Maximum Ride: The Final Warning

The Final Warning
Author: James Patterson
Series: Maximum Ride #4
Release Date: March 17, 2008
Pages: 256
Review by: Max

WARNING ALERT! This is the fourth book in a series! You probably shouldn't read this review or the book being reviewed if you haven't read the previous books in the series! Thanks. END OF WARNING!

As everyone who's read any of my reviews on this here blog might know, I am a big fan of the Max Ride books-at least, the first few.
I adore all of the characters, all of the action in the first few books make me extremely happy, and the humor of these books is just wonderful.
But I suppose all good things must come to an end, sadly, and this book (in my opinion) is where the greatness of the Max Ride series ends.

My main issue with this book was its sudden turn toward the idea of preventing global warning. Suddenly, the Flock is neither longer kick-buttingly fighting evil winged werewolves, nor taking down an evil government corporation, but saving the environment by studying penguins in Antarctica? C'mon. It doesn't even make sense! I would rather hear about the challenges of being bird-kids on the run than basically an ad about global warning! The plot just didn't feel right-saving the world from 'global warming' didn't seem like something the Flock I knew would focus on instead of more immediate problems.
Another complaint-look at the cover. Since when was there a bird-kid with blonde hair and black wings? Also, TFW was reallllly short. I understand that the first three weren't either, but this one was especially short.

The characters were, as is expected, the same characters as the first few books, which is one of the reasons I don't completely hate this book. I really liked the development of the relationship between Max and Fang throughout this book, and I like the use of Brigid, one of the scientists introduced in the book, to help Max realize her feelings, even though I hated Brigid as a character. However, I didn't read this book for Max and Fang's relationship, I read it for the plot and the action and the interesting genetics ideas of the first three books, and this could be why this The Final Warning was just plain old disappointing.

If you've read the first three Max Ride books and you're genuinely interested in a bunch of kids with tons of potential doing something about global warning instead of saving the world, this is most definitely the book for you. If you're like me, though, this book, and the last three or four books in the series, probably just won't do it for you. I'm not saying it's a bad book, I'm just saying that this specific book compared to the first three was nowhere near as good. There were some good points-like the characters and the great humor of the characters' dialogue, but that wasn't enough for me to redeem this book's massive plot failure.

Fly on,
      Max