Maximum Ride 3 is the third young adult book in series written by James Patterson. If you believe the buzz about this book, this is THE series to replace Harry Potter. I was excited to read it because I’m still crying every day about not having another Harry book.Eh.

I would much rather re-read the Harry series. I’m not sure why I didn’t get into this book. Besides Star Trek: The Next Generation, I’ve never been much into science fiction. But besides that, it seemed like this book tried too hard. It tried so hard to be cool and hip that to me, it seemed ridiculous.

For instance, one of the main characters has a blog. A blogspot blog, even. Which is all well and good, but it is thrown in there like to say, “Hey, I get you teens! Blogs! They are hip!” While I certainly don’t have a problem with a blog being featured in a book, it seemed awkwardly done. I haven’t read the other two Maximum Ride books, so I wasn’t sure why the main character, a girl named Max, kept talking to me. In the Series of Unfortunate Event books, you understand that Lemony Snicket is writing down the events that happened to the Baudaliere children, so when he addresses you, it seems natural. But why is Max talking to me? Is this her journal? How does she know I’m reading? Maybe the fact that she knows she has readers is explained in an earlier book, but it was a little off putting to me.

That all being said, I think Bug would really enjoy this book. It has a female lead, who has bird DNA so she can fly. That alone would draw in Bug. There are quite a few parts that are funny and the story is fast paced. The chapters are really short, I’m talking two pages at times, and I think Bug would enjoy the “cool” lingo and not think it was overdone. I think older teens might enjoy the plot and the adventures that Max and her buddies go on, but they would probably roll her eyes at the rest. I think Patterson tried to relate to teens and speak in the voice of a teenage girl, but went too far into stereotypes.

I’m going to pass this book along to Bug and Callie and see what they think so stay tuned. If you have younger girls, in the 10/11 range, I think they might enjoy this book. However, there is a lot of adventure/danger/violence type stuff in here, so you might want to read it first and see if you think it would be appropriate for your pre-teen.

See what other bloggers are seeing about Maximum Ride 3 at Mother-Talk.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 11:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.