Nevermore

by James Patterson

Published: Little Brown and Company, 2012
Pages: 368

This is an Eclectic Reader Challenge book!

Max and company are back in the final installment of the Maximum Ride series.  All is well for the group as they try to be normal kids, that go to normal school. But what happens when The Voice, tells everyone that they have specific jobs to help protect Max and save the world.  All hell is about to break loose and Max is the only one that can save us all, or can she?

To be perfectly honest, I did not have very high expectations going into this book.  I wasn't a huge fan of the last couple books in this series, but I wanted to see how this story ended.  It left me very unsatisfied.  It was almost as though Patterson had just remembered there were questions that needed answers and he started scrambling to answer them without taking the time to make the answers make sense.

As for the characters, they continue to be my favorite part of these books.  Even though the love triangle between Dylan, Max and Fang irritated me, I really did enjoy Nudge, Iggy, Gazzy and Angel.  I thought of all the characters these four were most interesting, in fact they seemed to be the only ones that stayed in character throughout the series.  We still got the craziness of these kids in their own environment, at their best.

By the end of this novel, I was so frustrated with the answers we were given these questions: who/what The Voice was, how was Max supposed to save the world, are Fang and Max going to finally get together, why was Dylan even introduced. ect.

I was looking forward to a strong ending with questions answered.  It was quite unfortunate that this series didn't end better.  That being said, I am still sad to see this series end.  The bird kids have taken me from middle school into adulthood.  I enjoyed seeing how their stories end, even if I didn't like the way it ended.

Stars: 2/5

Praise:
"This book...has all the characteristics of [James Patterson's] work for grown-ups: pace, action, mystery and cool.... This skilled and compulsive take is so involving...and it proves that girls can be tough, too."
               --London Times, "Children's Book of the Week," July 3, 2005

"The key to Maximum Ride's success may be that it incorporates concepts familiar to young people....  What  makes these characters so appealing is that they have wings and can fly... Another plus: the book has a feel of a video game.... Fights and flights are nonstop in Maximum Ride.  The writing is visual and cinematic-things that kids expect from their video games, TV cartoon shows, and action movie."
               --USA Today