The Angel Experiment by James Patterson

In James Patterson’s The Angel Experiment, there is a lot of excitement. There are six main characters named: Max, age 14, Iggy, age 14, Nudge, age 11, Fang, age 14, Angel, age 6, The Gasman, or Gazzy for short, age 8,. They call themselves, the Flock. They are all very different in many ways, but they all have one thing in common - each and every one of them has wings. They were born and shortly taken to a lab to be tested and experimented on. All of the scientists treat them very harshly, and they never escape until, Jeb, one of the evil scientists, helped them escape and leaves them on their own, in a house on a hill, near a forest, as a test of their abilities. All of them develop different superpowers throughout the series.

In the beginning of The Angel Experiment, Angel gets taken by an evil breed of animals called, Erasers. They are human, but have the blood of a wolf in them, and can morph into a wolf at any time. The Erasers, led by Ari, Jeb’s son, take Angel back to the lab, where she is put through more tests, such as, seeing how fast she can go through a maze. Meanwhile, the Flock is organizing a plan to get Angel back. They end up deciding to leave Iggy behind, because he is blind, and Gazzy, because he isn't exactly the fastest. On their way to the School, Max sees a girl getting bullied by some boys with guns, so she decides to go help her. Every member of the Flock has superhuman strength and is very tall, so Max ends up defeating the bullies. While she is running away, Max gets clipped by a bullet on her wing, so she can’t fly away. A few hours later, she finds a small house where Ella, the girl that was getting bullied, lives. They end up taking her in for a few days, and are very surprised when they find out that Max has wings. Dr. Martinez, Ella’s mom, takes Max to the veterinary office that she works in, after she finds out that Max has a bullet wound, to get her x-rayed. She then notices a small chip in Max’s arm. Meanwhile, Iggy and Fang are staying in a cave with hawks, worried out of their minds. Since that was their official meeting place, when Max is healed, she finds them. While all of that  has been happening, Iggy and Gazzy are trying to evade the erasers and destroy some of them with bombs. They end up surviving, but some of the erasers do also. Iggy and Gazzy go to the cave and find Max, Nudge, and Fang. They leave to the school and some of the hawks followed. When they get to the school, they save Angel the hawks attack some scientists. They meet back up at the cave and start flying east, when Max has a piercing headache that makes her wings stop working. Fang saves her and they land in the forest below. They start cooking various things on sticks over a fire that they make, when Angel tells Max that she overheard some scientist’s thoughts (Angel can read minds) about this place called the Institute of something. She couldn’t remember what the full name was. Anyways, they were thinking about the Institute and how it held their parent’s names and addresses. They were also thinking about how that certain institute was in New York. They head to New York, where they start looking for it. They find no traces of it, and are sleeping in the subway when Max has another headache, which interferes with a computer, and all the images in Max’s head go on to every computer nearby. The owner of a nearby computer gets mad at Max for interfering with his computer and Max explains what is happening, but he stays mad. Max has a voice in her head that gives her advice, and that voice hints where the Institute of Higher Living is. It is underground in the sewers. It turns out that it has other mutants held in cages, and all of the files for every mutant ever, except for Max. They unlock all of the cages, and the other mutants are free. On their way out, they run into some Erasers. Ari is leading them, and Max kills Ari, causing pandemonium throughout the ranks of Erasers, and escapes above to the streets of New York City.

I think this book was very interesting and exciting. It is amazing that they all end the book alive. There is so much suspense and thrill in The Angel Experiment that I hardly ever put it down. I would recommend this book to anyone, especially previous James Patterson fans and fans of The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. If you like this book, there are seven more books in the series, and you can enjoy the rest too.

By Timothy, 6th Grade Reader