Chat about... When The Wind Blows by James Patterson

Did you love When the Wind Blows by James Patterson? Hated it? Seen an interesting article about the book? Felt the book was a victim to superfluous commas? Loved the book, hated the cover?

Discuss it all here! Spoilers abound, enter at your own risk...

Ok *cracks knuckles* some opinions about When the Wind Blows:

Chapters don't count as chapters if you can finish them without turning a page. Having said that there is something pleasing about getting to chapter 100 in a couple of hours.

What is somewhat irritating about this book is that everything is laid out in capital letters, repeatedly, in case you didn't figure it out for yourself. This goes from the oh-so-obviously-going-to-be-the romance plot to the pointedly reiterating what happened earlier in case you can't remember. Although, the latter is a point that Robert Jordan could have used once in a while. It makes it easy to skim, without fear that you might miss something 'important'. Perfect reading for sick people.

The characters were staggeringly underdeveloped, they were still strangers to me by the time I finished the book. I think my mind filled in the gaps using material from the TV series Dark Angel. There was even a Max who took care of all her 'special' siblings.

I wanted to know more about the doctor who was the children's tutor. She was possibly the only non-evil scientist in the story (with the exception of the main character, whose name I have forgotten). As we all know, scientists are mostly evil. Mwah ha ha ha haaaa.

What bothered me the most though, was not the novel itself, but the author's note. What INSANE transgenic technologist from the University of California said that "two to three years in the future I wouldn't have any trouble suspending my beliefs about the events described in When the Wind Blows, much of this will come to pass". That was 1998. It is 2011 and I still have trouble with it. It is not that the science is outside the realm of possibility, but it is just so far at the extreme edge that it may well be described as a microscopic dot on the horizon of probability and should not be mentioned outside of a very desperate hail-mary-pass grant application. Especially if your readership is not in a position to judge it in an informed manner. Bah.

I can't believe I finished it.

>2 stripycat42: "What INSANE transgenic technologist from the University of California said that "two to three years in the future I wouldn't have any trouble suspending my beliefs about the events described in When the Wind Blows, much of this will come to pass". That was 1998. It is 2011 and I still have trouble with it. It is not that the science is outside the realm of possibility, but it is just so far at the extreme edge that it may well be described as a microscopic dot on the horizon of probability and should not be mentioned outside of a very desperate hail-mary-pass grant application."

God, I'd love to try and write a grant application for that. "I intend to create a group of superintelligent beings. Some, but not all, will have wings. Wings are cool."

A certain behatted person encouraged me to read this about 10 years ago. So my recollections are more than a little hazy. But as far as I remember, it wasn't really supposed to be an SF book, it was supposed to be more along the lines of one of Crichton's books. So I think the quote from the "transgenic technologist" is more of a "this could so really happen and therefore this book is not SF" disclaimer than anything else.

I just finished reading it. I had a really hard time getting through the first half of the book because aside from the random "Oh hey look, a flying girl!" bits, everything else was just so predictable and cliche. Handsome FBI agent with a mysterious secret meets attractive woman with a heart of gold suffering from her tragic past. There are evil scientists and doctors with a secret lab, and the intrepid pair are trying to beat the bad guys while falling in love. Woohoo.

The pace picked up a bit once they started worked with Max and then the other children, so I was able to get through that part reasonably quickly and with more enjoyment. I don't quite understand the end, though. What happens to the flying kids after meeting their parents? Do they really go back to live with them? I assumed they'd have to pretty much hide since there must be tons of people who'd like to study them, either with their permission or without it. Plus, it's not like people would just throw away all the research and papers and samples or whatever else was left at the basement lab.

I just really can't picture it as the home of a secret evil organisation harvesting babies for mad experiments. Also, how could all of those doctors and nurses have been involved in the baby harvesting thing and been apparently seriously evil...and Frannie didn't pick up on it even a little bit? No one noticed a higher number of reported miscarriages? No mothers ever got an ultrasound picture of their baby with its head as big as a volleyball and proudly showed it to everyone they saw? Was the entire staff in on it, as I don't see how you could deliver a baby, then apparently just pop it downstairs and tell everyone it had died without at least someone saying "Hey there is a baby with a giant head downstairs actually!" Was there no cleaning staff? Wouldn't the families at least have wanted to have their baby's remains for a funeral service?

Also...what happened to Kit's FBI career? It was so important in the first half the book and kept being brought up again and again, but then by the end it's apparently just forgotten. He punches out his apparently evil supervisor and then he and Frannie run off to the woods with no careers and live quite happily, I guess. Personally, if I had been Frannie, and the man I had married and been grieving for the past year and a half turned out to be an evil baby harvesting doctor, and my best friend had turned out to be the queen of baby harvesting doctors, and practically everyone I had known and my whole community turned out to be evil baby harvesters, AND the one guy I fell for had lied about his identity and been sneaking around my place and at one point suspected me of being an evil baby harvester....well, I think I'd have some issues. I wouldn't just run off into the sunset with the FBI agent who'd lied about his identity and purpose right after discovering everyone else I had ever loved or cared about had lied about their identities and purpose. I would think that would be the kind of thing that required years in therapy to fix, but I guess camping in woods with flying children will do just the same.

I could keep going...but to be honest, I'm mainly glad the book is finished. The one thing I hated above all, however, was the switching between first and third person all the time. A lot of chapters I had to start thinking "Ok, is this from Max's perspective, or is this from Frannie's perspective watching Max and commenting on it?" It didn't help that even when it was apparently from Frannie's perspective in first person, comments about what Max was thinking were inserted in third person even though Frannie couldn't have known any of it. It burned my biscuits.

It was an easy read, so I guess that's one positive. I didn't find it a very fast one, but that was mainly because I had to keep making myself read most of it, at least until the last 1/3 of the book when there was enough action happening to keep the pace up. Personally, I would class this as a "It's so bad, it's bad" book.

Oh wait, one more thing that really bugged me...they made a really big deal out of her dog, Pip, in various places. Then when they get captured, he just vanishes for the rest of the book.

And if these evil doctors/scientists were so evil...why did they remove all the animals before burning down her place? Where did the sick and recovering animals go? I would have felt better if left with the assumption that the evil baby harvesting, skitter killing bad guys had just burned the place down with the animals inside...but what did they do with a wounded fox?

I think It would read "I intend to investigate the potential use of gene therapy in extending life expectancy using genetic material from unusually long-lived birds". The flying children would be swept under the carpet as a cool but unmentioned side effect and then sold off to military research groups for their obvious utility in super soldier projects.

Oh by the way, if anyone is further interested, there is apparently a sequel, The Lake House, along with a series for children called Maximum Ride - which has even been turned into a Manga (Maximum Ride: The Manga). No I haven't read any, and have no desire to either...

Edited: Due to paucity of commas and bad grammar