Maximum Ride Book Summary

I read the book, Maximum Ride: School's Out - Forever. This book was written by James Patterson. This is the second book from the Maximum Ride series and I have really enjoyed reading it. Today, I would like to summarize the book and explain the characterization, plot elements and point of view in detail. To begin, the following summarizes the characterization of this novel. The main character is Maximum Ride. Maximum is the protagonist in the story. A protagonist is the main character of a book. She is often referred to as “Max”. Max is the leader of the Flock and she is also very smart. Examples of Max being the leader are shown by her telling the Flock what to do, such as: “‘Split up!’” I ordered. “‘Nudge! Gazzy! Nine o’clock! Angel, up top. Move it! Iggy and Fang, flank me from below! Fang, ditch the dog!,’” (Pg 12). The next main character is Ari. Ari is an Eraser, who is the antagonist in this novel. An antagonist is someone that tries to get in the way or stop the protagonist from achieving their goal. If I was asked to
describe Ari in one word, I would have to go with “evil”. He is extremely mean to everyone he encounters and is never happy. The following is an instance of Ari being rude. “No! I told you - she’s mine!” Ari was shouting into an earpiece. “This time no one’s going to stop me. You take the others. I'll find Max,” (Pg 266). This book is written from Max’s perspective which is the first person point of view. However, it does shift into the third person point of view when Max is not around or in the current situation.

Now that I have briefly stated the main characters in the book, I would like to explain the plot elements of this book. The plot elements include exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.

The first element is exposition, which I will now cover, the setting of this book is Virginia. The main conflict the Flock experiences in the book is that they are trying to find their parents while having to fight against the Erasers. The Erasers make it very difficult for the Flock to find out information by constantly attacking the Flock. In summary, the Flock has a lot to take care of under difficult situations and they are running out of time.

In the rising action of the story, the Flock is on their way to Washington, D.C.
because they need a place to stay. During their flight, they are attacked by some Erasers and Fang, a member of the Flock, suffers an injury to his arm. This causes the Flock to take him to the hospital where they meet a FBI agent. The agent offers them her place to stay in exchange for some information on the Flock. The Flock accepts the offer because they really need shelter for a few nights. The Flock likes staying with the agent because the Erasers aren't constantly attacking them. This allows them to gather more information on how they might be able to find their parents. The Flock eventually finds out that the FBI agent is working against them and that she works for the people that created the Flock. This causes them to run away and find a new place to stay. Later on, the Flock finds out that a company called Itex is attempting to destroy the
world.

Next, is the climax of the novel. The climax of a book is when the main character or the plot significantly changes. In this book, the climax is when Max decides that she is going to try and stop Itex from destroying the world after originally not wanting to save it. She has changed because she now wants to help the world out.

In the falling action, the Flock goes to Itex’s headquarters to stop them from destroying the world. When they arrive, the Flock discovers that Itex created another Max. The purpose of the new Max was to kill the old Max and to spy on the flock.

In the resolution, the two Max's fight against each other to the death. The original Max comes out victorious and the Flock leaves knowing that they have helped the world out greatly.

In reflection of what I have stated above, I would definitely recommend this book. It was so uplifting and it always had me excited to find out what happened next. I really enjoyed the way the author expressed his points. His word choice was outstanding and I liked how suspenseful the novel was in every way. The following shows how this book was suspenseful and exciting: “He was sitting on a bench at the exit, waiting for them to come out,” (Pg 330). “One of them slapped the bat against his open palm with chilling smacking sounds,”(Pg 85). If you are looking for something that has a lot of tension and excitement, I would definitely recommend you read this book.