 Hey guys, thanks for clicking on this video. Before I get started, I just wanted to let you all know that in a bit I'm gonna talk about child abuse and self-harming behaviors only a little and I don't go into explicit detail But if that's something that bothers you then you should probably check out now If it doesn't bother you then feel free to continue. I hate James Patterson. Actually, let me clarify I hate James Patterson's writing. He seems like a nice enough guy. If you've ever read any of his works Then you might know what I'm talking about. His writing style could generously be called minimalistic But I prefer the term skeletal. The details about what the environment looks like what the characters are feeling and what's going on in general are usually so bare bones that before you even understand what's going on the next scene is already started But this also makes his book short and easily digestible So it's not like I don't understand the appeal of it Especially when you consider that he primarily writes crime thrillers like the Alex Cross and women's murder club books He's also made several forays into the young adult market, which is similarly susceptible to this style of prose Maximum Ride is one of his more successful book series And it's probably his most successful young adult franchise consisting of nine core books a manga and a Marvel comic series There was even a terrible film adaptation that only got made because Jenna Marbles helped to produce it No, really. I'm just gonna come out and say that I actually think that the books are really good at First see it was originally going to be a trilogy In fact, I read the original trilogy when I was around 13 years old And I actually thought that the series did end there saving the world and other extreme sports would have worked great as a finale Then they released more books and I was really confused and angry because not only were they unneeded They were hot garbage books four and five took a weird environmentalist angle that I didn't disagree with but wasn't thrilling reading either Then book six fang was all about the main characters love life Then number seven came out and it was supposed to be the last one Then book eight was supposed to be the last one then finally book nine Maximum Ride forever came out and that was totally for real the last book in the series And that was almost four years ago So I think it really is the end most fans are in agreement that the books should have stopped after number three If you look at the number of ratings and reviews that the books have on good reads Then you can see interest in the series drop considerably after the original trilogy And if you look at the reviews a lot of them mentioned similar things Plot holes retcons character motivations turning on a dime two-dimensional villains junk science and a general feeling that everything is completely aimless But the original trilogy had some of those same problems So why did people care so much more in books four through nine to answer that I have to go in-depth about why people liked it in The first place and what shifted after the first couple of books Spoilers for the whole series ahead if you want to read these books Then just check out the original trilogy and stop there seriously it gets bad Maximum Ride is about a group of children who were created as genetic experiments that turn them into human avian hybrids They have strength and stamina far above that of normal humans as well as feathered wings that allow them to fly The kids escape from the lab They were born in which they call the school and go to a secret mansion in Colorado with the help of one of the Scientists a man named Jeb at some point Jeb goes missing and the kids unable to find him come to the Conclusion that he's dead the kids start referring to themselves as the flock and it has six members Max the oldest who acts as their leader and the protagonist of the books Fang her de facto lieutenant who doubles as a brooding bad boy Iggy the third oldest who is blind but still kicks plenty of ass Nudge a talkative girl who has a strong desire to be normal Gazi a young child who loves being a child and making bombs and Angel the youngest member of the flock who can read minds their names are weird But that's because they chose their names themselves the scientists never gave them any Max's full name is maximum ride where we get the title from It's kind of stupid, but kind of cool at the same time It's not like the flock is just background decoration either all of them have actual memorable Personalities that play off of each other in some fun ways There's the obvious joking and humor that they display But there's other things beyond that Fang and Max are unwilling to open up to anyone besides each other while Iggy and nudge are generally pretty open about their feelings Iggy can act immature and gets along well with Gazi But he's definitely one of the oldest and most world-weary of the flock angel can read minds But she's so young that she can't always understand what she's hearing They all stand out at least a little bit and that gives every scene a little bit of flavor This is especially noteworthy when you remember that most modern YA series have side characters Blander than Selena Gomez's cameo in spy kids 3 I'll bet you didn't even know that was her did you the story doesn't start until years after the flock escapes from the school When max is 14 their mountain hideout is found by agents of the school They're attacked by erasers which are human wolf hybrids that were created around the same time as the flock was with their superior strength They're able to temporarily subdue max one of the eraser speaks to max as though He knows her causing her to realize that he's actually Jeb's son Ari He had been human when she last saw him and only a young child But now he's a half-wolf monstrosity with the body and mindset of a fully grown sociopath Ari and the other erasers kidnap angel and take her back to the school max and the other flock members Knowing that they're no longer safe set off to get their friend back and find a new home Now I know I was just bashing James Patterson's writing style But for an opening like this one where there are years of exposition character introductions and an inciting incident to take Care of in just a few chapters it works really well The audience doesn't need to know every intimate detail about how the school operated or the horrible things that they did to the flock The very fact that these kids were created as genetic monstrosities and forced to go into hiding after they escaped tells You enough about the school to explain why the flock would want to be desperate to stay away from it We do get some snippets of what they went through though Iggy had his eyesight taken during a botched surgical procedure And that's considered one of the tamer experiments And Ari was born a normal human but had his DNA completely changed into the Frankenstein monstrosity that he is now The specifics are never revealed, but we do know that it was extraordinarily painful It's even implied that the scientists at the school only took him as a test subject because his father left and was no Longer able to protect him your imagination filling in the blanks about all the horrors They experienced probably comes up with things much worse than what Patterson could get away with in a book aimed at young people Not to mention that Max's first-person narration fits very well with this She's a very practical person who tends to discard everything she considers superfluous It makes sense that she wouldn't go into a whole lot of detail about the furniture in the room or what sort of clothes The people she interacts with are wearing and she has a very strong voice that just oozes personality The narration is full of sarcastic quips little jokes and evidence that Max's tough exterior hides a vulnerable and loving part of herself It takes full advantage of its first-person POV to flesh out as much character as possible without having to spell it out to you Of course, this is grating for some people when I was younger a couple of my friends stopped reading because they found it annoying But to people that enjoy that sort of thing it adds a lot of flavor to the story The only parts where this doesn't work out are the handful of third-person chapters that follow other characters Omniscient narrators should paint a better picture than a teenager with attitude not to mention that a lot of the time These sequences eliminate any subtlety or subtext that the villains may have the narration often just explains their motivations Directly to the audience without letting us find out anything through context The action scenes are also done pretty well Everything happens at a frantic pace in which every action feels like a barrier between the main characters and death and the lack of detail Kind of works to make things feel even more desperate rather than explaining every kick and punch in detail There will be stretches with more details and then stretches where the battle is described in more vague terms All in all James Patterson's style of prose actually works really well in this context Even though it sucks elephant dicks in other contexts So after Angel gets taken back to the school She discovers that Jeb is still alive and he's still working for the school the rest of the flock splits up Max her Lieutenant Fang and Nudge all go to the school to get Angel back while the last two members Iggy and Gassie stay behind Supposedly it's too dangerous for them to go along since Iggy is blind and Gassie is too young Of course while they're alone at the house erasers attack Iggy and Gassie were prepared though and set up a bunch of traps That the erasers bungle into one of those traps destroys the house in an explosion And so the boys fly off to catch up with the rest of the flock I kind of want to complain about that being a pointless diversion, but it actually works really well on two different levels Level one it's inherently funny to watch children cause pain to stupid and or arrogant adults That's the whole premise of the Home Alone movies and level two with their house destroyed The flock no longer has a home to return to there is no safe harbor They're on the run and that sense of dread permeates throughout the majority of the original trilogy Even when the characters are joking around and just being kids It feels more like a brief reprieve from the constant fear than anything So the destruction of the house has both symbolic and practical value While flying to the school Max sees a girl being attacked by a gang and splits off from her group to help her out She beats the gang but winds up being wounded by a gunshot in the process The girl whose name is Ella Martinez takes Max home and luckily her mother is a doctor Well a veterinarian, but that's better than nothing She patches up Max's wound during which she sees her wings The two of them are surprised to see a human avian hybrid but decide to keep the whole situation under wraps Max spends some time with the family Experiencing what she imagines a normal life to be like for the remainder of the trilogy She yearns after that sort of life again after a few days Dr. Martinez takes Max to her veterinary practice to give her an x-ray Erasers show up looking for Max, but she hides and the doctor is weirdly unfazed by them When they leave the doctor says that Max's wounds are healing up very nicely and much faster than a humans But she also has some sort of chip implanted in her arm and since it appears to have been there for such a long time It can't be safely removed Despite pleas from Ella to stay Max leaves to get back to the flock as quickly as possible Remember Ella and Dr. Martinez because they'll be important later This sequence could be seen as pointless, but the development that it gives Max is invaluable For starters even after all the shit she's gone through she still has enough of a conscience to help out those who need it Max could easily have just become a brooding anti-hero who only cares about her flock Instead she still has genuinely heroic qualities despite her overall jaded outlook and after getting to experience what she considers a normal happy life She really begins to pine after it never to the point where it seems whiny just enough to hammer in how the injustice of her life Situation hasn't been lost on her a lot of stories about people with extraordinary lives and or abilities have them languish about how they just want To be normal while also having a bunch of awesome adventures in this case It makes sense that max would want something other than the life of a fugitive and as you read you can't help but agree and Of course, there's the reveal of the chip in her arm which becomes important later Max meets up with the rest of the flock and several of them wind up getting captured and brought to the school Max and Jeb have a brief conversation during which he tells her that she's destined for great things and hints that the Flock members were created for a reason they managed to escape along with angel with surprisingly little trouble Angel tells them that during her captivity She found out some information about their human parents and another laboratory associated with the school this one called the Institute for Higher Living and From this point on we really get to see the strongest aspect of this entire story the flock and their relationships with one another I already mentioned how they all have individual personalities that are great And what makes them even better is the sense of family that they all have While they might fight a lot the flock is always very loving and supportive of one another when nudge wants to go find her Biological family fangos with her to help when Iggy briefly leaves the flock to live with his parents the others are sad But they let him go and they're constantly risking danger to protect slash rescue each other even when they argue I have multiple siblings and I'm sure many of you watching do as well And while it's not uncommon to see sibling relationships explored in any sort of fiction It's usually just between two of them. It's extremely rare to see the complicated dynamic that emerges once you have Four or five or six people at various life stages that all grew up together And it's even more rare to have it explored in any fashion This is one of the areas of the books that was good to come back to after so many years because the different perspective was valuable to Me I was always one of the youngest kids in my family. So I viewed max as being kind of bossy when I was younger It's only after I've experienced some of the trials of being a young adult that I sympathize with her more Your own personal life experiences can radically shift how you view the flock And if that's not a sign of good writing, then I don't know what is they head off to the Institute Which is located in New York during this time max starts hearing a voice in her head that gives her advice at one point It tells her that she has to save the world But it leaves things vague beyond that while in New York They have several run-ins with erasers during one of them Angel appears to develop a psychic ability to force others to Do her bidding and sends them away fang has a conversation with max about why they're Fathering to investigate the school further she thinks that they have to figure out who they are and why they were created Fang disagrees and thinks that they should just go into hiding and stay far away from danger as far as he's concerned All they really need is each other in the end He relents and they continue their journey not long after he gets wounded during a fight and they think he's going to die He doesn't though and in relief max plants a kiss on him Put a pin in that we'll get back to it while hiding out in the sewers The voice gives max directions through the tunnels and eventually the flock comes across the hidden entrance to the Institute They break inside and find a bunch of other mutants in prison there who they promptly free They also find some files about them in their past But they don't have time to look at them because a bunch of erasers including Ari attack max stops to distract Ari And gives the others time to escape while they're fighting she asked what happened to him and he starts to break down He's clearly angry about his father abandoning him to his fate and is jealous that max is considered the perfect hybrid as far as the Scientists are concerned. He's just a side project Max feels sorry for him, but he continues to attack her during the fighting She knocks him against the wall at an angle that breaks his neck She's horrified with herself and runs off after the flock Jeb shows up and immediately Loses his mind with grief shouting that max killed his son She shouts back that the whole situation is Jeb's fault and just as she's leaving earshot. He cries out that she killed her own brother Yeah Let's put a pin in that one too when the flock reaches a safe place They start looking through the files that they took and they discover that most of their biological parents live near Washington DC They all decide to head down there to find their families and figure out what the school's plan for them is and that's the end of the Angel experiment That's a hell of a way to end a book a million mysteries the characters still on the run and some sort of threat to the world looming Overhead if you're interested enough to read that far then it's pretty much impossible to not want to know what happens next Not to sound like a high school English teacher But there are actually some pretty powerful themes in the first couple of books too the most prominent of course being about how family is The most important thing in someone's life the flock is left homeless They aren't biologically related sometimes they drive each other nuts And it's never in question that they care deeply about each other and would do just about anything to keep one another safe It's not particularly groundbreaking, but it's still a solid message especially when you remember that the series is aimed at a Young audience there's also commentary about ethical Experimentation max and the flock were created to save the world to prevent humanity from going extinct during some sort of apocalyptic event That the school is worried about this raises the question of whether or not it's morally acceptable to subject children to these sorts of Horrific experiments for the sake of the greater good at first it seems like the books are saying no It's completely unacceptable to do those sorts of things to people whatever the cost may be at the end of the trilogy though The flock actually does manage to save the world and at the very end of the whole series There's some of the last survivors that are ready to rebuild civilization So if the school hadn't created them then humankind may have gone totally extinct There are solid arguments both for and against the morality of this sort of experimentation And if you can take either side in an argument without sounding like a sociopath, that's a sign of nuanced writing I want y'all to remember that there were actual themes here when we start talking about the later books because those have none Let's get to the first pin real quick the one about max and fang's relationship It doesn't come completely out of nowhere from the beginning of the book It's made clear that she has a closer relationship with him than with the rest of the flock She trusts him enough to express her more vulnerable side around him This trust is well warranted since he never reveals any of her secrets and whenever she can't lead the flock He steps up and takes care of them in her absence Whenever they're alone together, you can feel a genuine friendship that's been built over years And now that they're both coming into adulthood it makes sense that that might blossom into something else I've got to say that it's beyond refreshing to see a romantic relationship that starts with the characters liking and trusting one another rather than Hating each other's guts max and fang's budding romance doesn't take up much time in the story But it still manages to feel very real without being melodramatic as for the second pin Well Yeah, that one's pretty dumb Jeb just straight up says that Ari is max's brother and she has to ponder what that means for a while in the third book Jeb has a conversation with her where he tells her that he's her biological father and she acts shocked like Girl you couldn't figure it out sooner He already told you that moment could have been a decent plot twist if they hadn't given it away so early overall The first book is a whirlwind of action that brings up some interesting questions at its core though Are the members of the flock and their relationships? These characters are all so likable that myself and many others continued to follow them long after the quality of the books Dropped there are some issues with this first entry. Don't get me wrong It's not very subtle and it brings up a couple of plot threads that aren't properly expanded upon Worst of all the pattern of fight-off erasers run away get attacked again fight them off can get really repetitive It's just that there's always so much happening that you don't really have time to think about these issues while reading They only really bothered me on my second go-through now on to the second book schools out forever The second book is definitely the weakest in the trilogy with the most unfocused plot and the least feeling of overall progression I'll sum up the plot real quick while flying the flock discovers that fang received grievous wounds while fighting and he falls out of the Sky they catch him and managed to get him to a hospital where the doctors noticed that he's clearly not a normal human Some FBI agents ask them a bunch of questions and they tell them all about the school One of the agents named Anna agrees to let the flock stay at her house while they search for their parents So she can keep an eye on them. They start attending a normal school For some reason and keep their true nature under wraps They search for their parents, but the only one who has any luck is Iggy the blind one He moves in with them briefly and at first they're all ecstatic for him But he leaves when he realizes that his parents wanted to use his mutant nature to make money I actually like this plot point because it reinforces the idea that the flock is cut off from normal society Even if they want to be normal kids all they really have is each other the flock has some conflicts with one another and Have some run-ins with erasers some of which now have wings Eventually they discover that Anna is actually working for the school and they flee with no real plan They head down to Florida while there they talk with angel about some of the things she overheard during her captivity She reveals that a corporation called I tex has the ability to destroy the world and that they can somehow track the flocks movements She didn't reveal any of this earlier because she didn't quite understand the gravity of the situation She's only six remember and remember that chip in Max's arm Yeah, that's how the erasers have been able to find them this whole time This means that even when they were back at their house. They were being watched Max is justifiably startled by this and feels Tremendous guilt over her role in the others suffering at one point She even tries to cut the chip out of her arm before Fang stops her leaving her with a nasty wound This is another plot point that I actually like since it adds to the sense of danger the idea that the flock isn't safe anywhere It also adds some more mystery about what exactly the school is up to since if they just wanted to capture the flock They could have done it years earlier Ari is apparently alive too, which is kind of weird But when you consider how many medical miracles are in this series you just sort of roll with it He also has some wings now enabling him to fly with the flock and in a couple of chapters that follow him Both in this book and the next we see that he's working for I tex in order to make his father proud of him And that he's developing a dark obsession with Max He forgives her for almost killing him and wants to spend the rest of his life with her He thinks that she'll be able to sooth all of his physical pains and give him the affection that he's been denied for most of his life However, he also knows she'd never want to stay with him willingly So his fantasy includes taking her captive and cutting off her wings so she can't escape At first this just kind of feels like lazy villain characterization after all if you can't think of believable motivation Then just make them a psycho But when you remember that Ari is seven fucking years old It becomes a hell of a lot creepier and a hell of a lot sadder and in the last book he reveals some more about his feelings He saw the way Jeb doted over Max and felt abandoned then when his father left He actually was abandoned and subjected to torturous experiments He blamed everything he went through on her the reason he was so hell-bent on killing her was for revenge This is actually a common reaction among children who are victims of abuse They blame their older siblings for it thinking that they could have stopped it if they really wanted to and Obviously that breeds anger and resentment if you want to see another example of this Just watch Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and pay attention to Nebula and Gamora's relationship It's startlingly similar to Max and Ari's Ari also does things like bite himself until he bleeds in order to make himself feel better In other words, he's self-harming in order to distract himself from his anguish whatever his appearance He's just a scared neglected little kid begging for someone to love him and that's heartbreaking So the flock investigates I text some more and discovers that they are in fact planning on destroying the world and have created mutants to inherit the earth That's another pin. We'll get back to it in the third book Max gets kidnapped and replaced with a clone then she fights the clone But decides to let her go instead of killing her you might think that this would be important to the overall plot of the trilogy But no the clone doesn't really matter after this when I was rereading this book I thought that this would be one of the most frustrating parts But the clone is so bad at pretending to be max that the flock picks up on it right away and honestly It's pretty fucking funny The book ends with Max vowing to keep I text from destroying the world and to stop all of their evil experiments So while this book has even less focus than the first one It manages to still move fast enough that it didn't bother me much at the very least even with all the padding There's still plenty of humor and interesting personal relationships to keep your interest and in the last act They finally make some progress with the mystery of why the flock was created and by whom now It's time to get to the finale of the original trilogy The title of the third book is saving the world and other extreme sports Which admittedly feels like something a man in his 60s would come up with to try and connect with the hip new kids of today Even when I was 13 I thought it was kind of cringy but it halfway fits with the tone of the story So it's really not a big deal the story starts with the voice in Max's head Continuing to give vague advice about how saving the world is her duty and she does her best to ignore it She still wants to stop I text and whatever its evil plan is but she's angry and distrustful of the voice Frequently getting its arguments with it. They form an actual relationship. Believe it or not It's a relationship where they're both stuck together in Max's openly hostile But it gives some new dimension to both characters near the end It's revealed that the voice is being controlled by Jeb, but we'll get back to him in a bit See Max doesn't hate what to the voice is telling her She hates feeling like she's constantly being watched and she hates the idea that someone is trying to force her into doing something She reaffirms more than once that she's going after I text because she feels it's the right thing and not for any other reason From the beginning of the first book It's made clear that Max is someone who places her own autonomy EG her freedom in very high regard and that makes sense considering that she spent the first 11 years of her life locked in a cage She would never want to experience that feeling of being trapped again anytime she's faced with that threat She gets angry and lashes out this ties into her role as leader of the flock too. She would never abandon them She'd never even consider it. She knows that making sure they're all okay is her responsibility That doesn't mean she doesn't feel a crushing weight of her duties In fact that pull between her responsibility and her desire to not be constrained is a big part of her character You could even look at her few missions away from the flock as her just trying to get a reprieve Hey, look at that more themes take a picture. There won't be any of those after this So back to the plot at some point in the last book fang started a blog and in this one He uses it to spread the word about I tex's evil plans He actually amasses a large following and seems to think that they can be a source of help one day Whether that's because of or in spite of the fact that his posts come across as conspiratorial rambling is up to you to figure out While max is still fixated on stopping I tex fang is still insistent that they should go into hiding She agrees to help him search and they spend a night in a cave together There's no sex just some kissing and some reaffirming of the fact that they are totally in love After that max decides that she needs to get the chip in her arm removed if they ever want to be safe So she and fang head west back to dr. Martinez Martinez is ecstatic to see her again almost weirdly so when you consider how brief the time they spent together was She agrees to try and remove max's chip But she also stresses that the surgery will be risky So she removed the chip from max and in the process her arm becomes paralyzed The voice still talks to her and the whole thing is a disaster Her and fang fly back to where they left the flock only to discover that they've been kidnapped again They track them down and find that angel has apparently sided with I tex and is going to help them with their plans Using her mind powers. She incapacitates max max wakes up imprisoned in another facility with the flock Jab appears and tells her that they never actually left the school They've been in a simulation for years to prove it He shows that max's arm doesn't have any scars on it and that she can move her fingers again Ari shows up later acting a lot nicer than he was before He takes max on a tour of the facility during which she's a bit put off by his calm nice demeanor He reveals that I tex is retiring a polite term for killing all of the mutants In fact other than the flock most of them were created with a specific Expiration date and once they reach that date they die I tex has already replaced most of the erasers with Android versions called flyboys Ari's own time is coming close That combined with his sudden ain't change in attitude causes max to feel much more sympathetic towards him He also reveals what I tex's evil plan is to call half the world's human population to get rid of all the disabled and Useless people and then replace them with genetically superior ones They hope to make a more perfect world and that's why they performed so many genetic experiments in the first place It's a pretty simple pretty evil plan and while there is a threat of logic to what I tex wants to do There's no doubt that they're in the wrong so while they aren't exactly Complex or interesting as villains They are at least pretty straightforward after this point and their army of flyboys still makes them a threat The flock is set to be retired But they managed to escape with the help of Ari and Angel who was actually working as a double agent to help Them get information After the escape max notices that the scars on her arm are back meaning she really did experience the events of the books It wasn't a simulation they never explained why her arm is fixed though It would be one thing if they mentioned that they just used some Ultra advanced medical mumbo jumbo to fix her But they kind of just drop it after this point when they reach safety fang makes it clear that Ari isn't welcome there Since he's tried to kill them so many times max is insistent that he's changed and that they should keep him around This argument gets so bad that the flock splits in two with one half led by max and the other led by fang The voice tells max to head to Europe to I tex headquarters Meanwhile fangs group is trying to get his blog followers to organize and help them fight back That's probably the stupidest plot point in this entire trilogy and the worst part is that it actually works He even manages to get the help of a California Street gang and fighting off a pack of flyboys I'm not making that up that happens max's flock travels across Europe sharing some more friendly moments That confirm that Ari wishes them no harm and seeing him actually make friends and enjoy himself is heartbreaking for both max and the Audience when they reach the headquarters in Germany They find hundreds of mutants being held prisoner They are waiting to be retired the flock breaks in and sends a message to fang letting him know that they need his help Then they get captured right afterwards while in captivity Ari and max have a heart-to-heart about the abuse They experienced and why he was formally so angry with her they come to an understanding and Ari forgives her saying that he knows now it wasn't her fault because both of them were just kids and Damn it. It's a beautiful scene. There's no sarcasm or jokes in max's narration Just two people bearing their feelings a woman talks to them calling herself the director of I tex She also reveals that she's max's biological mother Jeb shows up and has a conversation with max about the nature of power and comes to the conclusion that she can't be corrupted He reveals that he was controlling the voice in her head then tells her that he's her biological father Even though he already said as much at the end of the angel experiment, but I've already complained about that Not only that but the director isn't actually her mother her real mother is dr. Martinez Okay, that one is actually a pretty good twist Even if the two of them meeting is the mother of all fucking coincidences Jeb finally confirms that he's against the director's plan to kill half the population and reiterates that max is supposed To save the world so the director stages a demonstration of a bunch of the newer kinds of mutants That I tex has created for some higher-up company and government officials The last one she brings out is one that looks like a normal person, but is far smarter and stronger than any human His name is Omega and the director pits him against max in a few tests to determine his superiority max outperforms her Expectations though angering her and making omega look like a chump in the process But the tests by time for angel to use her powers to incite the mutant prisoners into a revolt not that it was that hard During the battle Ari reaches his expiration date and dies in max's arm Right afterwards omega fights max on the director's orders, but she beats him without much trouble Then an army of fangs blog followers attacks every major headquarters of itex quickly wiping out the rest of the flyboys Max interrogates the director by carrying her up into the air and she confirms that dr. Martinez is actually her Biological mother max considers killing the director, but decides against it at the last moment The police show up and arrest all the itex ring leaders and the flock goes back to America They reunite with fang then max heads to Arizona to see her mother and sister again Finally having saved the world max and the flock fly off finally safe and unburdened. Hey look It's that theme of freedom again. So that's it. That's the whole original trilogy. And how was it? Honestly pretty good. I liked it as a kid and it still holds up fairly well The characters all have real personality the action is fun And it has some pretty heavy themes that would really resonate with teenagers The pacing is really fast too, which means that they just breeze by I read all of them in barely a week Almost nothing is wasted at first and every subplot ties directly into the story and character development at first Not to mention that there's a romance in there that even though the protagonist is a young woman And even though it's actually done fairly well Doesn't take up the majority of the books It's almost as though James Patterson wrote max as a character first without Obsessing over her love life and that resulted in a stronger character overall Funny how that works But even though max is a fun protagonist with a lot of personality the best character by far is Ari When I first read this series almost 10 years ago Ari was one of my favorite characters just because he was for the most part an unapologetic psycho I still felt sympathy for him don't get me wrong Especially when his death drew close But it was kind of lost on me that he was just a kid in my defense He does look and act like an adult throughout the majority of his screen time So it's easy to forget that fact it was only when I was going over this series again for this video that it really dawned on me He goes from a normal kid to a genetic abomination wanting revenge on the girl that received all his father's love to an obsessed Stalker that sees max as his only hope for salvation to a hero that does his part to save the world and all of those flow into each Other surprisingly well when Ari dies It could have felt like a cheap shot designed to make the audience feel bad But instead it feels like the logical conclusion to every terrible thing that's happened to him Ari is a deeply tragic character that puts a human face on just how evil the villains really are Some people have complained about the way he dies They feel it wasn't heroic enough that he should have gone out in battle or taken a bullet to save the flock or something But that's kind of the point. He didn't go out like a hero. He was killed by itex's experiments He was a victim a victim that tried to do his best to move past his circumstances and become a better person But a victim nevertheless if he went out in a blaze of glory it would detract from that Now all that's not to say that the books are perfect or even that great really a lot of the humor comes across as sort of a Isn't this totally radical fellow kids or otherwise fairly cringy and there are more than a few plot threads that are dropped Or don't lead anywhere For example the flock at one point finds out that one of their members gassy was actually sold to itex as an infant It's treated as some sort of massive gut-punching reveal But then it doesn't go anywhere and there are tons of other plot points that fall into the same trap Like max's clone nudges quest to find her family the mutants They freed in the first book and the splitting of the flock in the last book Hell I didn't even mention the talking dog that shows up at the end of the angel experiment and joins the flock And I'll never mention him again after this because he's annoying and stupid But the books fast-paced means you don't have much time to think about all of this while reading There's a real lack of logical consistency with the villains to the director of itex created the mutants to save the world but was also going to destroy the world herself and How was she going to destroy the world again? It's never explained what the exact plan is Speaking of which the main villains for most of the trilogy are Jeb and Ari by the end though Both of them have officially sided with the flock and there's no one to replace them The director in Omega both come out of nowhere and have basically no personality beyond evil Max's climactic battle with Omega lasts barely two pages and feels like more of an afterthought than anything Really other than Ari's death the whole climax is dull There's just not enough build-up to make anything have weight This trilogy was definitely written on the fly and there's nothing inherently wrong with that It's how I usually write the only problem is that you have to go back and polish things up If you want it to make any real sense or have a proper flow if you don't then you wind up with plot holes Dropped threads and uninspired climaxes at the end of the day These books were great when I was a kid and they hold up remarkably well all things considered Now let's see what happens when they keep going for the sake of making more money After the original trilogy ended there wasn't anywhere else for the series to go the bad guys were defeated The heroes were safe the flock was together again. What else is there to talk about? Nothing, you're just squeezing more blood from the stone and in a nutshell That's the fall of this series, but I can't leave this last section at that so here we go I can't summarize the last six books in nearly the same detail as the first three So there will be some skipping over of unimportant bits here The fourth book is the final warning and involves the flock traveling to Antarctica to combat global climate change What they're opposed by someone called the uber director an ultra rich man who doesn't want to help the environment because he's a big mean Poopy head he also tries to auction the flock off to other rich folks But a hurricane comes by and kills him the book ends with max making a long-winded speech to the American Congress about why we need to Take action to save the environment Then she flies off to complete some other sort of mission that is never specified and never even brought up again Okay, the original trilogy had an environmental message and it wasn't exactly subtle But this is just fucking ridiculous if you want your message to have anything resembling an impact You need to be subtle about it when I first read the final warning it felt like a slap in the face I had my issues with the original trilogy and when I finished it I thought that was that so when I saw that there was another one I was actually really excited then I just got this environmentalist stuff Which I didn't disagree with but didn't come with a good story to match I was attached to the flock and to see them reduce to that level hurt and to make it even worse The book has a great ending line that should have been used by the last one as max is flying off She narrates my heart was so full of freedom that I felt like it might burst. That's a perfect ender. Come on Patterson That's just insulting the next book is called max and it's all about an evil mean poopy head Who's dumping toxic waste in the ocean and killing fish he accidentally creates some giant mutated sea snakes But they're friendly so the flock makes friends with them. That's about it Book number six is called fang and it's all about an evil mean poopy head who wants to force humanity to evolve through genetic mutation He introduces another bird man named Dylan who he created to be a mate for max, but she really loves fang So that's conflict forced contrived conflict, but conflict nevertheless This was Patterson's attempt at cashing in on the YA romance craze that was going on at the time At least I assume it was the majority of the book is about max and fang's relationship with a love triangle on the periphery Look the romance in the original trilogy is good because it feels natural and it's just a small part of a bigger story Bringing it to center stage just reminds the audience that the characters are 15 and their romantic exploits are unbearably corny at the end of the book fang leaves the flock because he feels like he's distracting max from her Duties as a leader and he needs to go off and be a brooding emo somewhere to be fair It's actually a pretty sad scene book seven Jesus Christ We're still going is called angel and it was supposed to be the ending to the series in the interest of being totally honest I actually didn't read this one when it came out after fang I was very much done with this series and never got around to reading the ending trilogy until right before I wrote this script So I went into the last couple of books with a completely fresh perspective No nostalgia or anything in the way and I can confidently say that they are terrible by just about every metric in this one The evil mean poopy head from the last book his name is dr. Gunther Hagen by the way Keeps trying to convince max and Dylan to make babies and become the leader of the world's mutants to prepare for the end of the world Which is apparently going to happen because there's still a doomsday group around for some reason Meanwhile fang goes off and forms another gang with some other mutants including max's clone who now goes by Maya The two eventually come together max and fang bitch at each other for a while, but they make up The doomsday group has a plan to blow up Paris and release powerful toxins into the air The flock tries to stop it But they fail the whole city is destroyed and angel is presumed dead in the epilogue It's revealed that the doomsday group actually has her then book eight Nevermore came and it was also supposed to be the finale older copies of the book even have the title nevermore the final Maximum ride adventure so at the beginning the doomsday group starts going by the name the 99 percenters Presumably because they've gone seven books without a name so we may as well give them one now Jeb and dr. Martínez appear to be a part of it now and also angels sometimes has visions of the future Actually, she's had visions for a couple of books by this point But it's stupid and pointless and I couldn't figure out how to inject it into the script naturally fang's gang gets attacked by some Erasers including a clone of Ari that have been recycled by the 99 percenters There's a fitting metaphor for this book in there somewhere Some of the gang betrays them and the Ari clone fatally wounds Maya during the fighting She dies while in fang's arms and it's super sad and stuff Angel sees all this using her magic vision powers and is also super sad She also discovers that the scientists that captured her have clipped her wings and blinded her I'll admit that that scene is actually pretty hardcore and shocking which was the point so hey There's a mark in this book's favor So now fang and the rest of the flock have a voice in their heads just like max does and his voice tells him Where to find max meanwhile? She has a date in a treehouse with Dylan which goes great until she knocks over a candle and burns it down Then fang shows up and reconciles with max making Dylan really mad fang then He shows them a comment on one of his blog posts from a kid who knows where angel is Then they go to the place described and rescue her I can't even think of a joke for how stupid that is Jeb shows up with a bunch of erasers and tells them to hand over fang because the he holds the secret to immortality or something Max refuses and knocks out Jeb while Dylan kills the Ari clone This causes all the other erasers to immediately die for reasons Dr. Martinez shows up and is apparently a good guy again She takes the flock to a tropical island with a bunch of other mutants and a couple of humans She tells them that the 99 percenters have released a disease to kill all the humans But the mutants are immune Angel reveals that she was the voice in their heads this whole time completely Contradicting the earlier reveal that it was Jeb and also not making any sense because the voice gave max information that angel would never have Known so then they have some more dramatic conversations about love before an asteroid causes the sky to explode and tsunamis and shit to come out and Kill everybody at first it seems like max dies And she gives an ungodly corny speech to the audience about the meaning of life and how she died surrounded by people She loved and how we should all save our own world or Something then it turns out she's alive. It's just the rest of the world. That's destroyed She and the flock are supposed to inherit the earth. This was definitely pulled out of the oh god How do I end this pile and finally we reach maximum ride forever? Man if I didn't know any better these titles would actually be kind of cool So most of the world is dead except for the flock whatever my problems with this book I'll give it this much Actually destroying the world and then having the heroes try and deal with the consequences of their failure is a pretty ballsy move It's not something you see very often Especially not in young adult literature the flock explores Australia and gets beaten by some more mutated creatures Then they part ways for Really no reason nudge gets killed by a scientist called the remedy who wants to cleanse the world of genetic imperfections Then Iggy and Gazi are killed too max sees fang fighting some mutants and tries to save him But is knocked out Fang is killed but the others are revealed to actually be alive You see Dylan was actually pretending to work for the remedy and faked their deaths in order to keep him from finding them And do you actually care at this point? Everyone goes to Russia to take down remedy and his army during the fighting max finds Jeb there He insists that he's doing everything for the good of mankind for her own benefit yada yada yada Anyways, he's killed rather unceremoniously by the remnants of fangs gang max and Dylan confront the remedy only to find out That he's dr. Gunther Hagen not much of a plot twist there considering that we already knew he was crazy While talking with him the doctor makes a comment about how Dylan hasn't overcome his programming and Dylan says quote I just did what you first programmed me to do. I couldn't stop loving maximum ride When I first read that line I couldn't help but have this nagging feeling that the book was actively mocking me Like it was claiming that no matter how badly it abused me or insulted by intelligence I would always come crawling back for more I would say it's wrong since I stopped reading after fang but I eventually came back to read the rest despite my thoughts So I guess I really am Patterson's bitch So max takes the doctor into the air reveals that she's pregnant with fangs baby then drops him to his death I'll get to the pregnancy in a second right now I want to discuss the missed opportunity in this scene It has a lot of parallels to the scene in saving the world and other extreme sports where max decides not to kill The director of itechs even after the all the horrible things she'd done It was a moment that confirms that max was ruthless But she just didn't have it in her to be an executioner in this case She actually does kill the villain and that does a decent job of showing how much the events of the apocalypse have changed her But why didn't she kill jeb instead? He was max's father figure and his death was super anticlimactic Max expresses some grief over it, but it isn't dwelled upon at all If she had actually confronted him properly and wound up killing him think about how much more powerful that would be Her relationship with jeb would have come full circle And he finally would have faced the full consequences for everything that he did to the flock to ari and to the world Not to mention that dr. Gunther Hagen is an undeveloped villain who came in two-thirds through the story and jeb has been around from the beginning Max killing him could be symbolic of her finally burying the past and moving on to a new life But I guess that would take too much effort after the battle It turns out that fang is alive and in stasis dylan is able to bring him back But only by sacrificing his life because I guess that's how love triangles end now The epilogue of the story has the flock and all their new friends settling down in machu Picchu to rebuild Civilization at the very end max takes her daughter whose name is phoenix on her first flying lesson and that's it That's the end for real this time Good god. Why did it go on this long after the original trilogy? There was nothing there and Patterson trying to force things there just resulted in a jumbled mess Nowhere was Patterson's mess more apparent than at the ending of maximum ride forever I already talked about the missed opportunity with jeb However, there's also the fact that max and fang have a child and it's portrayed as a good thing when they're only 15 years old I know that the flock has had to do more growing up than regular kids have It's just that the books have also made it clear through their humor and their occasional immaturity that they are still kids So the thought of them having kids of their own makes me a tad uncomfortable I know it's very common in all sorts of books to have an epilogue where the main characters all pair off and have children Harry Potter is probably the most prominent example. It's a cliche, but it doesn't bother me that much normally However in Harry Potter, they were shown years later as adults max and fang are still teenagers But most of all is the simple fact that the entire original trilogy is about the flock saving the world and when they succeed It's treated as their triumphant victory. Then the world ends anyways Humanity dies out including max's mother and sister and they're forced to rebuild If the world was going to end anyways then all that effort they went to in the first seven books was all for nothing It was all a waste of time all the suffering all the hard work all the fighting all the hell That max and the flock went through was for nothing That's insulting to both the characters and to the audience and I already touched on this But this kind of means that I text was right to create the flock They were right to torture innocent children the whole time They claimed it was for the greater good that human civilization would die out if they didn't perform their horrific experiments and in the end They were right kind of makes the flock look less like good guys in the first few books, huh? Not to mention that dr. Gunther Hagen helped kill off humanity in order to protect the environment So environmentalism is bad now There were multiple books before this where fixing the ecosystem was portrayed as the most important thing we can possibly do So why is an environmentalist the bad guy now? It just doesn't make any sense But here's the thing the original trilogy had a lot of similar problems and a lot of people myself included were able to look past them So why exactly does it bother people so much in the later books? After giving it some thought I think it can be boiled down to two main reasons the first reason is just length The first couple of books are very fast-paced and have simplistic plots for the most part While reading you don't really think about the finer points of what's going on because you don't have time to you're more focused on the humor The action and the colorful personalities that the characters have When all of that gets stretched out to cover more and more plot the issues start to become more noticeable The second reason and the more important one in my opinion is character in the original trilogy Max and the flock all have clear goals first It's rescue angel then it's find out more about ourselves then it's save the world and all along the way they're desperate to avoid the erasers There's always a clear direction that they're going in or Okay, there's usually a clear direction that they're going in and more than that They have actual personality and development in the first few books by the later ones They're basically just one or two traits apiece Iggy has gone from being sometimes immature to acting exactly like the nine-year-old boy that he's best friends with Angel went from a little girl with powers to some sort of mysterious profit figure that always knows exactly how everyone works and max Max is almost Bella swan by the end of things All she does is worry about the two boys that are pining over her and wait for the others to act before she does anything And then there's the whole dynamic of the flock since they're split up so much more often in the last few books The dynamic is lost at first the flock was fighting to protect each other and saving the world was more of an afterthought By the end there's not much of a sense that they're fighting for anything since they're all just wandering off on their own It feels like the flock is already dead the world is already destroyed And so there's nothing for them to fight for you could argue that there are many more reasons for books 4 through 9 being terrible And I wouldn't disagree but those two reasons are the biggest and they're why I can't look past all the other nonsense here When I could at the beginning I have trouble viewing everything after the original trilogy as anything other than a cynical Cash grab in fact this might just be the most cynical cash grab I've ever come across the series was something that I enjoyed and to see it Perverted into this Frankenstein's monster of dropped plot threads character flanderization ideas that go nowhere cringe-worthy romantic tension and a total lack of interesting themes is a gut punch to both my taste in literature and My nostalgic view of this series the first three books weren't perfect But they were fun and they had some heart put into them and just like Ari They deserved better than what they got if you watch this whole thing Then I want to thank you and congratulate you for coming this far This video may have been a request from my patrons But getting all of this off of my chest has been extremely therapeutic if you haven't already subscribed to my channel Then you should definitely do that to see more content like this And if you want to participate in polls to determine what I'll do next as well as get some other neat rewards Then check out my patreon page I've taken up enough of your time though, so take care. Bye