upbringings gobble up enthusiastically. Why? Do they harbor a burning desire to connect with the least fortunate people in the world through the powerful medium of the written word? Hardly. People read this stuff because they’re voyeurs, and the writers have given them a trainwreck of a life to gawk and point at. It’s the same principle that sells cheap tabloid newspapers: throw something shocking and unsettling all over a page and people will flock to it. They’ll bemoan the state of humanity and weep profusely over the plight of people like Dave Pelzer, but really they’re getting a sick thrill out of his books.

And the worst part about all of this is that, on some level, they wish that they were the people these books are about. That might sound a bit strange, given that these are about fairly extreme examples of child abuse, but think about it this way: here you have a man who has told his story to a large portion of the world and garnered gigantic amounts of sympathy (and money, but we’ll leave that out of the equation for now). In today’s attention-craving society, that kind of universal goodwill from perfect strangers is like winning the Emotional Lottery. This stuff isn’t ‘inspirational’, it’s sick titillation and wish-fulfillment.

Another name for the ‘genre’ is ‘Misery Lit‘, which is pretty appropriate. You’ll find a few examples of outright hoaxes on that page, and I’m sure more are going to come to light.

So, what’s the point of all of this? I’m certainly not saying that people shouldn’t write about abusive childhood, nor do I begrudge authors for turning their tragic circumstances into a way of dealing with the pain and (hopefully) making some money out of it too. What I do dislike is the way these (usually) heartfelt memoirs are being treated like tawdry romance novels and trotted out at budget prices for people who haven’t read a proper book in twenty years.

(Actually I was staying on a boat and the nearest cafe with wifi demanded a credit card before letting me use their radiation).

The best things about WordPress (apart from the fact that it easily facilitates communication among a huge number of people) is that it shows you what search strings people used to find your blog. As you can imagine, some of these are truly hilarious. Here are my favourites so far:

steven king clown predictions (?)

exotic desserts with funny names

japan sex

stephenie meyer new moon bullshit

Whoever used that last one sounds like a man/woman after my own heart. I’m also a bit curious about what kind of ‘clown predictions’ Stephen King has been making. Possibly he knows something we don’t?

More book reviews to come in the near future!

There are two main things wrong with this series: firstly, it’s called ‘Maximum Ride’. Secondly, it’s called Maximum Ride. Seriously, what was he thinking? Oh, that’s also the main character’s name. Yeah. Maximum Ride.

I think Patteron needs to fire his editor.

Anyhoo, the first book in the series tells the story of ‘The Flock’ a group of super-powered children who escape from a shady establishment known only as ‘The School’. The group, comprising of Max, Iggy, Nudge, The Gasman (yet another stupid name!) Angel and Fang, live in hiding for a few years until the sinister ‘whitecoats’ (read: scientists) decide to come after them. Wacky hijinx ensue.

Each member of the flock is 2% bird, a genetic variation that manifests itself by giving them wings. As opposed to, you know…killing them. ‘The Erasers’, agents of The School, are a mixture of dog (or possibly wolf, I can’t remember) and human. Like everything else that sprouted from Patterson’s barren imagination, they’re extremely retarted and come across as the end product of an Eoin Colfer ‘paint by numbers novel’ kit.

Actually, ‘paint by numbers’ is a pretty good description of the entire book. Lots of action? Check. Funny (well, ‘funny’) names that will appeal to children? Check. Heavy handed moral lessons? Check. Put it in a pot, stir it around for a few weeks (or possibly days), and out pops a big heap of profit! Unfortunately the formula seems to have worked, and The Angel Experiment has become one of those books that makes me certain most big-name reviewers are paid off by publishers as a matter of course. I’m guessing this was churned out as quickly as possible, since the plot fluctuates between boring and contrived. At one point the kids need money, and just happen upon a man who leaves his ATM card in the machine. They just happen to guess his PIN number, and make off with two hundred dollars. I would have thought a more serious problem than money would be hiding their huge wings, but they manage to fly all over the place without attracting any attention.

The characters are all cardboard cut-outs, and the action moves along too fast for the reader to get any feel for them. Halfway through the book, which is when I decided to shove it behind my bed for the rest of eternity, I still wouldn’t have minded at all if they were all vaporized in an explosion. Actually, that probably would have improved things immensely. The entire thing reads like the dreck fourteen year olds put up on DeviantArt, which is not really what you’d expect from one of America’s most prolific authors at the moment. The book is a transparent bid for money, put together by people with little idea of what’s considered ‘cool’ among kids today – which makes it all the more incredible that it actually succeeded.

There are three other books in the series so far. The second is called ‘Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports’, which really tells you all you need to know about it. Like Dean Koontz, James Patterson seems to be one of those authors who has willed positive reviews and opinion from thin air – I keep hearing about how good they are, yet so far I haven’t seen any concrete evidence to back those claims up. The Angel Experiment certainly does nothing for him in that regard. Avoid, please, and if you have any respect for your children at all, tell them to do the same.