James Patterson
Little, Brown and Company
Published April 11, 2005
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For fourteen year-old Max and the others in her care, life is anything but normal. How can it be even close when she has wings bursting out of her back? Max and the others spend their lives hiding from scientists who would put them back in cages and continue the genetic experiments which resulted in their avian mutations. Just when Max thinks the coast is clear, and she and her friends are safe, the Erasers, frighteningly strong boys who morph into wolves, close in on them. When one member of the flock is captured, Max and the others have only one choice: they must rescue her from the lab where they were once imprisoned.
Max finds more than her lost team member when she reaches her former home. A mentor who helped them escape seems now to have betrayed them. He warns Max that nothing is what it appears. Everything is a test. A strange voice in Max’s head echoes the strange idea and leads Max and her friends on an even more perilous journey to uncover a secret which they desperately want to know: who are their parents?
Maximum Ride is packed with action and teen angst, but the ending was a bit anti-climactic, almost as if the book ended partway through the story. Max is above all an empathetic leader committed to protecting the weak, no matter the cost. Her struggle to discover who she is makes for a powerful undercurrent to Patterson’s first book in the Maximum Ride Series.
Mild. H*ll appears a couple of times.
Sexual Content
None.
Spiritual Content
None.
Violent Content
The central characters are part of genetic experiments and spent a great portion of their childhood locked in cages like animals. After their escape, their former captors pursue them, making for some moderately gory battle scenes.
Drug Content
None.
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I would be tempted to read this book, just because I like James Patterson as an author. Of course, I might run the risk of being terribly disappointed, considering the anti-climatic part. Eek! He can be such a great writer. Oh, it is the first book in the series? Hmmmm. Maybe that is the mistake he made, then, of assuming this kind of end would make his readers clamor for the next one. At any rate, thanks for the rewview. You are helping us make reading choices.
I wondered if he was maybe used to writing longer pieces for adults and sort of chopped the story in half to make it a more manageable length for YA? Hard to say. Thanks, Colleen! 🙂