Saving The World And Other Extreme Sports (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
There was a metaphorical hole in my heart. A spiritual void and yearning for oblivion. My hands didn't want to turn the pages of the many books I own. Too lazy. What's the point? I'll still be me. Nothing on tv. All of these channels and NOTHING on. It's probably broken. There's no way that the same show is on every channel. I was bored. There was nothing to do. Pretty much the mental equivalent of food in the fridge and there's nothing good (tasty) to eat. I've got nothing! I'm a wasteland. There's no party in my mouth and no one is invited. All alone. Fifth graders are probably smarter than me. I could find out for sure but I'm too lazy and there's nothing on tv. And in the dead television set a voice spoke to me. To me! It said, "Mariel." It was eerie, believe me. Not only was it broken, it was also unplugged! And it knew my name and it wasn't "Hey, you! You retarded or something? Get out of the way!" like the heavy books on my bookshelves say. I waited to hear it again to be sure. Pitter pitter pat. Is that the pitter patting of little feet? Was my biological clock ticking? (No.)"I'm bored. It was exciting at first that my broken tv is talking to me. The dangling plug gave it an extra something, I'll admit. Now what?" "Read my book. The pages turn themselves! I've got loads more where that came from. I write and sell these things like nobody's business." "James Patterson?" It's hard to tell without bending down and turning my head sideways. He's curled up in the fetal position. But I run down my mind of authors who sell like nobody's business. It's not Stephenie Myer. She's a woman, I think."Yes, it's me." I'm cynical about this stuff. This girl I don't think much of is a huge fan of his. Guilt by association. "Hey, you look uncomfortable in there. It's not very big. I'm too cheap and it's also pretty old." "You don't need to tell me! My hardbacks are $29.99. You can't pay for that? Kids in Africa could live off that for a year. You can't afford that for me?" "Welll...." A hand extends from the bowels of the television set to offer a hardcover book. I don't have any cash. "Your immortal soul will do." "That's pretty steep..." But I'm bored and the novelty of purchasing through tv gets to me. Didn't Morgan Freeman star in the film versions? Who can you trust if you can't trust Morgan Freeman? Didn't he even play God in some thing? Anyway, he always plays those wise old guys. If you need to explain something that doesn't make sense in a movie, you get Morgan Freeman to do it... Wait, that doesn't seem right. I HATE those movies. "Okay, you got me." What was I using it for anyway? I probably gave it away to someone years ago like the loophole on The Simpson's. It'd be neat to get something through the tv. I like the scene in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film when they teleport the chocolate bar. I always wanted to do that when a kid and the sugar cereal ads would come on. (I don't have any cereal. Nothing to eat.)The tube switches off and I wait for the maniacial laughter. A cha ching or something. My hands are burning . I rub my fingers over the neon raised letters as if they were braille and I could feel the magic contained within. The authors name is bigger than the title. That's always a sign of selling like nobody's business. Don't ask questions and they will tell you no lies. MAXIMUM RIDE: SAVING THE WORLD AND OTHER EXTREME SPORTS. It's part three! But I haven't read the first two! And I don't have another immortal soul to sell! Did I use it to miss it? I still feel empty except for this shiny new book to distract me. Should I have children (pitter pitter patterson) and sell theirs? There's a chick and shadowy other people (chicks and non chicks) are standing sorta behind her. The one in the back is probably going to die. It's pretty tense. Like watching a dream on the corners of your mind. Or trying to play a song in your head to get rid of the bad song that's already stuck in there (that happens to me a lot). Or a rorschach test and there are only wrong answers. That happened to me. "Interesting." "What's interesting about it?" "It's interesting that you ask why it is interesting." Therapy doesn't help. MAXIMUM RIDE: SAVING THE WORLD AND OTHER EXTREME SPORTS. But you can save the world another way!JAMES PATTERSON. It's larger than the above title. Use your mental abilities to image that those are larger than the other words. James Patterson.The good news! You don't need to read the first two. It all makes perfect sense! The bad guys from the first two books are after the good guys of the first two books. They are good because James Patterson says it is so. Look how large his name is. That's street cred that Mariah Carey couldn't buy with all of the rappers turned bodyguards in the employ of the Jonas brothers. He's on tv! Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, and Angel. I bet Angel dies. Iggy is probably the smart aleck who secretly loves the little one he gives a hard time. Gasman has gas or works in the employ of the government. Maybe he's a double agent. By day he collects bills and by night he eats tacos. Fang and Max have erotic tension you could cut through like butter. It melts.Genetically engineered like Hitler would never dream of engineering. The Swedes are way beyond it too. That's saying something because they are blonder than Germans. It's all the sunlight they get. Now these blondes (I just realized they could all get into that blondes only concert held by The Police aka the gestapo) could kick all of your asses because they are genetically superior. Blondes have more fun. I am a brunette and this is why I am often bored. They could breed turtles with spiders and then those turtle-spiders would eat your children. Angel is stuck in Mexico where the chihuahuas are bitches in heat and mating with giant chupachabras because the male chihuahuas are humping the legs of tourists instead. She got into a fight her first day because they pronounced the g as an h. Nudge is ALL THE WAY in Canada and hiding in an igloo from rabid mounties who did it with their horses when lonely one drunken night. It's wrong to mess with nature. That's what Max (she's a girl. Her name is probably something like Maxine. James Patterson was a genius giving her a boy's name. It's not messing with boy-girl nature it's just she's too bad ass to be a girl and that's natural selection in action) is probably all about. With the help of her gang, of course. They eat yummy roly poly fish-heads to survive. They keep them on dry ice because the dead bodies of the lesser humans are on all the regular ice. When they get a head out to eat there's lots of fog like in a music video. It's hard to find time for the James Cameron directed sex scene with all the cool visual effects like dry ice. The hand only starts half way sliding down the steamed up car windows of THE MAXIMUM RIDE. The MAXIMUM RIDE has a car race against another bad ass car. The one that was featured on Trick my Truck marathon the day I had car troubles and had to sit in a stinky lobby for hours. I never wanted to die more in my life than that day. If I appreciated chase scenes I'd have been happier and could relate to other people who got the point of really long chase scenes that never seem to end.They fight to the death in a game of extreme frisbee. Flying through the air (this is how Angel gets it. It cuts through her neck and her head comes right off) and crying Duck! in time. Marco! Polo! is played in the dire straits by Iggy versus the genetic snobs that are the bad guys. It's hard because his buddies are in different parts of the world and he can't hear if they cry out polo or not. The pages turned themselves so quickly that I hardly had time to ask any questions. Morgan Freeman read the audio book and that helped. I trust that guy. He wouldn't lie about any of this. Flirty fishing. C'mon, give a little loving. Kiss the girls. Itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout. What? Okay, Morgan... If he says there is going to be a big race war and it's not moving fast enough and the winners won't be smart enough and all we gotta do is wait and take over in the aftermath.... If we stop being cheap with our $29.99 and give it to the starving James Pattersons who need it... But it sounds like you're one of the bad guys! The bad guys believed in genetic superiority! But I don't have a cool name that could be either a man or a woman's like Max or Morgan. I'm NOT superior. It's like when the Soviets were for the people and then got all the good stuff anyway. I'd ask Liam Neeson what HE thinks but he's busy being smart in Hollywood films. Morgan says to trust him so I must.There's a test at the end of the book. I failed just like I failed those ink blot tests. I failed every page of the graphic novel version. It was ink blots of product placements and I kept saying pepsi when it was coke. It was a big ink splot on the page. It asks you what you think it is. I said it was a bunny rabbit. WRONG. It was James Patterson with a full head of blonde hair. There's another one and I said it was a bunny (law of averages?). Do they grade on a curve? It was James Patterson connected with all of the readers of the world. The connect the dots felt like braille and I could read the connectedness through my eyeballs and fingertips. He does sell a lot of books. Connected. Through him we could all be connected. "Look, we got the same book!" It's not all ink blots (I kept saying bunny and it was never a bunny). "Do you use a lot of hand lotion?" "What's a lot?" My pages don't turn themselves. I've been wrong this whole time. "Do you see the emperor's new clothes?" Yes? I made it! That was the right answer. I won a t-shirt, a key chain, a coffee mug and all I had to do was give up the souls of any children I may have (which is bound to happen any day now that I have something as huge in common with the wide world as love of James Patterson).Now I watch all of Morgan Freeman's movies (he's very wise) and I never have to raise the energy to turn a page again. When you get to heaven tell 'em that James Patterson sent you.
Agh, my genuine investment in the actual characters of the book is playing fiercely against my complete exasperation at the book. On the one hand, like I said, I do like the characters. Iggy, Gazzy, Nudge, and Angel to a degree have kind of fallen by the wayside development-wise, but there's still sufficient energy being invested into Max and Fang, who were my two favorite from the beginning. And I have toe admit that the bits of romance and dialogue between those two are my favorite parts of the book. However, the book itself was just riddled with problems. I'll outline three major ones, but could possibly do more:1) The plot-holes.I understand that Max (rather, Patterson, because I don't think a realistic Max would be able to) snidely integrates pop culture into her references to amuse the audience, who understands them. But...would she understand them? I'm coming in with a resounding no, since it's emphasized heavily that the flock knows nothing of current teen and pop culture, and when they go to Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum, they don't recognize any celebrity other than Brad Pitt, and even that's a guess. Why then is her inner monologue rife with subtle pop culture remarks??? I have no idea.Later, Ari can't even write his own three letter name, but in the last book, didn't he sign an autograph for a girl as "Wolverine"??? Is Patterson even writing these books?? Are there any editors??? Are the ghost writers they must have hired even bothering to read the other books in the series??? Good Lord.2) It completely invalidated the adventure and substance of the first two books.Well, the first book kind of invalidated itself, because all that happened was a hunt to reclaim Angel, then a pointless meandering about New York, and in the end they were in exactly the place they left off. But I'd hoped that the search for the flock's parents in the second book was leading us somewhere. However, we learn in this book that the information they were going on meant nothing, and was all a false lead, and so all the books up to now were...what? A giant red herring, and I genuinely feel like I wasted my time on them now. Also, there are a couple "surprise reveals" that I had already figured out halfway through the first book. 3) It was completely riddled with political agenda an heavy handed attempts to influence. My annoyance about this is completely separate from my politics. In fact, I don't necessarily blatantly disagree with any specific opinion expressed in the book at all. I'm just super annoyed that they're in the book in the first place. I agree that a book should have a moral (love of friends, family, mortality, etc.), but I do not think that a book should try to force opinions on people, and this book was definitely doing that.The flock finds out that Itex, in attempt to cleanse the world that the grown-ups have polluted and politicized into ruin, are now going to kill half the population to start over with a new, intelligent, pure race. Throughout the book, their mission is to educate the children of the world about how stupid all of the grown-ups are, how they ***k up everything they lay their hands on, and how they -- the children -- need to assemble and reclaim the world for themselves, because the grown-ups don't care how they're leaving it for the next generation, and the kids are the ones who'll be living in it, not them.I wouldn't mind if the book had introduced this as a subject matter for thought, to get kids thinking open-mindedly about the responsibilities of humanity, but that was not how the book framed it up. It came with its foot down on a clear opinion already, giving no wiggle room for opinion or discussion, and it was all just a little much.
What do You think about Saving The World And Other Extreme Sports (2007)?
Against all reasoning, at times I actually enjoyed this book. I have never been a particular fan of this series, so it caught me as a surprise when, from time to time, I chuckled at some snide remark or payed attention to an interesting event.However, I could not get past several things, the main ones being:1. The "this is a dream" set-up that was very poorly executed and conflicted against logic in how it was portrayed.2. The obsessive "I am your mom" "No she's not" "I'm your dad" "She's your m
—King Haddock
This book starts pretty much where the last one left off. Itex is all part of the evil military-industrial complex and has an evil plan. That plan is to kill about half the people on the planet, those not "good enough" and recreate the world. It's up to Max and the flock stop their sinister plan. Like the previous books, the pace is fast and fun. The author gives a couple of nods to Ian Flemming's James Bond, and that's pretty much the way of his villains. They go to great pains to capture the heroes and promise death to them all (the book opens with that order), yet they seem to prefer needlessly involved, complicated, and risky plots to eliminate our heroes. None of which work. In the end, like Bond, this is the villain's undoing. Further, Patterson replaces Erasers with remarkably Terminator-like replacements. Fortunately for our heroes, the "Flyboys", as they are called, aren't as tough as a Model 101 Terminator. They seem more like the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz. The author develops the characters slowly - very slowly. Max and Fang ALMOST confess feelings to each other. We find out who Max's parents really are, and be prepared for some surprises from Ari. The book ends leaving things wide open for a sequel. There is a great climax and grand battle worthy of any Hollywood action flick. The villain gloats, Max must battle alone, great odds are faced, and the villain is beaten and it's over. Or, is it? All in all this book is my favourite in the series so far, i cant wait fun read the next one...Enjoy the ride ;)
—(´*•.¸ღBexღ¸.•*´)
I'm not sure if James Patterson had a time crunch for writing this book, but it was trash. There were so many improbabilities, pointless scenes, inconsistencies, and it was boring. While reading "Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports", I had some major "Yeah, right" moments. Max loses the use of one of her arms, then suddenly gets it back? Angel is now powerful enough to hypnotize a crowd? I don't think so! About that fight with Omega Boy...Max is super strong. She would be able to hold her own against him, but not for long. He's 400 times stronger than a normal human. He would have thumped her BADLY. The Director said that he was perfect. Yet his nose is weak and he doesn't track well. How convenient. Was there any reason for Jeb and Anne to tell the Flock that everything that they had experienced was a dream? No. Did that whole episode with Iggy, Fang, and Gazzy at the beach have to be inserted? No. Why were the clones of Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, Angel, and Total even mentioned in the first place? They didn't do anything. What made me really mad was that it was so stinkin' typical who Max's parents were. Why couldn't Patterson have thrown in a nice plot twist at that point? On the upside, I really liked the title of this book. Secondly, there were some parts that cracked me up.
—Bridget
