All posts by EndOfTheEarth

Hello to anyone who’s still listening. I’m EndOfTheEarth, I used to be a big name on the old Maximum Ride Forum, and I like to write long reviews every time Patterson releases a new book for the MR series. What makes this review special, is that I never expected to be writing it, given that Nevermore was supposed to be the last book.

That is going to be the focus of this review— Does Forever do a better job than Nevermore at finishing off the characters? Most importantly, to quote my Nevermore review, a good ending must do two things: bring closure to the plot, and force the protagonist to face their fatal flaw and reform.

I’m also going to use this review to address all the characters, in order from least important/involved to most important. Beginning with the tertiary characters:

First, Fang’s Gang. Did we need them? No. Was it nice to see them again? Yes. It was good to see some repentance on the part of Kate and Star, but their usage later in the book regarding Jeb bothered me. More on that later.

Second, Harry. Similarly, did we need him? Not really, but I think that he was useful in bringing closure to Max’s character. More on that later. Same goes for Margaret and Dylan.

Akila was dead weight from her introduction to her conclusion. Not only did her death free up the characters, but it made the later deaths in the work more convincing. A clever move on Patterson’s part.

While Valencia Martinze’s death was useful for this series, I felt kind of bummed about Ella. For someone of such importance to Max and Iggy, the character was cast aside with surprising ease.

Now, the flock:

Total, like Akila, has been mostly dead weight from his introduction through the book’s conclusion. I was somewhat disappointed in this character; not only was his typical comic relief entirely absent, but he didn’t do much beyond Akila’s death at the start of the work.

Nudge’s main desire throughout the series was wanting to live with a stationary group and feel accepted. While I think that the events in the cave were useful for her education, we never really see her come to terms with the fact that the world as she knew it—fashion, celebrities, etc.—is dead and over with. While this doesn’t hit the same level of wasted potential that we got out of Nudge in Nevermore, I still felt like her character was cheated, and could have been explored further.

Iggy and Gazzy deserve a copy-paste from my Nevermore review:

Iggy and Gazzy wound up falling under the same title of wasted potential. Here we have two boys that should be suffering because a girl that’s important to them is up and gone from their lives, but we get absolutely nothing from either of them until they see their girl again. Beyond this, they just exist. Neither character really changed that much from The Angel Experiment, Iggy is still blind, and they’ll go on to live boring lives in an underground city.

Before I go to the Big Four, I want to backtrack a moment and talk about Villains.

An effective villain is one that stands as a good counterpoint to the main character. Max’s biggest problem has always been her ego. Similarly, if we look at Jeb and Hans in this book, their biggest problem was their respective egos leading to the end of the world. Granted, I felt that both characters were out-of-character in this work; the cool, collected scientists are replaced by raging lunatics in both instances, so while this did work as a counterpoint to Max, I felt that it did their character histories a disservice. While Hans got the ending he deserved (a remarkable parallel to Marian Janssen from book 3), I felt that Jeb’s death was cheap, and failed to solve the conflict between him and Max. Jeb’s power over Max was always their personal history, and nothing less than a complete rejection would have properly concluded this relationship for me. Instead, he was killed by others…quite an anticlimax.

That said, Patterson did a superb job this time around of taking all of the villains and plot threads from books 5-8 and bringing them together into something interesting. The final confrontation with the Whitecoats finally occurred—an aspect that was sorely missing from Nevermore, and by doing so it brought all the previous villain organizations together for a properly mixed close. Reuse of things like the One Light, M-Geeks, and Erasers worked perfectly in this scenario.

Again, while on the topic and before moving to the big four, I wanted to address the end of the world. In my Nevermore review, I had the following complaints:

Instead, the entire planet is wiped clean by meteorites; dumb rocks from outer space with no agenda, and no earlier mention in the story. As a result, the plot never feels resolved, but rather more like it’s been cut short somewhere in the middle. For all we know, Hans is on the other side of the planet, in a separate bunker, and a whole new intercontinental war is on its way. And what about the world governments? Surely NASA’s near-earth object program has seen these things already; the big nations must have been secretly scrambling to do something. Finally, I don’t think that Patterson realizes the ramifications of what he describes as a meteor strike that is bad enough to cause serious tectonic activity. If you’ve researched the Chicxulub (pronounced “Cheek-sah-loob”) dinosaur-killer or the Yellowstone or Krokatoa supervolcanoes, you know that the next step, in the next day or two, is a nuclear winter, which means that Max, Fang, Angel, and Dylan have about three days to gain access to the underground city before they all freeze to death, a danger which book four illustrates that none of them are prepared for.

To my surprise and delight, Patterson directly addressed all of these by name in Forever. The scientist in me was very pleased, and the reasoning behind everything happening the way it did felt sound. In other words, WE HAVE PLOT CLOSURE NOW.

Now, the big four: Dylan, Fang, Angel, and Max.

I was just as happy with Dylan now as I was with him at the end of Nevermore. Giving up his life to give Fang back to Max was in-line with his personal goals and character. Still, I felt that Patterson wasted an opportunity by having him not be a turncoat—his actions in the first two parts of the book were all very convincing, and while I dislike Patterson for using an unreliable narrator to build tension (same trick he used in book 3), I felt that a dangerous Dylan upped the stakes far more than any of the other minor villains that appeared in this work.

Furthermore, is it that hard to set up some electrical cable? This aspect of Dylan’s departure felt odd and cheap. If he could have found a way to save Fang, surely he could have also found a way to not kill himself.

Speaking of Fang…same thoughts as Nevermore:

Before I start with Fang, I want to acknowledge one thing; I have no problem with the fact that he got Max in the end. That’s fine. I was expecting it to be the case since book two, and I was expecting this to be the case over half a decade before Nevermore was released. My problem is that Fang, unlike Dylan, technically did not reform.

Knocking up Max is not character completion. Best case scenario would have had him actually die, like the character Ozymandias from Lake House which his relationship (in this book) often copied. Bringing him back didn’t really complete the character either, nor did it do much for the book that that couldn’t have also been done in his absence.

There’s a difference between being called a leader and leading. In Book 6, Angel was merely called a leader. In Forever, she actually leads, and boy, what a treat that was. We still see the vulnerable child, but we also see the wisdom and responsibility that Max was never able to attain. It was a very satisfying, and I’m happy that her plot arc concluded this way.

Finally, Max. In my Nevermore review, I said:

In sum, to complete Max’s character, we needed to see a rejection of this ego. We needed to see Max listening to others, delegating power, and taking time to focus on saving people instead of her romantic feelings.

Does she?

No.

Max’s path through Forever couldn’t have been more different. Her own ego is brought up at least three times over the course of the novel, and, ultimately, she cedes her leadership position to Angel. This is a good thing, and what replaces it is very important.

Halfway through the book, after losing her entire flock and traveling solo, Max runs into Harry. I believe, at this point, her character progression clicks. Max doesn’t ‘lead’ Harry per-se. He’s too stupid to follow human orders. Instead, Max cares for Harry. This element is repeated throughout the end of the work, Max being less of a leader and more of a care giver. It is concluded by the realization that Max was never meant to lead armies. She was meant to lead children.

In other words, Max is best at being a mother.

Once you’ve made that leap, the other characters failing to progress becomes far less relevant. Max has FACED HER FATAL FLAW AND REFORMED. In doing so, Forever manages to perfectly seal the story and, in my opinion, is a substantially better ending that Nevermore. It brings a feeling of wholeness that has been missing since book 3, and it makes me want to recommend the rest of the series to people.

This brings me back to the question: what about the series overall?

Ultimately, Patterson’s biggest mistake was his failure to allow his readers a sense of community. Being relegated to Facebook, unofficial forums, and wikis killed any chance of Maximum Ride moving from a medium-sized community to the financial juggernauts of Twilight and Harry Potter. Because of this, and based off of my observations of Nevermore, I think that the community will have dissipated again by 2017 or 2018, if not sooner.

I have not seen enough numbers out of the Manga, Comic, or Web Series to suggest that any of these will take off, nor do I see any of them increasing the chances of a movie being produced.

If asked by a new reader, I am now more inclined to tell them to read books 1-3 and 6-9.

Unless Patterson pulls another MR book out of the air, I’m taking this to mean that Maximum Ride has ended, roughly ten years after I first picked it up. It’s been an interesting experience that has taught me a great deal about storytelling and forums. If you have any thoughts on this review, I’d love to chat in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!