Maximum Ride Chapters 75 & 76

I’d like to start this recap off with a special message. This isn’t just for Jimmy, it goes for every author in existence. Ahem. Yes! We get it already! You do/have lived in New York city and were impressed and there’s no place else like it. Now can we please, please, please stop pretending that it’s the center of the universe and that every hack novel/movie/play has to end up there at some point? And put your sweaty hand down this instant, Los Angeles. You’re no better.

I am sick to death of every author who lives on either coast of the States writing about their neck of the woods like they’re getting paid by the tourist board. Do they fail to realize that, unless you live there, it’s just a heavily populated, smelly place where people talk with funny accents?

Jimmy continues this tradition by having Max tell us that New York city is on an island called Manhattan. Balderdash I say. I’ve seem the movies and New York is either mostly destroyed by Godzilla/the Cloverfield monster/Guliani or underwater.

Here’s another limitation to writing in the first person. It’s beyond difficult to express the emotions of multiple characters at the same time. Jimmy’s trick here is to have Max say that she knows they all felt claustrophobic around people because any one of them could be Benicio del Toro under their sunglasses. Just to clue you in Jimmy, the term is agoraphobic and I expect your smartass teenage protagonist to know it being as she whipped out technical gene splicing jargon earlier.

Anyway, Jimmy then wants to show us that all of his characters are losing their grip on stability as they run low on lithium. Without warning, Nudge turns into a bimbo.

“Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh,” Nudge was saying excitedly. “I want to go down there! I want to walk on Fifth Avenue! I want to go to museums!” She turned to me, her face alight with anticipation. “Do we have any money left? Can we get something to eat? Can we, like, go shopping?”

Like, really? That’s, like, totally lame. How does she know what Fifth Avenue is? Why do museums excite her? Why is she suddenly interested in shopping? You know, besides because she’s a stereotype cut out of a Reese Witherspoon movie and pasted into a lame duck science fiction book. Do any of Jimmy’s characters have a shred of consistency? Or are they all just switches waiting to be thrown in the proper sequence to unlock the door which leads to the ending?

While flying overhead they spot a concert in central park. Being as they’re not in any big rush, it’s not like they’re being pursued by bad guys who can easily track them or anything, they decide to stop and listen. Which provides another example of Max’s loose morals, sneaking into a concert and not paying for it.

They listen to the fake band, every one, of the kids that is, are amazed by the sounds and the people, and Nudge is thrilled. Even Gasman chimes in about how their house was always too quiet. Too bad Daredevil is the only dissenting voice in the group.

“Well, I hate it,” Iggy said flatly. “When it’s quiet, I can tell where the heck things are, people are, where echoes are bouncing off. Here I’m just surrounded with a thick, smothering wall of sound. I want to get out of here.”

Hey, Iggy. You might need to go a size up on the tights. The set you have on now is chaffing you and making you more irritable than a freshly shaven badger dropped in rubbing alcohol. Maybe make sure the next set it looser in the crotch too so no one can see your rage boner.

Nudge tells Iggy to get used to it because she’s in love with New York for some unknown reason. Max tells Nudge to remember that they’re not there on holiday and then she tells Iggy to get used to it because screw him and his handicap. She also tells them she has a plan on finding “the institute” but tells us she really has to stop lying.

At this point, who cares Max? You’ve already stolen cars, robbed people, assaulted humans and endangered bystanders. What’s a little lying at this point? Or is your author trying to convince us that you have a conscience?

Basically, if you put a fence around New York City, you’d have the world’s biggest nontraveling circus.

That’s how we start the next chapter, with a big bite of huh? No, Jimmy, circuses aren’t typically fenced in. You’re thinking prisons or maybe asylums. Both would be a more accurate description than circus. A circus is, typically, under a tent or other covering and entertaining.

This chapters starts off like Jimmy was running through a checklist of things that piss me off while circling the part about New York city. Blah blah blah, there’s a street vendor selling honey roasted peanuts and people speed skating through the park. Oh and there’s a clown selling balloons to kids which is funny because it’s night time and the kids who’re interested in balloons and clowns are probably all home in bed. This leaves me to conclude that the clown is really a serial killer who’s a bit of a fixture in central park.

Just as the irritation reaches an apex, Max’s spidey senses start tingling. Oh noes, there are attractive men around her! Does every guy who looks like he could be a model have to be an “eraser”? Why can’t Max ever be wrong? Just once I’d like her to have a panic attack and run around screaming while punching square jawed fellows with identical smiles and pressed clothes only to discover that she’s not under attack but is in the middle of a flash mob publicity stunt aimed at promoting a designer brand of cologne.

They all start running away because underwear models start converging on them and threatening the kid’s body image. And while they’re running away all the characters feel the need to count off the number of wolfmen they see like they’ve all just discovered how number work.

It all comes across like the scene in Aliens where the Marines are scanning for life forms when they first arrive and they detect xenomorphs closing in. I keep expecting Bill Paxton to pop up wearing a helmet and some plastic future armor while telling us ‘it’s a bug hunt man, a bug hunt!’ And because this is Jimmy, there’s absolutely no tension as this happens.

Max and them are trying to run to a place where they can take off and fly because she knows that there’s no out running the wolfmen. But then why don’t they spread their wings and take off? Max doesn’t want to draw attention, I guess. Then again, they’ve got to be drawing a lot of attention as it is, this pack of kids running from a bunch of American Idol hopefuls. Surely at least one bystander sees this and has to start thinking that it looks like either a performance artist making a statement about priests or that the authorities need to be contacted post haste. Which means that Max really can’t do much worse than to she already is.

So I’d say leap into the air and fly. After all, being captured would mean a fate worse than death, right? Public exposure or death? Hmm, those are really tough choices. Pick death, Max. Pretty please?