Grade 8
Running. That's all I needed to do right now. That's all I've been doing for the past fourteen years. I trip over a stone but quickly gather myself and continue bolting through the trees. I can hear them nearing. Their heavy breathing and stomping is scaring me the closer they get. Maybe it's because to me and the Flock, they represent death, or, in the best circumstances, represent lives filled with pain, misery, and enslavement. So we keep running. Ahead, I see a cliff. I skitter at the end of the rocky land and see a pebble fall hundreds of feet to the ground. As I spin around to face the Erasers, I can hear them laughing and barking. They think I have no choice but to give in. The dog-like monsters realize they're wrong as I jump off the cliff. I feel the wind rushing past my face at a fast pace. Then, it stops. My wings fold out and catch the air, stopping my fall quickly. I fly up to the cliff, wave at the awed Erasers, and wake up from my nightmare.
Most people on Earth want to be able to fly. For Maximum Ride, or Max, she wants the opposite. Being genetically engineered as 98% human, 2% bird, Max and her Flock of Iggy, Fang, Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel, have to constantly hide their secret of wings from the world. And, to make it worse, the Erasers, a genetically altered species of human-dog monsters, is chasing them. The Erasers plan to take the Flock back to the lab where they were created, so that more tests can be done on them. And what's more is that the Flock must get back Angel from the Erasers, who stole her in an attempt to capture the entire flock.
Throughout Maximum Ride: the Angel Experiment, Max must make quite a few difficult choices. She has to risk her life for members of the flock and civilians. Max is a very nice fourteen-year-old girl, but at points throughout the book, is stretched to her limits and gets mad. Iggy is a very smart fourteen-year-old and enjoys building bombs with Gazzy. Iggy is blind because at one point in his time at the lab, they tried to give him laser vision and instead blinded him. Being blind all his life gives him extremely acute senses, though. Gazzy is Angel's blood-brother, while the rest of the flock isn't really related. Gazzy likes to build bombs with Iggy as stated above and acts like a normal eight-year-old boy, being occasionally gross. His real name is the Gasman, which he gained by farting a lot. Fang is the same age as Max and is very swift. He has black hair and dark wings with pale skin. Nudge is eleven-years-old and is very talkative. She has cream colored wings and dark skin. She is very girly and emotional. Nudge has her heart set on finding her true parents. Angel is six-years-old and is very different from the rest of the flock. Throughout the book, she gains random powers, but her main one is reading and controlling minds. No one in the flock knows why, but they assume that it happened to her at the lab, or the School, as they call it.
I would recommend this book because of two things. James Patterson writes very well, and it never gets boring. He is really good at writing as if a teen was writing it, and the reader can easily get into the character's mind. The book also teaches the lesson of family. It tells you that you should never leave anyone behind and always stick together. The book Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment will get you hooked on the whole series, and is a real page turner. It will have you thinking well after the book is finished, as will this review!
(A good song to listen to while reading this book is Radioactive by Imagine Dragons)
