Book of the Week.

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment. by: James Patterson
Reviews:
"Buckle up. This is a ride that starts fast and gets faster." -Cleveland Plain Dealer  
"Nonstop action carries this page-turner brilliantly from start to finish." -Kirkus Reviews
"Practically ready-made for a movie script." -The Toronto Sun 
"Think wings, big wings." -Chicago Tribune

My Overview/Review: :) 
Where do I even begin? From the beginning, you're thrown into the action. Six "mutants," half-human half-bird, Max-14, Fang-14, Iggy-13, Gazzy-8, Nudge-11, & Angel-6 are living alone in the middle of nowhere. Their "adoptive" (<-----which I use very lightly.) father, Jeb Batchelder, saved them from a terrible place they call "The School" four years prior. ("The School" is a science lab, where scientists crossed human DNA with avian DNA to make "the flock.") I say Jeb was their "adoptive father," because he rescued them, & took care of them for two years, like a father, until he disappeared. 

****SPOILER ALERT***

They presume he is dead. The Flock is safe until one day, while going to pick strawberries, a pack of Erasers, half-wolf half-man mutants led by Ari, Jeb's son, find them & kidnap Angel. Now Max & her crew must return to the place they hate most, "The School", to retrieve Angel. Max, Fang, & Nudge set out to Death Valley, California,( location of The School) to rescue Angel.

---OK, here's where the book splits into three different stories.---

• Halfway to California, Max stops to help a girl named Ella, who is being bullied by a couple of older guys. She then gets shot in the shoulder/wing, & has to show Ella & her mother what she is. Ella's mom, Dr. Martinez is a vet. She takes Max to her office for an x-ray, where she finds a microchip in her arm.  (<---- it turns out to be a tracking device!)
• Fang & Nudge find a cave, high up, in the mountains never Lake Mead, (where Max is supposed to meet them.) near some hawk nests. While they wait for Max, Fang studies the hawks & how they fly. He teaches Nudge some new tricks about flying & landing.

• Iggy & Gazzy stay behind at the house in the mountains, because a) Iggy is blind & b) Max assumed that if the Erasers & White-coats wanted Angel they might also want her biological brother, Gazzy. They make a bomb (yes! A BOMB!) for the Erasers, in case they decide to come looking for the others. After successfully blowing up two Erasers, they decide to go against Max's orders & go to Death Valley. 

They all catch up with each other, & proceed to The School to rescue Angel. But along the way Max, Fang, & Nudge get captured, & end up in dog crates in The School's laboratory. That's when they all find out Jeb isn't dead, he's working at The School.  Jeb trys talking to Max, telling her she's meant to save the world, but she has nothing to say to the man who betrayed her & the rest of the flock. 
During what Jeb calls a "test" Max, Nudge, Fang, & Angel escape, with the help of their "hawk friends", Gazzy, and Iggy. They decide to go to New York City, to find a place called the Institute, where they could supposedly find information about their biological parents. (<-----while Angel was in the school by herself, she overheard White-Coats talking about it.) 
Their journey wasn't an easy one. Max gets sick during their flight(their actual flying, not an airplane flight.), they sleep in trees in Central Park, they sleep in the subways,  they are constantly chased by Erasers, & they have little money. Although with all these things happening to them, Angel & Max find that they have "special" abilities beyond flying. Angel can breathe under water, & make people do whatever she wants them to do. Max's ability, on the other hand, is kind of weird. She has a voice in her head that tells her what to do, & most of the time is sounds a lot like Jeb. 
Max's voice, the one inside her head, finally leads them to The Institute. There they find the information they came for. They also find other experiments like themselves, & the flock rescues them. Among the rescued experiments is a Scottish terrier named Total, whom Angel decides to keep as her pet. Max fights & kills Ari, but as she is escaping Jeb tells her that "she killed her own brother!" This only adds to the mystery even more, because none of them know their real parents. 

----> I've spoiled enough of the book for you already, so if you're interested in knowing the rest, you'll just have to read it yourself. :) but what I will tell you is that in the end, The flock sets out to find their biological parents, with the information they stole from The Institute. (I'm reading the second book, so it will be a "book of the week" pretty soon. 


God Bless! :D