Maximum Ride: The Fugitives
Maximum Ride
The Fugutives, Books 1-3
James Patterson
image courtesy of hatchette book group
Book 1 Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
Book 2 Maximum Ride: School’s Out Forever
Book 3 Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
The Maximum Ride books by James Patterson can be consdered two trilogies starring the same characters. The first trilogy is The Fugitives, the second is The Protectors. This review will concentrate on The Fugitives, a group of genetically altered kids who struggle for simple existence against those who created them and pursue them still.
The kids who star in this series are ages 6 through 14, and have DNA that has been altered to be 98% human and 2% avian. This 2% has given the kids distinct birdlike characteristics—most notably, each has a set of wings and can fly. They are also tall and proportionally stronger than most human beings.
Because of this birdlike humanity, they call themselves a flock, rather than a family. Each member of the flock was genetically altered either before or after their conception and birth in experiments conducted at a facility they know only as The School. They lived in cages and were treated like animal experiments rather than like human children. The one kind influence in their lives was one of the scientists, Jeb Batchelder, who treated them humanely, and eventually rescued them from the school and took them to live in a hidden home deep in the mountains.
When the book opens, Jeb has disappeared and left the oldest member of the flock, 14-year-old Max, in charge of the family. Max, the eponymous Maximum Ride, is strong and caring, and takes personal responsibility for the well being of her flock. She can be bossy and overbearing, but she is loved by her flock and manages her little family as well as any 14-year-old could. There is absolute trust and loyalty between the members of the flock: 14-year-old Fang, a dark, quiet boy who functions as Max’s right hand; 14-year-old Iggy who is blind as a result of past experiments performed on him; 11-year-old Nudge who talks incessantly but has a gift for computers; 8-year-old Gasman, or Gazzy, whose gift (to the delight of middle school readers everywhere) is exactly what you’d expect the gift of someone called the Gasman to be; and Gasman’s biological sister, Angel, who develops gifts in telepathy, mind control, talking with animals, and breathing under water.
The flock’s hiding place is soon discovered when agents from The School, genetically altered half-men half-wolves called Erasers, find their hideout and kidnap Angel. Max resolves to get her back, even if it means returning to The School and the horifying memories it contains for all of them.
From that point on, througout the three volumes, the action rarely stops. There’s a reason this part of the series is called The Fugitives; for three volumes these kids run and run and run. They are guided and protected by Max, who struggles to keep them safe even as she has to deal with her own feelings of inadequacy, fear, and anger. She doesn’t make every choice well, but we never forget that she’s 14. How many 14-year-olds have to face assassins every single day?
These kids can’t trust anyone, and every time they start to do so, it blows up in their faces (sometimes literally). Yet all they want is to be regular kids. Their ongoing, often interrupted quest in the three books is to find their parents, to find out why they were given into the hands of the coporation that made mutants of them. The answers aren’t always pleasant.
It’s heartbreaking to see the flock, during their few forays into normalcy, wish so badly for it to go on, but even the youngest kids enter every room with their eyes on the nearest exits, and not even the simplest everyday tasks are undertaken without knowing what their backup plan is.
It’s no wonder, when she has to be so strong to keep her flock safe, that Max has a hard time letting herself be vulnerable. She develops feelings for Fang, but every time she comes to the point of having to open herself up a little bit, she can’t do it. This leaves Fang frustrated and angry, and Max confused and hurting.
Those human moments are why we read these books. I read the first three books in just a few days, I didn’t want to put them down. As an adult, I could do without the bathroom humor, but I recognize that gas jokes have a hallowed place in the middle school psyche. And at times the continuous action gets to be a little much. It’s really an action series with emotional scenes, not an emotion series with action scenes.
Even so, the characters are real and interesting. They make age-appropriate decisions and mistakes. Most of the humor—led by Max’s sarcastic narration and smart aleck comments—is truly funny, and the whole thing has a tinge of realism that’s a little disturbing. Experiments are being done on humans right now that confound the DNA code of different species, so why wouldn’t we end up with bird kids? And why wouldn’t we believe that the scientific community set out to destroy experiments that they didn’t consider useful? It’s already happening.
The books are fun, funny, compelling, emotional, interesting, current, and well written. They aren’t perfect, but I don’t want to enumerate all the flaws. You don’t really notice them at first, anyway. Maximum Ride is like a good action movie; you don’t think to question it until you leave the theater and are driving home, and you say, “Hey, wait! How could that happen?” Incredible coincidences, occasional pacing problems, and plot points that float unaddressed for far too long would be on the list, if I were to list it, which I’m not. Like I said, you don’t notice. Not at first, anyway, and by that time, Max and her flock are long gone.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 3:33 am and is filed under Book Review. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
