Daniel X is Dr. Who without the charm and Superman without the identity complex. If Daniel can make something out of nothing, he might try conjuring up a better writer as his next trick.
Creative Staff
Writers: James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge
Artist: SeungHui Kye
What They Say
When his parents are murdered by an intergalactic criminal, Daniel X vows to take on his father’s role as Earth’s sole Alien Hunter. But life isn’t easy when you’re a young boy on your own, tracking down the galaxy’s deadliest outlaws. Luckily, Daniel has a gift: the ability to create anything he can imagine – including his parents, his sister, and his best friends, who are there to help him along the way. But when Daniel decides to go up against the sixth-deadliest criminal on his hit list, he may find that even his awesome abilities just aren’t up to the task!
The Review:
Technical:
Daniel X’s release follows the format of most of Yen’s other series, just in a larger trim size. The glossy cover features a wrap around image of the lead, Daniel, showing off his flashy powers, with the title in a nice large font size across the lower half. It stands out and looks very nice. The back cover has a small text blurb summarizing the events of the book.
Kye’s art uses a lot of fine lines and doesn’t skimp on backgrounds, some of which are highly detailed. Characters have a good range of designs and are easy to distinguish from each other. The art almost resembles a shoujo manga with its lack of blacks and emphasis on character interaction, rather than fights. The alien designs are somewhat silly looking rather than threatening, evoking insects and other well-known earth creatures. The panels flow well and the story reads easily.
Yen includes a few color pages to open the book and a bonus preview of Maximum Ride at the back.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After a successful release of one James Patterson young adult novel adaptation, Yen Press has moved on to another one of his series: Daniel X. Unfortunately, nothing about this book is going to make you want to read the actual source material. Depending on how faithful this adaptation is, that’s probably a good thing.
The book opens with a flashback explaining a tragedy that unfolding in Daniel’s past. His parents were hunted down and killed by an alien because they were alien bounty hunters. Almost immediately there are issues with the writing. The alien menace isn’t threatening despite having blasted a hole right through Daniel’s mother. Why?
You can’t take an alien spouting the worst one-liners I’ve ever read seriously as a villain. Replacement words for cursing, pointless product placement, and dialog that would never come out of a teenager’s mouth litter the story. I’m certain my parents who are roughly Patterson’s age could do better at mimicking modern day teenager speech than this.
The problems with the text don’t end at the awkward dialog. There are huge gaps in logic. An early scene has police officers come to the door suspecting Daniel of being truant who then hassle his “parents” about it. In the day and age of home schooling this scene boggles the mind. There’s also the fact that Daniel seems to have an exhaustive knowledge of most topics, yet has no idea where Malibu is and has never heard of the place before. This book doesn’t ask you to suspend your belief, it requires it.
One of the major elements to the story is Daniel’s ability to rearrange matter and create almost anything he can think of. He mostly uses that ability to recreate his parents and a group of imaginary friends. Daniel’s oddly cheery personality as he interacts with his created versions of his parents would make an interesting portrait of a completely broken and insane boy. His complete isolationism in the wake of total loss would be a fascinating story to tell. Patterson isn’t interested in reality. Daniel saunters on, tracking an alien who decide to give the kid multiple warnings to back off through ridiculous means, like attacking him with cats.
Did I mention the big baddy of this book is a mechanical horse in a suit? Before you think this is hilarious and might be a fun read, let me reassure you of his role. This is an earth threatening alien who attacked and destroyed Daniel’s home world! Yes, Daniel’s not a human, if the matter rearranging superpowers didn’t tip you off. The climax of the book reveal his origins and tries to justify his imaginary friends at the same time. What it unwittingly does is sucks all suspense and interest out of the shallow characters and leaves any readers who made it this far wondering why they should care.
In Summary
I understand that Yen has a good relationship with James Patterson and that the Maximum Ride series must sell really well for them. I’m just hoping that the next series of his they adapt has a story that doesn’t read like an exercise in focus group testing. The age rating may be teen but it’s written down to an eight-year-old’s level but has too much violence to qualify for that rating. The decent art is this book’s only saving grace, but it’s not enough to prop up the derivative plot and terrible writing. Unless you are a diehard fan of the book series and absolutely need to read this, you can do much better elsewhere.
Content Grade: D-
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: N/A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: October 31st, 2010
MSRP: $11.99
