The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson

I know that I have been hard on James Patterson for the last little while- mainly because I know his potential and have felt like he was not living up to it with his last few books. So, when I was sent The Dangerous Days of Daniel X to review, I must say that I was dreading the read just a little. I am happy to report that 2 hours after picking this book up, I am finished with it (wait- I didn't mean that the way it sounded...) and I loved it. That's right. Patterson is back on my good list.

Himself the father of a 10 year old boy, Patterson wrote this book concerned that reading statistics for boys are poor. They don't read any where near as much as girls, and when they do it is often a comic book. So, he decided to write a series that boys will love that has all of the elements of their favorite superhero movies and comic books, yet is a challenging book with complex sentence structure, big vocabulary words (the main character, Daniel, at one point uses the word euphemism and actually breaks the 4th wall to tell you to look it up, which made me laugh out loud), and a rather intricate and detailed plot line. I also really appreciated that Daniel is a cool, strong super hero who has a penchant for cooking his own gourmet food, classical music, art history and classical literature. He describes a passage from the Illiad so well, that it made me want to go re-read it. Wow. Refreshing to have some of those gender roles merged- especially pertinent for me right now as I have unsuccessfully spent the last week trying to find a non-pink play kitchen for my own little boy.

The story line is a little bit Harry Potter (his parents are killed by his arch nemesis at an early age and Daniel is on a quest to avenge them using his special powers), a lot Men in Black (he is an alien hunter who has a list of aliens that are currently inhabiting earth that he has to kill) with the perfect amount of action, compassion, grossness, teenage angst and adventure.

My only complaint with the book is along the lines of what I have said before about Patterson- every once in a while the one-liners are a bit contrived, the attempts at tween pop culture references a bit too obvious. I worry that 10 years from now references to Sanjaya Malakar and 24 are going to be obsolete and will take away from the potential timelessness of the story.

I loved the first 2 pages of the book where Daniel is talking to the reader and describing this first installment of his life (more books in the series are promised) and all of the disgusting aliens that he encounters and all but dares you to put the book down and walk away. I know that I will be letting my son read this series when the time is right- and I might just read it out loud to him before that time comes. Patterson has done it right this time in a bigger-than-life intergalactic epic and I can't wait for the next installment.