Hi!

Hi, and welcome to my blog-turned-place where I post my writing. This is my outlet to put them up, which was radically different from the blog that this started out as. I hope you'll have a good time reading my blog/place where I post some poetry and some short stories. I try to cover a variety of topics in these works of mine, so I hope any readers will enjoy it. I'm not an English major by any stretch, but I enjoy writing. Critique would be nice for my writing, cause lord knows I could work on it. Enjoy!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Book Review Time

I thought that I'd delve into the world of book reviewing; I mean, I figured why not? Okay, so the book I read was The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, by James Patterson. Admittedly, it's more of a teen novel, but at this point of summer, I'd read just about anything. Plus, the concept appealed to me.

The plot of this book is Daniel X being an alien hunter, with the power to create. Literally, he can create things that he thinks of, and they're actually real. He also can transform himself into anything he thinks of, which is a rather useful talent. These powers comes in handy to eliminate the alien scum that are trying to destroy, eliminate, corrupt, etc. the world, and he frankly needs them. Oh and did I mention that the most wanted alien on earth murdered his parents? Yeah. That's what fuels Daniel's quest for relative vengeance.

For this book, he was trying to eliminate the number 6 most wanted alien on earth. It starts out with his recap of his parents being murdered and thus him taking over as the designated alien hunter (it's starting to get cheesy writing "alien hunter", but bear with me here).

Because he hasn't had the need to go to school at all in his life, as he's literally too smart for learning, he finds it a bit awkward to walk in the halls of high school. Note, the only reason why he's going to high school is that he had a hiccup with the truancy officers in the good city of Portland, Oregon. Well, that and he literally is too smart for school-he just knows things, as he's a genius, of sorts. From his new high school in California, he ends up with a crush (that ends up getting a bit messy) and other things. Who knew high school could be that deadly?

The part of the book that I can critique with fairly good accuracy is the segue parts. I felt that some of it was just filler to move from point A to point B. Yes, the people reading it are young kids to pre-teens, so their attention spans aren't long enough to really mind. Maybe it's me, and I'm pretty sure it might be the case, so I might be a tad facetious. But still, I was questioning a few parts of what was going on; I didn't see the relevance between a few parts in the plot, aka the loopholes.

Without spoiling anything, I felt that the ending was a bit rushed, and that it could have been a bit more spectacular. That being said, it still was neat, just that it was a more younger kid heroic ending, rather than the more mature-ish ending that I've become accustomed to. Eh well given the intended audience, that's to be expected.

Final Rating/Opinion: 5-6/10. It's a decent read, cheesy at times, but not too bad. Do I suggest buying it? Well, I'd say to check it out, read it a few times, and then make your decision. The book itself is really short, so it would have to be mindblowing or highly rated for the individual to purchase it; though I don't mean to say that it wasn't that bad. Check it out first, then proceed from there. I will say that I'm more than likely going to check out the next two books in the series though.

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