Thriller

I chose to read this book simply because I am doing a Book Tac Toe challenge; I needed a book with a man’s name in the title; this was in the right place at the library and it was short. I love James Patterson’s Alex Cross series but tend to stay away from anything “co-authored”

I am not a reader of “alien” books but I found it to be a fun distraction. It wasn’t great and I think the flow was a little choppy but I tried to keep in mind it’s YA though I think it’s a little more middle grade than YA.

This is the first of a series and I will probably pick up the next book just to see what happens.
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CW: Death of parents ( )

Classic textbook case of God-Mode Sues running rampant over the plot. Or, if you want to be specific, classic textbook case of James Patterson. Oh, wait, plot? Sorry, it's impossible to get anxious over any conflict when the protagonist is FREAKING INVINCIBLE.

I am extraordinarily grateful that I did not pay money for this swill. I am saddened that the public library did, so that I and the rest of its unsuspecting patrons could be exposed to the garbage that this book is. What was the author thinking? That books "for kids" are excused from any semblance of quality? Kids WRITE better than this stuff every day. Even My Immortal is better than this, for all that it claims to have been written by a 13-year-old girl. At least it's funny. There is fanfiction that is worse than this book, but let me assure you: there's not very much of it.

For all mine and other reviewers' rhapsodizing, there is little that can be said to explain this book, and nothing to justify it. TV Tropes will not grant a page to this book. It is THAT bad. ( )

James Patterson’s foray into YA fiction is in my humble opinion, a flop. Given that there is a co-writer in this novel, it means that he didn’t actually do the writing, but it was the other writer who wrote it. Regardless, this didn’t work for me for a multitude of reasons. First, the main character here has every imaginable power, doesn’t know how he got these powers, was never trained, but still can be beat the baddest of the bad people. His home planet, who has people with similar superpowers, was overtaken by a villain, but Daniel X can defeat this same villain single handedly. This is a shortcoming of many YA novels that make their protagonists are more powerful, more capable, and more mature than their years would reasonably allow for.

The writing is weak. I’m not a teen, but even if I was I would feel insulted by the dumbing down of the writing here. I felt as if I was reading a reprisal of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The characterization was weak. There was very little that I liked about this novel, and I have no interest in reading any further books in this series.

Carl Alves – author of The Invocation ( )