Review: Maximum Ride by James Patterson

Posted by Darwin - 25/03/09 at 09:03 pm

Just in case you, like me, managed to miss it, the Maximum Ride series of YA (young adult) novels by James Patterson are best sellers.  Bona fide best sellers.  As in, the kind of success that every author dreams of best sellers, not just “good for YA” best sellers, i.e. movie-coming-out-soon-with-hordes-of-expectant-fans-already-looking-forward-to-seeing-it-because-they’ve-read-the-book best seller.

Still, not quite as creepy-successful as Rowling, but close enough.

Previously, I reviewed the first volume of the manga version of Maximum Ride and had expressed my intent to review the original book as well.  And thus, we now see that Darwin can keep a promise.

Maximum Ride is not just the book title, but also the name of the main character (although she normally goes by Max).  Fourteen year-old Max is the leader of a group that includes five other orphans: Fang, Gazzy, Angel, Iggy, and Nudge.  They live secretly together in an unidentified forest in the American west in a secluded house.  As the eldest, Max takes responsibility for the group, but everyone pitches in and has their own special gift to share, especially Angel since she can read minds.

Then again, since they all have wings and can fly, Angel’s just a little bit more special than the others - at least, at first.

The tale begins when Angel is kidnapped by a band of “Enforcers”, who are genetically altered werewolf children.  After Angel is taken, Max and the others undertake a desperate effort to reclaim her from the “School”, a research facility from which they had escaped years before with the help of their ersatz father-figure, Jeb, who disappeared two years after their escape.

The story is told in “micro-chapters”, each one ending with a cliff-hanger or mini-resolution.  Told generally from Max’s point-of-view, we get occasional shifts to other characters but such shifts hold for an entire chapter at least, so it’s not confusing.  I was particularly pleased with the way Patterson kept the language under control and all true profanity “off screen” through description.

The “tone” of the prose is obviously aimed at pre- and early teen readers.  The ages of the main characters seem jarring, but I’m sure that, in addition to being indicative of the backstory regarding accelerated maturation of gengineered children, it keeps the characters accessible to the target readers.  This “tone” coupled with the micro-chapters seem to be combined to encourage the reader to stay immersed, which it does.

For an adult reader, some of the situations and dialogue come across as cliche and overdone.  However, considering how things are being set up, I suspect that this is not as true as it seems on the surface.  I will take issue with the “adults are ruining the world” meme that crops up, though.  Use of that tired old phrase really is a shallow and condescending bid to stroke the ego of the intended readership.

The most frustrating thing about reading this as an adult is that Max and her “family” do lots and lots of really stupid things in their race back and forth across the country.  That, however, is the point.  In the telling of the the story, what we see is Max and her “family” being “trained” and “tested” by the people they assume to be their enemies.

This illustrates the primary success of Maximum Ride.  The story is written to be easy to read and appears to be shallow on the surface.  As you get into it, though, you realize that there’s so much more going on and that Patterson is carefully letting bits out in digestable chunks.  Honestly, once you finish the book and look back, you realize that a great deal of thought and effort went into presenting things in as valid a manner possible given the setting and characters conceived.

In conclusion, I have to believe that the Maximum Ride series deserves to be best selling and I applaud James Patterson on his skill and the success it has earned him.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Reviews. The entry is tagged under adventure, sf, transhumanism, ya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.