Maximum Ride are YA books by James Patterson, the prolific murder-mysteries-for-moms author. They start off decent and go downhill a bit, but anyway.
The protagonists are kids who got genetically engineered or something into bird people. (Like typical angels, not like the Aarococra from D&D) they fly around and try not to get caught. I feel like there’s some similarity in the personalities that would be fun to read in a crossover fanfic.
I’ve never heard of these, they sound pretty fun. I’m in the middle of the annihilation series by Jeff vandermeer.
I was going to ask if James Patterson wrote these books or if they’re all ghost written, but then I don’t really like Patterson’s books much anyway, so it doesn’t really matter if he wrote the series are somebody else did, haha.
I’ll check it out.
I’m fairly sure they’re his usual ghost written stuff. He’s outright said that he usually just roughs out the characters and plot then farms out the rest. It varies how often the “co-author” gets their name on the cover, but if you compare the style of the max ride series to his older stuff, it simply can’t have been him doing the work of much other than the basics.
They are, however, a pretty good series overall. It’s “YA” all the way, so there’s moments where you run into the whole “hello other teenagers” feel to the writing. But it still manages to be entertaining. It gets preachy often enough as the series progresses that it can get annoying at times, but not enough to kill the story.
The precursor books, “when the wind blows” and “the lake house” were regular books rather than YA, so if the idea appeals to you, but the vibe doesn’t work, try those instead.
I will say though, after the first four, they’re obviously cashing in on the success of the series more than written because the story was burning to be told by the writers.
Definitely worth at least one read through
Thanks, I appreciate the extra context, i’ll definitely give them a try. I still like good YA when i stumble into it.
