The Lake House - Audio Book Review

Title: The Lake House
Author: James Patterson
Publisher: Time Warner Audio Books
Narrator: Hope Davis and Stephen Lang
Duration: 7 hours 35 minutes
Copyright: 2003
Genres: science fiction, action, adventure

THE GIST: A secret laboratory, euphemistically called The School, has been performing illegal genetic experiments on human embryos. Most of the experiments failed and resulted in gross abominations, but not all of them. Max, Ozimandius, Icharus, Matthew, Peter, and Wendy were created at The School. The D N A of the six children was combined with that of birds, resulting in completely viable half human half avian life-forms. In other words, the children have wings, and all the other equipment necessary for them to fly.

In “When the Wind Blows”, the bird-kids were rescued from the school by FBI agent Kit Harrison and veterinarian Frannie O’Neil. Once The School was destroyed and the children were safe, they were all reunited with their biological parents, from whom they were stolen many years ago. It turns out they weren’t safe after all.

While at The School, Max accidentally learned about a secret project, called The Resurrection Project, which was being conducted at a hospital in Maryland. She knows that if anyone finds out about her knowledge of the project, she will be hunted down and killed. “You talk, you die." she continually reminds herself. And so, when a reporter comes around Max’s house asking about The Resurrection Project, she is terrified. Max urges the reporter to leave it alone, but the damage is already done.

A few days later, the reporter is murdered in her home, and soon after that several gunmen try to kidnap Max and her little brother Matthew.

Max quickly sends out a message to the other four bird kids in their respective homes that they are in danger. The flock meet up and go to the only place they have ever truly felt safe; the home of Doctor Frannie O’Neil. They aren’t safe for long, however, the killers quickly track them down at Frannie’s house. Frannie and the six kids make a narrow escape and leave town.

When they are a safe distance away, Frannie calls FBI agent Kit Harrison who had returned to his home in Washington DC. Once they are all together again in Washington, Kit uses his connections at the FBI to investigate The Resurrection Project.

Kit’s investigation eventually leads him to Doctor Ethan Kane at Liberty Hospital near Baltimore. Kit doesn't know it yet, but Doctor Kane is running an organ harvesting operation in the basement of the hospital. He has discovered a way to greatly increase the lifespan of a person by transplanting the entire organ system from a young healthy person, healthy before he killed them that is, into the bodies of rich and affluent people who are ailing. The procedure is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Doctor Kane, and the knowledge he could gain by studying the bird-kids could advance his research by light years.

MY THOUGHTS: “The Lake House” is a direct continuation of James Patterson’s “When the Wind Blows”, so hopefully you read that audio book first.

I didn’t like "The Lake House" quite as well as "When the Wind Blows.” I didn’t feel like James Patterson ever really established the connection between Doctor Kane and The School. In fact, it felt like the story was about Doctor Kane, an the bird kids were just kind of there.

I noticed one thing that was interesting though. In the current series of Maximum Ride audio books, the bird kids are really just people with wings. In these two earlier audio books, however, James Patterson really played up the avian part of their genetic make-up. The kids really display the characteristics and behavior of birds and it was interesting to see how Patterson integrated the two halves of their nature.

NARRATOR: I liked Hope Davis’ narration of “The Lake House.” She reads with passion and feeling which is not common among audio book narrators.

A while back I listened to the audio book “Heart-Shaped Box which was narrated by Stephen Lang. I didn’t like his narration at all in that audio book, and I think I described his reading as “wooden." In "The Lake House" however, I found myself liking him quite a bit. Lang mostly read the parts involving Doctor Kane, and he matched the arrogant tone of the character rather well.

FINAL WORD: Overall, the Maximum Ride in “When the Wind Blows”, and “The Lake House” does not have much in common with the Maximum Ride in Patterson’s more recent audio books. However, I think that real fans of Maximum Ride will enjoy “The Lake House”, although it should be remembered that unlike the recent audio books, these two earlier novels are not for kids.

TRY THESE OTHER AUDIO BOOKS:
“When the Wind Blows” by James Patterson
“Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment” by James Patterson
“Max: A Maximum Ride Novel” by James Patterson


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This book review is based on the unabridged audio book.
Audio book review by Steven Brandt
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