Max by James Patterson (Maximum Ride series)

Max

Author: James Patterson
Series: Maximum Ride series #5
Release Date: March 16, 2009
Pages: 309
Review by: Max

Warning! This is the FIFTH book in a mostly-great series, so if you haven't read the first four books and are interested in reading the series, I highly recommend you don't read this review and start the series from the beginning! Thanks!

In this installment in the attention-grabbing, thrill-filled Maximum Ride series by James Patterson, the Flock explores the circumstances around a catastrophe involving---you guessed it--millions of fish dying somewhere near Hawaii, relationships strengthen and evolve between two specific characters (insert winks and nudges here), and Max learns some lessons about adults and working with them.

Does it sound like your kind of book yet? Me, neither.



While Max (the book, not the character) isn't quite as bad as the fourth book in this series, The Final Warning, it's in a totally different league, at least, to me, than the first three books.
It seems as if this book (and the one before it) belonged to a whole different series, a whole new set of characters, living in a different world. In the first books, Max and the Flock had tons of kick-wing adventures, funny moments, and definitely less moments of pointless boring (yeah, I said it) moments about how Max felt.

It was like everything I liked about the series initially, beside the characters, was taken away and replaced with speeches about the importance of global warming awareness. And that wasn't okay with me--I just couldn't like the book, no matter how much I wanted to.

There were some (aka few) good points in the book, the main one being the long-awaited progress in Max and Fang's relationship. It was overdue, I think, so when I finally got to see something actually happen, I was extremely pleased. This wasn't enough to please me though, but combined with just my general adoration of the humor in the book and the characters, I'd say that'd be enough to give this book a solid 3.5 stars out of five.