Maximum Ride by James Patterson
**Please keep in mind that there are more then likely going to be spoilers in these posts, so if you don't want to know anything - then please don't read after the first title is presented (titles are in bold
All righty, here we go again, another review by yours truly. Today we shall be looking at the Maximum Ride series (currently two books - I'm thinking there will be a third).
This series is about six kids (ages ranging from teenager to six years old), who escaped from an institute they call "The School". I won't go into details as to what they did in the "School", but I will say that it wasn't good. The story is mainly written from the point of view of Maximum Ride, the oldest of the six. One more interesting little tidbit, all the children have wings. This series has it's own blog, I don't mean one that was made by a fan, but one that is suppose to be written from the character's prospective. Link Be careful, the blog takes a lot of processing power, many images.
**Possible Spoilers below - you have been warned**
The Angel Experiment
Now you know, I wanted to write a nice detailed explanation of what happened in this book, but too much happened to be able to do that. So I will give you a quick rundown.
Six kids were experiments at a place called "The School", with some help, the escaped. They managed to start living a fairly normal life, they had a home, watched TV, didn't have any parents, and never went to school (either kind).
Then all that ended, when some other experiments from The School attacked them and kidnapped the youngest girl, Angel (seeing any relation to the title?). The remaining kids then go on and try to save Angel from The School.
Their house gets destroyed, by the other experiments from The School. They are now out in the world, alone and without a place to go. On their way to save Angel, Maximum Ride, is injured helping a normal child. She later finds help with that same child and her mother.
After returning to the flock, Maximum Ride and company then focus on rescuing Angel. Most of them get captured though.
The ones who did not get captured, then rescue Angel and the others.
Maximum Ride starts to have major headaches, and sees images. With these images and some information that Angel learned (she can read minds by the way), they head to New York to try and find out information about their parents.
They get to NY, only to find that they don't know where to go, and end up sleeping in some subway tunnels and in the park.
Maximum starts to hear voices as well as seeing images. With the help of this mysterious voice in her head, they finally reach their goal, a place called The Institute.
Getting into The Institute, they find a bank of computers, and some information on themselves and supposedly some information on their parents. While there, they find another lab, with experiments just like them. They free them, and try to run for it. They are found by some Erasers (the bad experiments I mentioned earlier), and Maximum is forced to fight one that she knew as a child.
Of course they escape.
School's Out - Forever
This book starts out with the children heading to Florida, and a quick stop at Disney World (admit it, you would too), where they narrowly avoid being found by Ari (the Eraser that Maximum knew as a child) - they were helped out by a child who thought that Ari was Wolverine.
Later they get attacked by Ari, who is pissed because he missed them at Disney World, and Fang is hurt badly. They end up having to take Fang to a hospital. The hospital staff notices right away that he is not normal. Rather quickly the FBI is called.
Soon enough, the flock ends up being taken to the house of one of the FBI agents, who treats them very well. She feeds them (tries to cook), clothes them, and even makes them go to bed on time. Maximum is feeling very conflicted at this point. The flock then works on trying to find their parents with the information that they took in the previous book - they have little success.
The FBI agent decides that it would be a good time for the children to go to school, a private school (noticing something about the title yet?). The flock goes, and tries to be normal, with little success of course. Though Fang does get an admirer, and Maximum even goes out on a date. Things turn south from that point on. After Thanksgiving dinner, and an announcement that the FBI agent would like to adopt them, the children are almost caught by The School (the really bad one in this case - man this could get confusing) - but manage to escape, and flee the area.
Camping out in the swamp lands, they run into a couple of kids - who escaped from an institute just like the flock, and end up giving the flock a lead as to where to go next.
Following this lead, they decide to find out more about a company that supposedly controls almost everything - and might accidentally nuke the world.
Sleeping in a motel room close to this companies headquarters, Maximum is kidnapped, and replaced with a double (the rest of the flock see through the double in no time).
Maximum manages to escape (with some help from her voice), and tracks down where the flock is. Maximum is just in time to save the flock from a trap that the double and The School had set for them.
There is some more, but nothing of too much note.
I know I was rather quick on these, but there was just so much going on, that it would have taken a book to fully review these books.
I can't wait for a third one, there has to be a third one.
