I’ve been a fan of James Patterson’s work for sometime now. After I read “The Thomas Berryman Number” I was enthralled and I’ve been reading his work ever since. Every book that he does is wonderful. The webs of dialogue and plot entangle you into each of his books and never let go until the final page. I admire that.

Something that I just love about his books is that the chapters are short and sweet, but still hold a wonderful source of information and the right amount of integrity. This is a cool thing because if you are reading in a hurry, you don’t have to put your bookmark in the middle of a chapter and totally forget what happened when you come back. Now you have a fresh start.

“When The Wind Blows” is 402 pages and goes by really fast. What happened with me was that I started it at around my bedtime and then when I looked at the clock, I noticed that I lost about 2 hours just reading this fine book. That’s cool, in my book.

PLOT—Spoils—Beware

It begins following a little girl named Max. She has escaped from her School with her brother Matthew, but got separated. Hunters are chasing after her as she first spreads her extraordinary wings and flies away into the night. Shortly after, Frances O’Neil, (or Frannie as she likes to be called), sees the little girl and thinks that it’s the alcohol making shapes so she sort of dismisses the sighting, but knows that there is truth behind it. Kit Harrison, AKA Thomas Brennan FBI agent, rents Frannie’s cabin right next to her vet clinic that she runs and sleeps in. Right from the start, this mysterious agent who knows no rules, has an attraction towards the doctor. The girl, Max, (short for Maximum) brings these two together in a plot full of love, betrayal, fear, death, and suspense that will leave you on the edge the whole book to unleash the mystery about what’s happening to the kids who are being experimented on at the “School”.

The only real character that I had a problem with in this book was that Max is a horrible character and dialogue is terrible. The character is a just annoying to read about, ESPECIALLY her dialogue. They just hurt my eyes. Plus, her character is just hard to like. She’s an innocent little girl, but she’s also childish, worthless, stubborn, insubordinate, weird, nice, mature (where did James get that? A mature 11 or 12 year old who acts like an adult, yet always acts like a child?), and whiny. I’m sure a lot of people will think she’s just a lovable little girl, but she is just annoying.

The book moves at a steady pace, but I felt like at some parts, James was rushed. To tell you the truth, his imagination is yucky in this book. It takes place in Colorado, and I’ve never been there, so I was expecting to hear some imaginative, wonderful paragraphs explaining what it looks like, but I didn’t. I couldn’t imagine where the storyline took place, because he didn’t explain it correctly, and that was sort of frustrating.

Something else I thought sucked was that the ending was a no-brainer and was rushed and just plain dumb. It wasn’t a big ending with fireworks and a big kill or something, it was just a predictable thing and it sort of drained me of my interest. I mean, you devote a day or two to a book, so you expect to be rewarded in the end and sadly, that didn’t happen FOR ME, in this book, but it might happen for other people who are more easily amused.

Something that’s just a little thing I would like to mention is that the cover art for each of Patterson’s books is fantastic, showing not only the surrounding area where most of the magic happens, but there’s also amazing color content and it looks beautiful, not Van Gogh or Giger perfect, but amusing and impressive.

Something I notice in each of Patterson’s books is that he has an obsession with sex, sort of. When he writes about it, he is ecstatic and graphic. It’s sort of annoying. I hate reading about sex in books because it has already taken over our radio waves, video games, televisions, music, and movie theatres and I like to get away from all that crap, so it’s disappointing. I don’t mind sexuality in all that if it advances a storyline or what-not, but mostly sex in movies and TV is just for a male audience, and I hope we get over that. That doesn’t sound like what a 13-year-old MALE would say, would he? Awesomely, though, James doesn’t write about sex too much in this. In fact, I only have recollection of one chapter that had details about that stuff.

The cuss factor isn’t as high as in his other books, but it is still in the mix, so parents be warned about what their child might be reading, although I doubt a child would be reading an adult book anyway.

FINAL ADVICE

If you like Patterson’s work in the Alex Cross mysteries (I know I did), then you will love his work in “When The Wind Blows”. You won’t get as high caliber characters as those in the Cross books, but you do get a great storyline with one amazing character, Frannie. Out of all the female characters that Patterson has come up with (don’t even mention his ֿst To Die” book, I’m still disgusted over that book), Frannie has to be his finest. Go out and buy this book, or at least get it from the library because it is a worthy read if only it lasts for a couple days. Peace out and have a happy day (AKA “Ta Ta For Now")

Jason

“The New Book Reviewer”

ALSO RECOMMENDED READS BY JAMES PATERSON:

“Four Blind Mice”
“The Beach House”
“The Thomas Berryman Number”




Recommended: Yes