Saturday, February 21, 2009

More TV

Flight 29 Down: The Seven, and Flight 29 Down: The Return, by John Vornholt; based on the television series created by D.J. MacHale and Stan Rogow. [I'm not sure if the authors of these (a whole bunch of guys so far) would be considered ghost writers: MacHale and Rogow are listed on the front cover, but the writer's name is not difficult to find on the title page.] and Flight 29 Down: The Storm, by Brad Strickland and Flight 29 Down: Scratch, by Walter Sorrells and Robert T. Sorrells and Flight 29 Down: On Fire, by Walter Sorrells. It takes me about 2 hours to read one of these, so it seemed silly to try to react to each one individually. Some things of note: 1. Although nos. 2 and 3 are actually written by the same guy, Return had a different feel. The others are all very close in voice and writing style, but that one stood out to me for some reason (although I'm sure the teen(y) fans won't notice a thing). 2. I don't know if it is just this copy, or if something is off with the entire printing, but Storm is missing pages 161-192. They weren't torn out, nor do they appear later out of order; they are simply not here. 3. Minor details seem to change from book to book. The first couple things I noticed, I tried to tell myself it was just a matter of perspective, since small sections will focus more on one character and be from that character's POV, and include their thoughts. But there are starting to be some bigger inconsistencies that I cannot ignore, like how in 5 the plane wandered out into the ocean during the storm, but in 6, part of it managed to come back during the storm, a fact that was totally ignored in Scratch. 4. The writing in general is filled with cliches and is overly dramatic. I'm not sure how teens will receive it, but it feels very poorly done to me. That's enough for now. I in general like survival stories (I loved them as a kid), and, for a 5th-8th grade audience, these would be quick fun reads. They are pretty informative, or can be at times. Here is the web site for the tv show.

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