Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, by James Patterson, is the 3rd in the Maximum Ride trilogy.

Events finally come to a head in this latest installment. Max and the flock are still on the run, but get captured again and are threatened with “retirement” (death). When they are given some shocking news, immediately Max assumes the scientists are lying again. But what is the truth they’ve been searching for all their lives? What were they designed for? How are they supposed to “save the world’?

This book finally answers the questions that have been gnawing. Though some minor questions are still left unanswered for potential future episodes.

This is my favorite of the three. The bad guys are more evil, the fight scenes more exciting, and the real story is finally revealed. The character of Max is a fun one. She’s bold, irreverent, and completely sarcastic. When faced with adversity, Max just cracks jokes and makes light of the situation.

My only qualms were the environmentalist agenda that somehow snuck in, which seemed to come completely out of nowhere. I just rolled my eyes and moved on. And the amount of discussion given to Fang’s blog simply sounded like a commercial to push kids to visit the actual blog themselves. Advertising a blog in a book. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? The blog should advertise the book. If the kid is reading the book, the money has already been spent. You can’t get much money out of a blog. But Patterson is trying to get enough of a fan base to launch a movie deal. They already made a commercial spot. It’d probably be something I’d watch. In fact, they could probably make it more exciting than the novels.