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A while before THE LAKE HOUSE by author James Patterson begins, FBI agent Thomas "Kit" Brennan and Colorado veterinarian Frannie O'Neill rescued six amazing winged children from the place that housed them like lab rats, a laboratory called ³The School.² The flock of children was made-up of a 12 year old girl named Maximus (Max) and her younger brother Matthew, two boys Ozymandias and Icracus, and sister and brother, young Wendy, and Peter. The children had bird DNA mixed into their human makeup and they were exceptional. They were smarter and stronger than the usual and they could fly. The group lived together at Frannie's Lake House before the authorities intervened and they were returned to their biological parents. But in that time the children, like all birds, imprinted Kit and Frannie as their parents and Frannie and Kit felt the same about the kids. Although they tried to win custody of the children, the system didnıt permit it and the youngsters were forced to live with their biological parents, and they were miserable. All that the children want is to return to the one place they have ever felt truly protected, loved and most importantly, understood at the waterfront cabin known as the Lake House. Dr. Ethan Kane, chief of surgery at Liberty General Hospital, works on illegal and horrifying experiments using unsuspecting donors for his Resurrection Project. He desperately wants these six children for his own experiments and he will do anything to get them. Max knows all of Dr. Kaneıs secrets and the horror that goes on at his laboratory at ³The Hospital² because, along with her other talents, she had been called upon to be a crackerjack secretary for ³The School.² But Max won't talk about what she knows, for she had been told, over and over, "If you talk you die!" And that pretty much tells the main body of the book. Kane keeps trying to capture the children and they keep trying to get away. The winged children are so charming and interesting and Frannie is so sincere in her affection for the kids, that itıs easy enough to suspend belief in the beginning of this book. But as you continue reading, Frannie and Kitıs tries at keeping the children safe are so incompetent, mad doctor Kane is so cartoon evil and mean, and his experiments are so over-the-top outrageous and unbelievable that the readers canıt help but wonder what James Patterson was thinking as he penned this book. There are two performers reading this audio book, Hope Davis and Stephen Lang. Ms. Davis takes the sections with our heroes, male and female, while Mr. Lang has Dr.Ethan Kane as his single character. Ms. Davis hits the perfect note as the hopeful yet worried Frannie and she does an equally fine job as the sincere and adolescent Max. Unfortunately, all the other voices she needs to portray in this audio book are similar variations of her two main characters. When any other person speaks to Frannie and Max, it was sometimes impossible to recognize who was talking until a clear speaker attribution was declared. That made for more than a few moments of confusion where there shouldnıt have been any. Mr. Lang's performance of Dr. Ethan Kane is filled with dripping menacing evil, while intermittently permitting the readers to hear how convincing and friendly the mad scientist could be, when needed. It worked perfectly. You could tell that the actor had a grand time creating his character. The prequel for THE LAKE HOUSE is the book, WHEN THE WIND BLOWS and here Patterson has departed from his usual mystery genre into the realms of fantasy and science fiction.THE LAKE HOUSE can stand by itself without having read the first in this series, but I wouldnıt recommend it. If the medical experiments werenıt performed and portrayed in such an unnecessarily cruel and mean spirited way, this book could almost be simple enough to be thought of as a tale of adversity and family-love that is targeted for preteens or teens. If youıve never read James Patterson I would recommend his early Alex Cross books and leave WHEN THE WIND BLOWS and THE LAKE HOUSE alone. When you see this novel for sale, heed the advertisements for it, ³Be very afraid.² And run from this book.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, June 2003
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