Max Ride Forever Review Part 3

Or The Cris Carter Effect

Here we go, Forever now only has one part left to wrap it up and make the previous five books worth expanding from the original trilogy.

Part 3 starts off with Max meeting up with Dylan and Angel. Oh, gee, apparently he's Horseman. I am shocked. I am so shocked. If you could only see my face and how shocked it truly is you would be shocked by the mere proxy of having seen it.

Even my monocle fell off!

Don't ever introduce a new mysterious character right after another one supposedly died.

Dylan talks about how everyone is actually still alive and that he was only pretending to kill them in order to trick the bad guys. Okay, I'll admit, the book had me at killing Nudge (because Patterson was sick of everyone), but after killing them off one by one after that it was obvious there was nothing going on.

But then, here's the kicker, he says Fang is for real dead and shows Max a convenient video recording of Fang falling off a cliff.

Yeah...literally everything I have ever watched on read (with the exception of Piggy from Lord of the Flies) has someone survive falling off a cliff. Actually falling off a cliff has a lot of health benefits in the fictional world because usually they come back better than ever.

I'll believe Fang is dead when I've reached the end of the book and five years pass. Yes, five years, five real years. We don't want Patterson releasing another book, titled: Maximum Ride: Endend: Fang Lives: The End Book

Here's when I get not just disappointed, but downright disgusted.

When Max hears the news she refuses the believe it.When Dylan shows her the recording she cries, to the point of throwing up, cries, crawls until she runs into a tree because she doesn't pay attention to where she is going, and then she curls up there and cries and then emos after crying.

Characters can cry, that's okay. Tough characters can cry, that's okay too, but don't build up a streetwise tough girl over an entire series and then turn her into a completely useless, blubbering moron. I wasn't lead to believe Max would go catatonic with sadness. Max got angry, Max got things done. When Angel is kidnapped in the very first book Max doesn't throw herself on her bed and cry until her face puffs up for the rest of the book. No, she makes a damn plan.

Okay, disgust over, back to disappointment.

Dylan continues his infodump (because we all know how readers love one lump infodumps in books) The Remedy is a recycled baddie who I haven't even bothered to remember the name of. With the exception of good/bad (repeat to infinity) guy Jeb the series uses baddies like TV shows have a baddie of the week. Taking a forgettable one and telling the reader he was the real bad guy all along just doesn't sit well.

So Max reunites with the flock and sees that everyone is in good health: Nudge, Iggy, Gazzy, Tota-

...Wait.

Total?

Total lives?

No.

No!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

(Did anyone else abuse the button in that link? Because I sure did. Anyway...)

They go to Russia to fight a war against the recycled baddie known as The Remedy and all of his cronies. It is a surprisingly boring battle.

Max heads into the the underground base of The Remedy. Of course Jeb is there, because he is exactly everywhere he needs to be for the plot. Max says "Deeps sobs were welling up in me, but I was too well trained as a fighter to give in to them" never mind she cried until she puked and ran into a tree only chapters before. Being trained as a fighter doesn't train you to stop crying either, just throwing that out there.

Stuff happens and Jeb dies. It's sad when a reader's thought is "FINALLY!" Not in a good way either. Not in the way that a character, who is so well written as a bad guy that his death has been coming for a while now, finally gets his karmic death. No, this was in a way that you're just plain tired of it. The five year rule will also apply to Jeb in case any RoboJebs happen to appear.

Max and Dylan find The Remedy, but oh no! Someone set up us the bomb! The Remedy strapped a bunch of bombs to himself or...like...he is a bomb? Any worse and the pages will start to literally melt. So Max flies The Remedy up high so that he can explode safely over the ocean. He infodumps. I don't think I've ever seen someone chew the scenery in a book before.

Then, out of nowhere, Max says she's pregnant because there is something about fiction that makes doomed men super fertile. How, after only a few days (weeks maybe?) does she even know? It's right at that moment that James Patterson threw all his craps to give out the window and started ripping off Where the Wind Blows by James Patterson.

At least when people rip something off it's not from themselves.

So back to the pregnancy thing. Max's stomach is described as a little convex making me wonder if I missed a time skip.

After scenery chewing Max drops The Remedy to the ground...which is weird because it was specifically mentioned that they were over the ocean (the Atlantic Ocean if you want to get even more specific.)

People are basking in the victory of the battle. Max follows Dylan back down into Evil HQ where Dylan has taken Fang's body. Apparently Fang can be brought back to life.

Because he was only mostly dead.

Max agrees to it. Dylan brings Fang back by throwing a switch and...grabbing a bunch of wires so that the electricity can conduct through him into Fang. There are electrical patch jobs for that. What's that you say? Maybe they were limited on time? No. First off, Dylan says Fang's body has been in suspended animation. Second, the passage of time was screwy in the book, but it was a minimum of days. I tend to mentally shorten time spans in books, so it was likely weeks or even a month or two. They were under no time constraints to revive Fang. It's the most worthless self-sacrifice ever.

Epilogue

Or: Max Named Her Child Albus Severus Renesme Potter

What is it with these YA books ending with children?

After all the nuclear bombs that went off and all the other Every Single Apocalypse Ever, Angel does her Thor Bath thing again and says they now need to live underground to survive the nuclear winter.

It ends in four years.

A quick search brings up estimates of 20 years but Patterson was probably tired of being emo and wanted to make things bright and shiny again because symbolism!

The rest is just faffing about in the last 3 chapters (and Max's daughter's name is Phoenix, if you were dying to know.)

It works out to be like Lost, or Battlestar Galactica, or Twin Peaks, or Assassin's Creed (you have to have watched at least one of those) where the creators were writing by the seat of their pants and, after so long, it just became a huge tangled mess.

It ended better than I was expecting, I'll admit. It definitely ended better than the last one. Sadly, the best part about the book was the fact that it ended.

I can't promise I won't buy anything from James Patterson ever again this time. They've already released a comic adaptation from Marvel and I don't know if he'll release another Maximum Ride at this point. This was the third "The End" book, there might be more.

I can make another challenge though. I'm going to make a better story.

I'm going to rip off the "kids with wings" dynamic, and it's going to be better. It's not going to be as popular. James Patterson is one of, if not the most, popular authors in the world. Part of his popularity means he can get away with whatever he wants. Forever was a terrible book, even in the simplest editing, much less the plot. He could write the alphabet with his own vomit and people would drive big dump trucks of money up to his house. Me? I have to work hard. I have to make a good story because that's all I have going for me.

It's already there, in my head, it just needs written down.

So, at the very end I'm going to have a bit of a credits roll, except I'm going to have characters that Patterson could have cut completely out of the book and it would not have affected the narrative.

Dylan

The love triangle of Fang, Max, and Dylan was forcibly injected into the story because Twilight was popular at the time.

Total (Total Total Total Total)

Total contributed absolutely zero to the story. His dialogue could have been removed, even. He does nothing to move the plot, does nothing to contribute. He is dead weight from beginning to end.
 
Dr. Martinez and Ella (AKA: Max's mom and sister.)

I enjoyed their part in The Angel Experiment, but once they were revealed as Max's biological family (literally people Max randomly ran into out of everyone in the entire world) they went to crap.

Fang's Gang

Everyone in it except Maya. The plot arc was built up over an entire book and then stripped down at the beginning of the next. A few characters have cameos in Forever but are, ultimately, worthless.

Dylan's girlfriend

Wait stop the presses! Dylan had a girlfriend? Yes, she was introduced in the last fifty pages of Forever and, after her introduction, was never mentioned again. She stayed in a single room that Max passed through quickly. I would have mentioned her if Dylan had lived, because she would have fixed the love triangle, but with his death and her never mentioned again I didn't bother.

Now, the one character I wished had been more integral to the story was Maya (AKA: Max's clone). The character of Maya had a lot of potential After failing to kill Max, Maya strikes out on her own, trying to do everything she can to make herself look and be different than Max. She is, literally, a clone of someone far more important, can you imagine the potential in a character like that? Better yet, Patterson could have used her to close the triangle. Fang started to have feelings for Maya, which would have worked, but Maya and Dylan would have worked well too and kept the Max/Fang fans happy. Instead she is unceremoniously killed off by the 29583905830295121th revivalof Ari who, after establishing he was a good guy after all, is made evil one last time. What a waste that ruined both characters at once.

Well, hopefully it's well and truly the end for Maximum Ride. I don't think I could survive another book.

For more evidence that I'm not a foaming-mouthed lunatic, here's the TV Tropes page for Maximum Ride that details every piece.

Max Ride Forever Review Part 2

Or: This Book Comes With a Free Razorblade!

Before I launch into a play-by-play let me take a moment to describe the overall tone of this book.

Books are an escape, depending upon what kind of book you read depends on what kind of escape it is. Though I've only read one or two, I've heard spy novels are an exotic location travelesque escape. Maximum Ride started out as that. It was a high-flying travel adventure. Then it was a save the world blah blah prophesy, but they still traveled and had fun.

Forever doesn't give us that. It is a constant doom and gloom. Max cries, hyperventilates, cries, freaks out, and cries. It is unceasing in its description of destroyed cities, starvation, and death death death. The flock gets injured and there are descriptions of their wounds festering and oozing pus. the series isn't fun anymore, it's depressing.

Here's a kitten in a cast to fight the sadness.

So, picking up after the murder of Nudge (no!) and Total (yes!) we start with Fang.

Fang comes across a couple of kids who are working for The Remedy, which is the stupid name for the so far faceless bad guy.

And a song by Jason Mraz

Their job is apparently to murder whoever is left in the world (?). They fight and, when things turn back for Fang, the very very convenient deus ex machine plot device Star shows up and saves him.

Wait, who the hell is Star?

It took more explanation on the part of the book to remind me. Star was part of Fang's Gang previously in the series. As part of Patterson's "Nevermind" initiative Fang's Gang was dispersed as conveniently as possible and never mentioned again up until now. Star infodumps on him saying that Jeb's good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil pendulum has swung back to evil once again. After the infodump she leaves, presumably to continue to never be mentioned again.

Meanwhile with Max she is flying around, in the process of emoing, when she comes across another flock of bird kids. These ones are more bird than human though. They make gutteral noises to communicate and, despite being human-shaped, are covered in feathers except for their heads, which are normal. Max hangs out with them for awhile and befriends one that can almost communicate. He says "Huryu" frequently and Max decides to call him Harry. I preferred Huryu but whatever.
At least it's not something stupid like Horseman.

Iggy and Gazzy are finally given a few chapters. they are in the States when they come across a silo of girls. the girls put them to work in the silo, cleaning the septic tank (because gurlpower...or something), when Horseman shows up (somehow?). He went from an underground network of tunnels on a tropical island to the United States, found a hidden silo, got through to the bottom where the septic system is at without being detected, all in a matter of something like twenty-four hours or less. In an attempt to fight against Horseman, Gazzy blows up the silo, himself, and all the girls presumably, and Iggy is presumably also murdered by Horseman soon thereafter.

Jesus Christ, Patterson you're pissing me off!

"Hey, don't bring me into this monstrosity of a story."

I guess with all of Patterson's least favorite characters out of the way he'll like the story better... or something.


With that it focuses on the three remaining characters.

Angel is recruiting a bunch of kids. At one point she finds a couple of them in the States and tells them to go to Russia...Exactly how are they supposed to get there? Oh, but that's ignored.

The bird kids leave Max and Harry behind and they strike out on their own. At some point Max and Harry are captured, because Max these days does the exact opposite of what she did at the start of the series (and I don't mean in a good "coming of age" way,  I mean all of her survival instincts are dead.) After that Patterson gives a big ol' middle finger to physics when Max and Harry are trapped in a cage and Harry sticks his winds out between the bars and is able to lift the metal cage with himself and Max in it. Get gets high enough to hit the ceiling.

Fang, meanwhile, is in Alaska for some reason. He randomly runs into Erasers Horsemen. Also Dylan is alive and being beat up by them, also Jeb is there because holy freaking coincidence, Batman!

Don't bring me into this either!

Then one of Fang's wings are ripped off and he's presumed dead. The second part ends with Horseman kneeling in front of Angel saying Fang is dead. Which, if you know cliches, saying a character is dead automatically means they are not dead.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion!