Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

THE STORY: Maximum Ride is a fourteen-year-old girl with wings (or a mutant freak depending on the current turn of events) who is the result of some experiments at a secret lab to inject avian genes into human embroyos. Max is the oldest of the six members of her family, or as they refer to themselves, the flock. The others are Fang - a taciturn boy who is four months younger than Max; Iggy - who was blinded by experimentation on his sight at the lab; Nudge - a young girl who talks non-stop; and two siblings, the Gasman - an eight-year-old boy with persistent intestinal problems and Angel, his six-year-old sister. Max and her companions were kept in cages and subject to repeated scientific experiments during their life at the School (as the lab was called); they were eventually freed by one of the lab scientists (who are referred to by the flock as Whitecoats) named Jeb Batchelder. Jeb secreted them at his mountain home and raised and educated them; but Jeb suddenly disappeared two years ago and the flock has been on its own since then. Suddenly, Erasers (experimental beings also developed at the lab who can morph into powerful vicious wolf-like creatures) raid the family's mountain hideaway and kidnap Angel. The remaining five kids determine to rescue Angel, who they assume has been returned to the School. Obviously the mission, for which they are ill equipped, will involve extreme danger despite the advantage of flight which their thirteen foot wing span provides them. Their journey begins with a return to the School in Death Valley, California; after a harrowing ecapes and great emotional trauma they eventually make their way across the continent to search for the clues to the identities of their human parents in another secret lab located somewhere in NYC. The fact that the Erasers possess a seeming uncanny ability to locate the flock adds to the tension which builds as the story approaches the point where the flock may be forced to choose between the bonds which have made them the only "family" each has ever known and the pull of searching for their biological parents. Each of them wants an answer to the question of how they came to be participants in such a despicable experiment; they also intensely yearn to somehow become members of a nuclear human family with a "real" mom and dad. As a point of clarification, despite the subtitle THE ANGEL EXPERIMENT, the flock do not think of themselves as angels and while they bear a superficial resemblance to our general conception of angels, there is no mention of this resemblance at any point during the story. THE GOOD: the decision of James Patterson to attempt to realize the potential of Max's character (which first appeared in WHEN THE WIND BLOWS) after her adventures headed toward a dead end in LAKE HOUSE, which received very poor reviews. The basic storyline is quite clever and it has sufficient elements to develop into an interesting fantasy series, although some readers of the earlier books may be disconcerted by the fact that with the exception of Max's winged nature and her escape from a despicable school, there are few similarities with the earlier books. (In effect, this is a cover of those books not a sequel; it utilizes the same basic character but everything else is diffeent.) The situation in which the "children" find themselves evokes both sympathy and tension in the reader; the author accommodates his legion of fans with his usual style of very brief action-filled chapters and frequent plot twists. The technique of using Max as the narrator very effectively provides insight into her psychological travails and impacts the reader emotionally. While there is frequent violence, most of it is less disturbing than in some of Patterson's work, both because it is less graphically described and also because it occurs in the realm of fantasy. Finally, the examination of the moral and ethical issues relating to the scientific experiments which produced the protagonists and the discussions of family relationships and responsibilities are cleverly interspersed throughtout the narrative. It is this aspect and it's potentially thought provoking and educational impact on young readers (certainly an important target audience for the book as I will discuss later) which led me to slightly upgrade my two star rating. THE BAD: The potential of the story is never realized, as is increasing the case with Patterson's books. Interesting ideas are never fully developed, even the humorous moments seem rushed. Either Patterson is getting increasingly lazy and just attempting to establish a new franchise to milk or he is involved in too many projects; whichever is the case his editors should have required a major rewrite. The thought process was also sloppy, this is a fantasy set in the real world, not the creation of a whole new world. So, when the flock is in NYC, it frequents Central Park, finds sanctuary in St. Patrick's Cathedral, and takes the Madison Avenue bus. Yet suddenly in a disconcerting switch with no conceivable purpose the kids visit a fictional AFO Schmidt (rather than FAO Schwarz) and dine at the Garden Tavern, which resembles in every detail the Tavern on the Green. The narrative content actually more resembles a comic book or a graphic novel than the usual hard cover of over 400 pages. THE TRULY UGLY: The author seemingly changes the rules at will whenever the flock confronts a problem. While it is difficult to be specfic without providing spoilers, two general examples will suffice. First, in the absence of any source of funds, the family soon confronts situations with which it would be very difficult to cope in their disguised state as regular children. So on two separate occasions, ATM cards very propitiously come into their possession, once in a totally unbelievable manner. In another situation, just when required one of them suddenly manages to drive a car. (These aren't the most outrageous examples.) But most importantly, THERE IS AN ENDING BUT NO CONCLUSION! Many events remain unexplained. The reader and Max are both left in a state of shock by the apparent implications of a horrible tragedy near the end of the story, yet there is no closure. Even when a book such as this one is intended to be the initial installment of a series, it should satisfy the reader on a standalone basis. This fails that requirement. SUMMARY: While there was no indication either on the book jacket or in the television commercials which I saw that this book was intended for the youth market (perhaps preteen), the price, the nature of the story and the website to which the reader is referred all seem to indicate that is the intended audience. I will obviously be interested in the opinions expressed in the reviews of such readers, but I believe that there are numerous better written alternatives available for both adults and young readers interested in fantasy. Among the best known works of recent vintage are not only the Harry Potter series but the wonderful Thursday Next quartet by Jasper Fforde. Thus I strongly recommend that rather than buy this book you at least wait until the sequel is published in the hope that some of the loose threads wil be tied up. If you are too much of a James Patterson fan to wait that long, either just borrow it from your local library (to which I plan to donate my copy, which is definitely not a keeper), or alternatively wait for the paperback rather than encourage the author and publisher to produce more books of this quality by purchasing the hardcover edition. Tucker Andersen