To be completely honest—I was severely disappointed with the second book in James Patterson’s series, Maximum Ride. I had read the first book a few years ago, so the writing must’ve seemed better to me then. But this book was extremely mediocre, and not at all like what other people told me.

     The first red flag was the title: “School’s out— Forever”. Really? There was, at most, six chapters with school involved, and that was in the middle. I guess they were trapped in some school during the first book, but that was called a school only by the loosest definition. It’s also just a bad title. To me, the purpose of a title is to capture the essence of a book; to grab a person’s attention and direct it on that book. This didn’t, it was just a string of poorly chosen words to fill space on the cover.

     My second issue was the way it was written. The point of view was erratic and poorly maintained. It would start as first person with the protagonist, but then would suddenly shift to another random character. And, to make it even worse, when it shifted to another character, it would also be in third person. I am all for a book having multiple point of views, but I feel like they all have to be either third or first person. What made it even worse was that the majority of the book was with the protagonist and in first person. It only went to other characters when something more interesting was happening. I understand the trouble of writing when there is a lull in the action, but a good writer should be able to keep writing in that character’s eyes and make it work. Yes, it can be challenging—but writing in itself is a challenge and when you choose to make it your career, you have to accept the challenges and work through them instead of just boycotting the one character for a few paragraphs until you can think of something interesting to happen.

      Moreover, James Patterson felt the need to make this group of children avian-human hybrids—giving them the ability to fly, as they’re part bird. Being able to fly seems to be more important than the incredible fact that they are hybrids. If you read the back of this book, it says “Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, Angel and Maximum Ride: six incredible kids with the ability to fly”. That’s it. It doesn’t elaborate on how, it just tells us what. No mention of the fact that they’re the outcomes of an amazing, seemingly impossible experiment—it just says that they can fly, like Superman. The back of the book is supposed to glorify the story as much as it possibly can, and this didn’t. If possible, the back was just making the book even worse in my eyes.

     I was told this would be a superb book but I thought the writing was extremely undistinguished. Maybe my expectations were too high from what I’ve heard and that’s why I was so disappointed. But I just could not bring myself to be impressed in any way, shape or form. It was all-around unremarkable and seemed almost as if the author didn’t fully immerse himself in the story.