Maximum Ride, where should I start with this series? First, I will post the summary of the books, courtesy of Wikipedia.
**Major Spoiler Alert**
The first book, The Angel Experiment, focuses around the rescue of Angel, the youngest member of the Flock. The group is safe in the mountains until a pack of Erasers (human-lupine hybrids) appear and kidnap Angel. The Flock must return to the School, where they had once been held and experimented on, to rescue Angel. Max is deeply confused when she finds that Jeb Batchelder, who had rescued them from the School and cared for them before disappearing two years ago, has reappeared as an evil figure, and that his son Ari has become an Eraser. As Max focuses on looking after the Flock and saving Angel, she is puzzled by a Voice in her head saying that her mission is to save the world. The Flock flees to New York City after rescuing Angel from the School. In New York they start trying to find out who there parents are. There, a dog named Total is added to their group.
School’s Out – Forever begins with the Flock heading off to look for their parents using papers they found at the Institute for Higher Living. On the way, they run into flying Erasers (with patched-on wings), including Ari. After a fight with Ari, Fang suffers injuries bad enough to need treatment at a hospital. FBI agent Anne Walker offers her home for residence while Fang recovers. The Flock agrees, and eventually they are enrolled into a real school. While at the school, Max goes out with a boy named Sam, but gets jealous when she spots Fang kissing a girl named Lissa. The principal of the school works for the Institute and almost traps the Flock at the school. Anne reveals herself as a member of the lab that created the Flock, and seeks to recapture them. Later, Max is kidnapped and replaced with a clone that has her appearance but acts differently. In the end, a fight leaves only the real Max standing. It is also revealed that Total can talk.
In Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, the Flock must save the world from the Itex Corporation (the company behind the School) and its evil Director, who want to terminate all recombinant species and cut the Earth’s population in half. The Erasers have been replaced with the flying, robotic Flyboys. As this is happening, Fang tries to persuade Max to find a permanent home where they can live in peace. Max invites Ari (the last remaining Eraser and Max’s brother) to join the group after escaping from the School again, causing Fang, Iggy, and the Gasman to leave the Flock in protest. In the end, Ari dies, the group reunites, and Max discovers that her parents are Jeb Batchelder and Dr. Valencia Martinez, a kindly veterinary surgeon from the first book. She also begins to realize she has feelings for Fang.
In the fourth book, The Final Warning,the Flock flies out of a government meeting set up to decide what is best for them. Later, they go with Max’s parents to Antarctica, where a team of scientists needs their assistance. There they fight an international organization led by the Uber Director, who intends to auction off the Flock to corrupt leaders of foreign countries to be used as weapons and mercenaries. When Angel goes after a baby penguin in the midst of a blizzard, the group is captured and taken to Miami. They defeat the Uber Director in the midst of a hurricane and make their escape. Meanwhile, Total grows wings of his own and falls in love with Akila, an Alaskan Malamute. Max and Fang kiss a few times, and Max starts to acknowledge her feelings for him.
At the start of MAX: A Maximum Ride Novel,the Flock is attacked by bionic assassins (which Max nicknames M-Geeks) at environmental awareness shows in Los Angeles and Mexico City. Later, the government enlists their help in finding out what is destroying hundreds of ships and killing millions of fish off the coast of Hawaii. While the Flock is undertaking the task, a criminal mastermind is tracking their every move. Then, Dr. Martinez (Max’s mother) is kidnapped and held hostage. The Flock takes a submarine down to the ocean depths, fends off hordes of M-Geeks and rescues Dr. Martinez from an underwater dome as it starts to flood. During their struggles, Fang and Max’s relationship grows stronger, and Max feels that she loves Fang.
In Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel, the Flock travel to Africa to help the people there. They meet Dr. Hans, a former Itex worker, and Dylan, another avian hybrid designed to be Max’s “perfect other half”. After a prophetic statement from Angel stating that Fang will die soon, Max is traumatized and starts spending more time with him. Dylan joins the Flock, and they return to their newly rebuilt home in the mountains. Max and Fang are told to leave the Flock because they are more focused on their personal relationship than the surrounding dangers. Angel becomes the new leader of the Flock and gets rid of the rules Max set up for them. Eventually the group reunites, but Fang is captured by Dr. Hans and dies while being experimented on. The Flock rushes to save Fang, and Max stabs his heart with an adrenaline shot and revives him. Dylan also injects himself in a suicide attempt, but fails. In the epilogue, Total and Akila are married, and Fang leaves Max a note saying that the Flock is in danger with him there, and that he will meet Max again in 20 years.
Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel, Max, unable to get over the fact that Fang has left her forever, goes to live with Dr. Martinez. During that time, they figure out that an organization known as the Doomsday Group is brainwashing people.However, Max is slowly starting to warm up to Dylan despite her mixed feelings in the sixth book. Meanwhile, Fang starts his own gang which includes Max's clone, now called Maya. The two teams join forces in Paris, although they don't exactly get along perfectly, to stop the Doomsday Group from killing themselves and the brainwashed people in order to save the planet. Max is hurt even more after Fang asks her to come and help them, causing great tension between them. Everything goes awry when Gazzy fails to disarm all the bombs under the gathering spot, and the bombs explode while Fang, Gazzy, and Angel are still in the blast radius. Fang and Gazzy make it out safely, but Angel is missing, leaving everyone heartbroken. In Angel's epilogue it said she was still alive, but her whereabouts were not specified.
Last of all there was Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure, The story begins when Max and the remaining members of the flock have to go to an ordinary school. Though Max is unhappy about it, she just cannot say no to Dylan. Meanwhile, Fang's gang is caught up when they're attacked by two monster trucks. Within those monster trucks is something interesting: Max's half brother, Ari, who has yet again risen from the dead. But not only that; there are also more Erasers along with Ari. The fight ends when Maya (Max's Clone, aka Max II) dies in Fang's arms. He doesn't want to hurt anyone else in his gang so he tells them to go home and forget everything that had happened with him. He is then told by the Voice that he has to go back to Max. While he is traveling on foot (one of the bones in Fang's wing was broken in the fight with Ari), Fang meets some people who ask him if he needs a ride. He ends up getting thrown off a cliff. When Max and Dylan leave school, Dylan realizes he forgot his book in a teacher's room. While there, the science teacher tells Dylan that if he values Max's life, he will do the mission that Doctor Gunther-Hagen wants him to do. He is told that the doctor had found something in Fang's blood that many scientists would want, so he tells Dylan that he must kill Fang or they would kill Max. Later that night, Fang arrives on the Flock's doorstep. Max can't help but hug him. When Ari and Jeb arrive to kill Fang, they learn that Fang's DNA contains the secret to immortality. Dylan, after running off, returns and tries to kill Fang, but cannot go through with it. The whole Flock is picked up by Max's mother, and they go to an island paradise where they will survive the approaching apocalypse. As the world suddenly goes up in flames (although they first believed the apocalypse was in the form of a terrible virus), Angel is revealed to be Max's Voice and Dylan comes flying in to the rescue. Fang and Max think they die in each other's arms, as Max has finally decided who she truly loves, but they don't die. The world has adapted so that only mutants can live in it; half of it is water, which is why the Flock evolved to have gills. The other half has high cliffs, so the Flock can live there, having wings. In the end, they did not quite save the world, but they saved each other.
~
Okay, honestly I do not see the whole hype over this book series. I remember when I was in middle school, all of my fellow schoolmates were absolutely OBSESSED with this series. Just the imagine the joy and happiness young, middle-school me must have felt when I first got my hands on the first book of this series. Finally, I was going to join in on this Maximum Ride fandom, I was going to become an official "Avian-American." Boy, was I disappointed, I think that the summary of this series is so much more exciting then the actual books.
To be fair, I really enjoyed the first three books of the series. They were amazing, the concept was interesting, and really different. I mean how often do you read a book about bird-human hybrids, who are on the run from these evil whitecoats? However, once the third book ended everything had been resolved in the story, that was it, there was really no where else the author could have went with this story. Even though James Patterson couldn't really go anywhere else with the story, doesn't mean that he didn't try. So the first half of the fourth Maximum Ride adventure was dedicated to Max and the flock traveling around the country, like a band of circus freaks, preaching about the importance of taking care of the planet. This is a very important thing to know, but this was a really disappointing transition. How can you possibly go from that amazing storyline and downgrade it to that? That's like taking away a five star meal and replacing it with McDonald's, then expecting me to thoroughly enjoy that.
And of course there was a love triangle. 99.999% of the time, I really don't mind love triangles, just as long as they are well written, and they do not consume the whole story. Which in this case, none of the above happened. First off, the whole idea of having a person created to be your perfect other half, is just creepy. Secondly, I felt that Fang didn't really act like he cared for Max as much as the author claimed that he did. Of course Dylan was head over heels for Max, its literally in his genes to be in love with her (again creepy). All Max really did in the last five books was complain about how she didn't want to choose between Fang and Dylan, and repetitively deny that she liked either of them. Meanwhile, the world is coming toward its end while Max is just sitting in a tree, making a list of pros and cons about both of the boys. Not to mention the fact that Fang left Max, and created a new flock to replace everyone in the old one. I don't understand how Max still claimed to be in love with Fang when he practically left and replaced her with her own clone, Maya. The part of the story that was the most screwed up for me was that when Maya dies in his arms, he just goes and abandons his new flock, and crawls back to Max! Of course screwing up everything else in the process.
Whenever I come across a Maximum Ride fan page, I notice that the main focus of all of them is just the relationship of Max and Fang, no one mentions Dylan (who was actually one of the least annoying characters), and the rest of the flock, Iggy, Gazzy, Nudge and Angel are basically forgotten about. Also, everyone seemed to have hated Max's clone, Maya, (another decent character, until she died, of course) for absolutely no apparent reason. Max and Fang (also known as, "Fax") didn't even have a relationship, they basically just denied liking each other the whole series before making a split second decision in the last book that they were going to end up with each other.
I especially hated how the series ended, it felt way too rushed. I thought that since there were eight books in this series that the ending would seem more planned out then what it was. It just seemed that he ran out of ideas for the story and just thought, "I'm gonna just make the whole entire world explode, and let all the people die, but the mutants live." If I would have known that was going to happen I would've saved myself so much time by putting the books down long ago. There were so many cool ideas that he brought up during the story that he could have incorporated into the ending but he just dropped those ideas, and instead wrote what seems to be an ending that was put together in like five minutes. I really wanted to like this book series and join the fandom but honestly I really
hated it. I wish I could have all the time back that I spent on this less-than-impressive book series. I don't understand the huge deal with this book series and highly recommend against reading it at all costs, unless you want to read about a fourteen year old human-bird hybrid who's only good for complaining about this horrible love triangle dilemma that she finds herself in, and how she fails to save the world. Until next post.
