Daniel X Book Review (Draft)

The book Daniel X: Watch the Skies,  is a fantasy novel by James Patterson and Ned Rust. It is the second book in the Daniel X series. The book follows an alien that takes the form of a fourteen year old human and his job is to hunt down all of the evil aliens inhabiting earth on “the list”. The list is a compilation of all the the aliens on earth. He uses his powerful imagination to produce some sidekicks. He also uses his imagination to produce his family, killed by the List Alien Number One when he was only a small toddler.

    I think that this book is intended for teenage boys around fourteen, the main character’s age. This is because the book uses slang and has a storyline that would be appealing to that age because it is full of action that people of that age would enjoy. The main character, Daniel seems to “talk” to the reader as they are his peers. That is good evidence for the hypothesis that this book is meant for teenage boys. I think that if a book is written in the perspective of a certain age, then the readers should be that age in order for them to sympathize with them and understand their thoughts and views.

    The main character uses slang from the modern era to relate to the reader and add some comedic interest.

“He moved some wires to different jacks and threw a couple of switches. And then we saw what might have been the most sickening thing I’d ever seen. And yes I’ve been on the Internet before.”

In this quote, Daniel is describing the scene that he saw after hacking into the Alien’s computer. He called it the most sickening thing he had ever seen, even though he has been on the Internet. This is poking fun at some of the Internet pranks that circulate around. This may be funny to the reader because it may connect to their life.

Daniel is a very interesting character because he represents himself in many ways. His best friends are purely figments of his imagination. He expresses different parts of him imagination through his different friends. His friends are physically present and not completely imaginary. They can think for themselves and discover new things even though they are not 100% real. Daniel also creates a family to replace the one that was murdered and to interact with and get advice from. It seems weird to me that he can get advice from them even though he created them from his mind. Therefore he should know everything that they know.

“‘This is great, Dad,’ I said. ‘So how’s everything work?’

‘Its all very user-friendly,’ said Dad. ‘I don’t think any of you will have any trouble getting the hang of it.’”

I think that if all of the stuff that the author says is true in the story, then Daniel should have already known how to work the van and he should not have required any explanation. This is weird because if they come from his imagination, then they should not be intellectually superior to him. The relationship between Daniel and his imaginary companions is very interesting and makes the book better even though the system has a few flaws.

Daniel X: Watch the Skies  is a fantasy novel that was a great read.  The book follows a young alien hunter that tracks down all of the evil earth dwelling aliens. Daniel chooses to take the form of a fourteen year old boy. On his quest to rid the earth of bad extra terrestrials he references the list, an advanced laptop that keeps all of his information about alien hunting. This book is perfect for fourteen year-old boys because of its voice. The characters are also very interesting to read about and hear about their weird connections. Overall, this was a very good book.