Jaime Reyes was an ordinary kid, until a piece of advanced alien tech shaped like a scarab attached itself to his spine, giving him superpowers, and the Justice League dragged him into space to fight an evil satellite. Now he’s back in El Paso, trying to put his life back together after being missing for a year – and trying to learn how to control the scarab in his back, which wants to turn him into a killing machine. Oh, and the scarab’s creators, the Reach, have arrived on Earth, and Jaime’s the only one who knows they’re here to take over. Can the new Blue Beetle stop an alien invasion, protect his family and his city, and survive a legacy that’s already killed both his predecessors?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit my bias here: Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle before Jaime and who Jaime spends much of the series fanboying, is not just one of my all-time favorite superheroes, but one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, full-stop. So is his best friend, Booster Gold, who makes a heroic appearance towards the end, and Guy Gardner, the Green Lantern who makes regular appearances in the book, is way up there. And Ted, Booster, and Guy all met in the pages of Justice League International, one of my very favorite comics of all time, and one which this series makes deliberate allusions to. And Supergirl, my absolute favorite superhero, makes a cameo, and I’m awfully fond of Dan Garrett, the first Blue Beetle, and…look, this comic has a lot of things I adore in it before you even get into the actual subject matter. I’m predisposed to love it.

That said, even if you’re not me, it’s pretty darn good.

(A side note: Ongoing superhero comics, particularly those by DC and Marvel, tend to presuppose a certain familiarity with up to 70-plus years of backstory. Blue Beetle is better than most in that regard, but there are certainly moments that are caught up in the history of the Blue Beetle legacy, or characters the previous Blue Beetle was friends with, or what was going on in the rest of the DC Universe at the time. If you pick up these books based on this review and are confused, feel free to email me; I can talk for hours on end about Blue Beetle. Just ask my long-suffering co-blogger, who after years of friendship with me can tell you where Ted Kord grew up (Chicago), his favorite book (The Brothers Karamazov), and what kind of underwear he wears (boxers).)

Blue Beetle is both hilarious and exciting, but the real strength of the book is the characters. This, of course, starts with Jaime, who is endlessly lovable. He’s certainly a teenage boy, awkward and impatient and goofy, but he’s such a good boy; he’s brave and smart and responsible and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone and he loves his parents and his friends and his little sister and he makes people better just by being around them. His dream is to become a dentist so that he can pay off his parents’ mortgage. And yet he never comes off like a too-perfect Gary Stu; he’s a believable, funny, kind of dorky, unbelievably sweet kid, in over his head but trying his best.

It’s very clear that this is in large part because of how he was raised. Jaime’s parents are fully realized characters in their own right, and wonderful. They expect obedience and respect from their son, but they also trust him – there’s a great scene where they lay down the ground rules for crimefighting at night (he doesn’t have to ask permission if there’s a natural disaster, but he does have to call). (Incidentally, the fact that Jaime’s family and friends all know his secret identity is extremely rare in comics, and very refreshing – rather than constantly lying to his loved ones, Jaime just trusts them, right away.) They believe in peace and the sacredness of human life, and talk to Jaime about forgiveness and turning the other cheek, but Bianca can back down a Green Lantern (one of the most powerful superheroes in the cosmos) like a naughty child, and Alberto will fearlessly face off against a mob boss who dares bring guns onto his property. The strength of Jaime’s upbringing is encapsulated in one wonderful panel: when a defeated supervillain asks why Jaime doesn’t just kill him, Jaime simply says “That’s not how my mother raised me.” Darn straight.

Milagro, Jaime’s much younger sister, is great, too – whiny and plucky and believable. One particularly sweet moment between her and Jaime led to me bursting into tears on the subway (which happened three times – between that and all the giggling, I must have looked like a lunatic). And Jaime’s best friends, Brenda and Paco, are pretty much everything I love wrapped up in a bow – Brenda is a smart, overachieving, determined and independent redhead who can flip a guy twice her size to the ground, and Paco is a big, lovably smug goofball who acts like an idiotic BMOC but is actually extremely smart and loyal. She fights aliens! He saves babies! Maybe they’re in love maybe? Shh, don’t tell them.

And the story! The series is brilliantly-plotted and paced; the second half of End Game had me on the edge of my seat. (It should be noted that the series continued after this for about ten more issues, but I haven’t read those yet.) The gradual development of the scarab is beautifully done, and the climatic battle, with all of Jaime’s allies coming together, is one of those moments that makes the reader want to stand up and cheer (the one crazy thing I actually did manage to avoid doing on the subway).

I also loved the art, which goes through quite a few artists but always has a modern, kinetic, urban feel that fits both Jaime’s character and his powers very well. It’s also refreshing that none of women are drawn in nonsensically skimpy outfits, or contorting their bodies into uncomfortable, “sexy” poses; though the teenage girls have a tendency to wear belly shirts, it comes off as oddly dated fashion more than creepy objectification.

Oh, and did I mention that the cast is almost entirely Hispanic and the setting within a Latino community is handled with taste, careful thought, and understanding? The characters never come off as stereotypes, the bilingual factor is handled well (one issue is almost entirely in Spanish, and it’s wonderful (don’t worry, there’s a translation in the back)), and – there’s that word again – it’s just refreshing to see a non-white hero leading a non-white cast in a story that’s about the character and not his race, since mainstream comics don’t often handle that well. (Jaime’s interracial relationship with his Asian – and incredibly competent and funny magical detective – girlfriend Traci is also well done and very cute.)

The only bad thing I can say about this series is that it was sadly canceled after 36 issues (the four books reviewed here cover the first 26 of those). (Don’t worry, Jaime’s still appearing in the sadly-dreadful Teen Titans and will be featured in the upcoming Generation Lost, and is a major player on the animated Batman: The Brave and the Bold, so the character, at least, isn’t going anywhere for a while.) Since I can’t fault the series for heartbreaking decisions made by the company, Blue Beetle gets the coveted five cupcakes, and a double thumbs-up from longtime Blue Beetle pal Booster Gold:

It doesn’t get much better than that, I tell you what.

After the Boov aliens kidnap Gratuity “Tip” Tucci’s mom (and oh yeah, invade and take over Earth, renaming it Smekland), things get… Weird. Tip decides to travel on her own to the human reservation in Florida, rather than taking the alien transport, and on her way she meets a Boov named J.Lo who might not be all bad, and she discovers her mom might still be alive somewhere. But nothing is what it seems, the humans aren’t in Florida after all, another alien race is threatening humans and Boov alike, and Tip, J.Lo, and Tip’s cat Pig might be the only hope for humanity.

Wow. I didn’t get Tip’s nickname until I just typed it above. Clearly, I am super-smrt.

This book just treads the line between message-built-into-story (which I love!) and story-built-around-a-message (which tends to bother me), but I think it stays pretty well in “fun story that makes you think” territory. Essentially, what happens with the alien invasion and human relocation parallels white folks colonizing the “New World” and the genocide against American Indians. (There isn’t exactly a genocide against humans, but they are brutally taken over, have all of their rights curtailed, are referred to as savages and barbarians [and the invaders all think they're saving humans from themselves by civilizing them], and are sent to live on small reserves with few resources, while the Boov keep changing the terms of the deals they make with humans, or outright going back on them, so yeah, it’s pretty clear what’s happening.) There are a few moments that were… Uh, not subtle about the message; but there were a lot of small moments that were very powerful.

Clearly, the book dealt with racism in a head-on way. It’s demonstrated a few times with the way a group of people in Roswell deal with an American Indian character — they write him off as a crazy drunk and, as far as they know (or care), his name is Chief Crazy Legs. Tip actually stops to talk to him, and discovers a) his name is Frank; and b) he’s probably the smartest person in the book. And Tip herself is biracial; in one moment that stuck with me, another character said something along the lines of, “Your mother isn’t what I expected.” To which Tip, smart and wry, basically answers, “You mean white?”

The biggest issue with this book was the pacing. It was slow and meandering — there were a lot of elements that could have been condensed or cut. They drive to Florida, looking for humans, and that’s the first half of the book; then the second alien species appears; they get chased to Arizona, still looking for humans, get sidetracked in Roswell for awhile, and the climax doesn’t even start until you’re 375 pages in. I feel like a lot of those elements could have been combined or trimmed, because by the end, even though I was still enjoying the book, I also was wondering when the heck it was going to be over already. That’s really not what you want, especially in a book that’s on the younger side of the YA spectrum.

The book took awhile to settle into itself, too. In the first quarter or so, a lot of the humor is of the forced, look-how-wacky-I-am! variety (case in point, J.Lo the alien’s name). It eventually calms down into being actually funny — my favorite bit was J.Lo’s “Pictorial History of the Boovish Race With Pictures” — but it took awhile for me to get into it. I was also put off by the parodies of brand names. I wouldn’t have noticed, except that Happy Mouse Kingdom (guess what that was) was a major plot point, so there were constant references to the Happy Mouse character, which meant that instead of being a funny gag, it was way too much.*

The book would probably be a three-and-a-half cupcake affair if it didn’t deal so well with race issues; I enjoyed it, but don’t have much of an urge to seek out Adam Rex’s other books. But because it did manage to deal with issues that I consider important (while remaining funny, no less!), it gets knocked up to four cupcakes.

Bonus: When I was googling to find the cover image, I ran across this video. If it makes you giggle, you would definitely enjoy the book.

* I was going to say I get this, if it was due to copyright reasons and because a section of the book takes place there, but then I noticed the book is published by Disney-Hyperion, so… Bzuh?

Title: My Teacher is an Alien
Author: Bruce Coville
Genre: Aliens Among Us
Pages: 123

Summary: Susan doesn’t like the substitute teacher who’s taken over her sixth grade class — and she finds out he’s not just strict, he’s an alien! Now she and Peter, the smartest kid in class, have only a few days to expose him, before he kidnaps some of their classmates and takes them off to space forever.

Thoughts: What is there to even say? Bruce Coville is the reason I love reading, and the reason I love sf/f in particular. This was the most formative series of my childhood. The first book is pretty light and silly (the end of the series is quite a bit heavier), and utterly delightful.

Four and a half cupcakes.

Title: Little Brother
Author: Cory Doctorow
Genre: Contemporary, borderline Aliens Among Us
Pages: 380

Summary: Teen hacker Marcus is in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets accused of terrorism, and is dragged off to a secret facility. When he gets back, his home town is a virtual police state. After everything he’s been through, Marcus can’t handle that, and he declares war on the Department of Homeland Security.

Thoughts: My feelings about this book are certainly mixed. I liked the characters — a stunning success on the race, gender, progressive lefty scorecard — and the prose, though there was something mildly off with the pacing. This book was recced to me as both good and important, and it is both of those things. That said, I didn’t enjoy it very much. I had a visceral reaction to the terrorism at the beginning, but beyond that… Hm.

I read mostly for escapism; that’s why so much of what I read is sf/f. When I’m looking at things like race and gender, I’m much more comfortable with looking at story subtext and seeing how that reflects the culture. But there is nothing sub about this text, and while important and engaging, it’s also a bit lecture-y. I agree with it, and I’m glad it was written, but it was an obvious case of story built around an agenda, not agenda built craftily into the story. So while it’s a good book, and I will happily loan my copy out to anyone who is interested, I doubt I will read it again.

Final thought? My favorite bits were the asides on math and cryptography. Sort of Neal Stephenson for the YA crowds.

Four cupcakes.

And now, because it is 3:30 AM, I shall go to bed. I think tomorrow I shall start with something light-hearted and whimsical.

Title: The Invasion (Animorphs #1)
Author: K. A. Applegate
Genre: Aliens Among Us
Pages: 184

Summary: Evil, mind-controlling slug-aliens are trying to take over Earth. A good alien dies trying to stop them — but not before giving five ordinary kids the power to morph into animals. And now those five kids are all that stand between the rest of the human race and total enslavement.

Thoughts: Apparently, all my friends grew up on this series, but I totally missed it somehow. It was definitely the shortest of the books in my TBR pile, and the one aimed at the youngest crowd. The prose was very clean, and the change in narration styles when the POV character became an animal was really well done. The cast is multiracial, with girls kicking as much butt as the boys, so it gets a thumbs-up on both of those counts. A fun, fast read. I’d give it to my younger relatives for sure.

Four cupcakes.

Kyon just wants a normal high school experience, but that all changes when he meets the beautiful but highly volatile Haruhi Suzumiya. Soon he’s drawn into her S.O.S. Brigade, a club on the lookout for quest for the supernatural, the paranormal, and the extraterrestrial. But as he quickly discovers, the other members of the S.O.S. Brigade are precisely the paranormal beings Haruhi is looking for. Even more alarming is the news that Haruhi has the power to destroy the universe, if she so chooses – and Kyon is the only one who can stop her.

This is a bit of a tricky review to write, since Haruhi Suzumiya was originally a Japanese novel and my version’s a translation. Actually, Haruhi is apparently something of a phenomenon in Japan, with nine novels, three mangas (one of which is sampled at the end of the translation), three video games, and an anime for television. It’s hard to tell how much of the issues with the book stem from the translation, and it’s hard to know what judgments are fair to make on a novel that springs from a culture so different from my own.

That said…this book is pretty terrible.

I’m not sure who did the translation; my copy credits it to MX Media, LLC, so presumably it was fed through Babelfish or the like. It’s not just that idioms don’t match up. There are grammatical mistakes, tenses switch from past to present and back again willy nilly, sometimes multiple times within the same sentence, and even when there aren’t any technical problems the prose is stilted and hard to understand. Here’s the opening sentence: “The question of how long someone believed in Santa Claus is a worthless topic that would never come up in idle conversation.” I had to read that four times to parse it, and once I got it I was just irritated by the awkward, passive construction. And the whole book is like that.

Even worse than the translation were the bizarre sexual shenanigans. Haruhi drags Asahina, a girl who is even more beautiful than she is, into the S.O.S. Brigade because she believes that having what she describes as an incredibly sexy Lolita in the group will cause more adventures to happen. Then she gropes her. Then she blackmails the president of the computer club into giving the S.O.S. Brigade a computer by grabbing his hand, forcing it onto Asahina’s breast, and having Kyon photograph it; when his club protests on behalf, she threatens to accuse them of gang raping Asahina. Then she forcibly strips Asahina and forces her into various fetish outfits, including a bunny girl and a maid. Through all of this, Asahina cries piteously and begs for her to stop, but though Kyon thinks Haruhi’s behavior is wrong, and has promised Asahina he will stop Haruhi from doing it, he just watches. Not only that, but he says multiple times that it’s super hot watching all of this, and that Asahina’s distress just makes it more appealing, to wit: “Cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she was forced into poses accentuating her chest, Asahina awkwardly smiled at the camera, her eyes watering close to tears. She was oozing incomparable charm.” The real kicker, though, is when Kyon stops Haruhi from posting the sexy maid pictures on the club’s website – but saves them to a hidden, password-protected folder: “I’ll save them for my private viewing pleasure.” And yes, this creepily voyeuristic, pathetically passive accomplice to sexual harassment, blackmail, and false accusations of rape is the hero.

The sad thing is that the story itself isn’t bad. It’s fairly different than what I’ve seen before, at least as far as Western fantasy/sci fi goes, and without the icky sexual violence and with, you know, readable prose, I could see Haruhi and Kyon’s relationship being actually kind of adorable. There are certainly glimmers of likeability from Haruhi, when she’s not violating people. Part of me even wants to know exactly what Haruhi’s powers signify, and what’s going to happen next.

Because of all this, and because I feel like I should give it that benefit of the doubt rather than pass sweeping judgment on another culture, I’m not giving it a zero. But because it was so nigh unreadable – yes, it’s a translation, but somehow I feel like Little Brown can afford to hire a decent translator and/or editor – and because all the molestation, both literal and figurative, was completely unforgivable, I’m giving it as close to a zero as possible. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya gets half a cupcake, and not a crumb more.

Cammie Morgan is a normal teenage girl… Or as normal as any of the girls who attend the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women. It may look like a high-end boarding school for spoiled heiresses, but Gallagher Academy is actually a school for spies. Cammie and her classmates all speak fourteen languages, can disarm a bomb in seconds, and can kill with their bare hands — but sophomore year is the beginning of something new for Cammie and her friends. It’s their first time taking Covert Operations, a class that teaches them the real ins and outs of being a spy. Cammie’s doing great on her first homework mission, until she hits a snag she never counted on. Cammie gets sighted… by a boy. And none of her training has taught her how to handle a normal relationship.

(Mild spoilers after the cut.)

I admit, I’m stretching the definition of science fiction here to include these books, but the girls are super spies who use all sorts of James Bond-esque high tech gadgets, so they aren’t totally out of the realm of the Aliens Among Us category, either. That said, they’re definitely more general YA than most of what we review here — they’re mostly about teen girl friendships, first loves, and fashion, set against a backdrop that happens to involve being spies. And it actually works really well, in some ways, because being a teen girl really can make you feel invisible (as Cammie often does), or like you’re hiding who you are (as Cammie must), or — this one hit me really hard — feel that you can be something special, if you just get the chance. Just like Cammie and her friends. So I kind of love the set up.

That said, the books themselves are very by the numbers in some ways. Cammie is definitely an Everyteen, despite being a spy. She’s the “normal” one of her friends, to the point where her strength in CoveOps class is how normal she seems. She has the standard best friends: a tomboy who looks like a model and a clumsy genius who also looks like a model, but of course, neither of them cares. Only Cammie, who is not nearly as beautiful, notices; and despite the fact that she’s supposed to be the most normal girl in the group, she’s the one the only boys in the series flock to. (That is, of course, definitely a YA standard.) There’s a super-rich mean girl she has to deal with and eventually befriend. She has a pretty good but not perfect relationship with her mom. She does well in school, but she’s not perfect. She’s just like you, but a spy!

So in the first book, Cammie bungles a homework mission but meets Josh, a very cute — but otherwise ordinary — boy. He flirts with her, and that’s a shock, because, since she attends an all-girls school, Cammie’s never really interacted with a boy before. Wacky hijinks ensue as Cammie creates a secret identity so she can go out with him, without him catching on to the Gallagher Academy. In the second book, the girls discover that there’s a spy school for boys, too, and when a group of boys comes to study at Gallagher for a semester, even wackier hijinks ensue.

I can tell you, I would have 100% loved these books when I was 14. Reading as an adult, I’m pretty meh — they were enjoyable, but not great. One thing that really didn’t work for me was the way Cammie really forgot a lot of her spy skills when confronted with Josh. It didn’t work because, while the book did a good job of selling reasons it would have been awkward for her to flirt at all — and to flirt with a normal, townie boy in particular — at the same time, if she’s been training almost her whole life, and she’s such a good spy, and great at CoveOps in particular, why did all of that training to out the window and leave her flustered? When boys aren’t around, Cammie is competent and kick ass; when they show up, she’s just… Not.

Taken to another level, you have my frustration with the second book: show

One other issue with book two: show

With all that said, though, there were some elements of the series that were pretty great. I love that Gallagher is all about sisterhood. The friendships are lovely, and I like that the ultimate moral of the first book is that boys may come and go, but Cammie’s friends will always be there for her. I like the way the books deal with Macey, the mean girl; she shows a fair amount of growth for a supporting character. I love the idea of the school in general — it was founded by Gillian Gallagher, who saved Abraham Lincoln from the first attempt to assassinate him (the one that’s not in the history books), but the CIA didn’t know what to do with a woman, so she founded her own school for exceptional girls. And I love that it’s about girls who are smart, tough, and tenacious.

In the end, these books are a lot of fun, but nothing terribly extraordinary. There were a few moments that were really good, but also a few gags that didn’t work for me. However, as I will almost certainly read the third book once it’s out in paperback, they both get three and a half cupcakes.

I’m going to do something a little new, here. It’s no secret that Bruce Coville is my favorite author, and I can’t pretend to be objective about his books — I get too caught up in fangirling. I read all of these books in marathon sessions over the course of a week, so I wasn’t pausing for deep thoughts. Basically, I just want to get these book reviews out there, so I’ve decided to include two short reviews here: one of Bruce Coville’s series The Unicorn Chronicles — including the newly-released book Dark Whispers — and one of his Rod Allbright’s Alien Adventures series.

The Unicorn Chronicles: A strange man begins following Cara and her grandmother, and the incident sends her from her home town into a whole new world — literally. Cara finds herself in Luster, the land of unicorns, where she must deliver a message the unicorn’s queen. But that’s harder than it seems: not all of Luster’s creatures like humans (or unicorns). Cara soon finds herself in the middle of a centuries-old war between the unicorns and a clan of humans who have sworn to hunt them into extinction.

Rod Allbright’s Alien Adventures: Rod Allbright is a typical kid — albeit a clumsy one. Then a group of aliens crash-lands in his science project, and reveal that the school bully who torments Rod is actually a villain wanted galaxy-wide for crimes of unspeakable cruelty. Things get even worse from there when it turns out Rod’s enemy may be the only one who knows what happened to Rod’s long-missing father.

The Unicorn Chronicles: Into the Land of Unicorns, Song of the Wanderer and Dark Whispers

The Unicorn Chronicles is a series that’s been in progress for over a decade now — I read the first book in middle school. This series is a bit of a departure from most of Bruce’s stories: it’s a portal fantasy, and its strength isn’t the characters, it’s the world building and the history. Cara herself is an everykid protagonist: she’s quiet, she misses her long-lost parents, she finds herself in an amazing situation. Some of her companions are more developed than others — teen rebel unicorn Lightfood is pretty great, but a lot of the peripheral cast is light on characterization.

But the worldbuilding and backstory behind Luster is fantastic: the unicorns were driven from Earth by a clan called the Hunters (and it’s not a coincidence that that’s Cara’s last name) in what feels like it could be a real myth. The story of what happened to Cara’s grandmother and how she first met and befriended the unicorns caught me completely offguard, and I’ve never read anything like it. And the origin of the Whisperer — the strange entity that may be behind everything, even the war between unicorns and Hunters — was pretty much just fantastic.

As for the new book, it was even more of a departure: there were multiple points of view, including one from Cara’s father. (The rest of the series had stuck with just Cara.) I liked the huge scope of the story — it is truly epic — but I’m not sure all the additional POVs really worked. They increased the depth of the world and the war within it, but most of the characters were not as strong, which meant the sections didn’t work as well.

It’s hard for me to grade these; like I said, I’d been awaiting the new book for years and years, and I’m just not objective about Coville’s writing. This is a good read, but I don’t think it’s Coville’s best. It pains me to give any of his books below a four, and I think I’d have loved them a lot more if I’d read all of them when I was young, but as it is I think the series is a very, very solid three and a half cupcakes. Someday, it may be upgraded to four, depending on how the conclusion plays out — which hopefully is not going to take another eight years…

Rod Allbright’s Alien Adventures: Aliens Ate My Homework, I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X, The Search for Snout, and Aliens Stole My Body

So like the Unicorn books, I started this series in middle school, but I only ever found the first two books. I managed to track down a copy of the third a couple years ago, and only just found the fourth on PaperBackSwap last month. So after a decade-plus, I fiiiiiinally know what the heck happens in the end.

These books are great, hands-down. Rod is an endearing first-person narrator. As I read, I couldn’t help but think that certain authors should take notes: this is how you do a book where your first-person narrator is relating events that “really happened” and who is looking back on the story with a bit of perspective. Rod is funny, he’s got a strong voice, and that never gets in the way of his own story. (Rant over.)

The individual books all work well: the build up to who Rod’s father is, to what the villain’s big plan is, and to how it all ties together is fantastic. Rod’s arch is also fantastic — he’s also a bit of an everykid, but the way he grows and matures to the series climax is beautifully done. But there are still elements of the story that seem to disappear or never quite tie up, as if the outline had shifted between the first and fourth books. There were also a few cases where relationships were stated instead of shown — Rod has an official mentor who he loves deeply, he says, but we almost never see them together or see Rod get any real training. Instead, we see him develop much deeper relationships with other characters, to the point where I misremembered which alien actually was his mentor until I reread the first two books.

Aside from that, though, the characters were great, and they tackled some cool things. Rod’s bratty cousin Elspeth also gets a lot of growth, and she and Madame Pong, the only major female alien character, actually discuss how Earth has a problem with sexism, and that the rest of the galaxy just does not think that’s okay. And I suspect there was an intentional, though subtextual, gay relationship between two of the aliens — there are a couple of very, very quick references to a them being “bonded,” and sharing a bedroom, and to them having a very deep emotional connection. I definitely did not catch that in middle school, but as an adult reader I did, and I appreciate it.

So, in the end, the last book was worth the effort it took to find. I actually loved the series even more on rereading than I did when I was a kid. The series as a whole gets four cupcakes, complete with sprinkles.

In the final book in the Maximum Ride trilogy, it’s do-or-die time for Max and her flock: the bird kids versus the badguys. Unfortunately, tension in the flock leads to the team splitting up, the boys going with Fang and the girls with Max. While the boys are off dealing with killer robots and rallying an army of kids to their cause, Max and the girls are in Europe, breaking down the doors of the villain’s headquarters—and solving mysteries. Like who the heck is Max’s real mom, anyway? And why were they created?

And the big one: is there still enough time to save the world?

Okay. Well, the tagline on the book’s cover posits the question, “The end is near…or is it?” And you know, I’d like to know, too. Because while the characters of the book are as gripping as they were in the first two installments, in terms of plot, this book is a big old garbled mess.

Here’s the problem: as far as I can tell, there really is no plan behind anything. The villains are part of an evil, global corporation. They created not just Max and the flock, but hundreds of human-animal hybrid experiments. The most successful were the bird kids; the most common were the Erasers (human-wolf hybrids that act as the villains’ henchmen); later, we find out there are other, less successful experiments all over the world—and clones of the ones that worked well. But what the villains actually seem to want to do is commit genocide, getting rid of the most useless portions of the planet’s population, reducing it by half—or more. So sometimes it seems like the experiments are supposed to be the beginning of a new race that will be better than humans, but then villains refuse to use them in any way, and instead round them up and kill them all. All the Erasers are put down, replaced by robots. The rest of the mutants are all brought to an extermination facility in Europe and are killed off a few at a time. So…what? We’re never given the badguys’ objectives in creating the mutants, or what criteria the hybrids all failed that leads to them being exterminated. We also aren’t ever really given a motive for the By-Half genocide plan, except vague mumblings about overpopulation. We are told that the plan is put in progress, but nothing ever comes of it and we never find out how it’s supposed to work.

Not to mention the fact that it suffers from the Princess Leia problem: if Max and company were actually exterminated every time they were scheduled to be, there would have been no book. Instead, the villains always opt to run “more tests” on them (when the villains created them, so it’s unclear what or why they’re testing), giving the kids a chance to escape. A narrative necessity, but it makes me think that if this is the standard for global supervillainy, I should be Dictator For Life by now.

And that’s just the villains. There are scores of other questions left unanswered: show

Like I said, a big, garbled mess. I overlooked it in the first two, which had a feeling of rambling without actually going anywhere, if only due to the Voice’s constant repetition that there was a purpose for everything and it would all make sense eventually. Now I suspect the Voice was trying to reassure the readers, not the characters, because I can’t see any kind of plan behind anything. It’s incredibly annoying—it reads like an ultra-long NaNoWriMo project. The author went into it with great characters and an interesting premise but no plot, let them wander where they felt like, and gave only half-assed explanations for anything, failing to tie up the myriad loose ends.

With that said, though the plot was incoherent, there were good points. The best of which remained Max. Her narrative voice and personality remained strong and fun throughout. There were also moments when she hit a really excellent note—she has the weight of the world on her shoulders, pretty much literally, but it’s presented in a way that reads like the kind of teenage girl I was, and I suspect a lot of the readers are—the kind who strives to be too perfect, to do every activity, to get the best grades, to be everything to everyone. The pressure Max deals with feels like that, ramped up to the scale of saving the world. On the other hand, the author unfortunately has moments it’s taken too far, and instead of a girl struggling to keep her head above water, it becomes cliché gender wars: Max refuses to lose to Fang, to Ari, to Jeb. Though the ultimate villain turns out to be female, it in places relies to heavily on, “I’m a girl, girls kick ass, I WILL NEVER LOSE TO A BOY.” Which I would have dug when I was in the age-bracket it’s intended for, but when reading actively at this point, it induces a few eye rolls.

So overall? The series was enjoyable. The characters are pretty rockin’. The conclusion was disappointing. Two and a half cupcakes for this book—and I’d probably give the series overall three.

Her name is Maximum Ride. She’s 98% human, 2% bird. And the girl can fly.

Max and her flock—that is, the other five mutant kids with wings—are on the run. They escaped from the despicable School where they were created, kept prisoner, and experimented on, but their only human ally, a former whitecoat scientist named Jeb, has gone missing…or gone back to the badguys. No matter where they go, the Erasers (bloodthirsty human-wolf hybrids who obey only the whitecoats) are after them, trying to kill them…or worse, bring them back to the School.

For the last few years, they’ve been safe. But when the Erasers show up from nowhere and kidnap Angel, the youngest member of the flock, Max has to do what she’s always feared and go back to the School. The only upside? They hope that somewhere at the School is information about why they were created, and who their parents are…if they even have parents. In the second book, the search for information on their origins continues, but this time a Voice in Max’s head complicates matters by insisting that she’s wasting time which would be better spent, you know, saving the world.

First off, the category. It’s hard to classify, but I went with “Aliens Among Us” because, while about mutants instead of aliens, it’s the same basic idea; similar to urban/modern fantasy, it’s basically our world, but with a hidden science fiction element. As for the rating, I really, seriously enjoyed the heck out of these books, but had just enough frustrations—albeit, as always, a fair amount of personal preference was involved—that it hit 3.5 instead of four cupcakes.

I absolutely loved Max’s first person narration. Though it feels like the books kind of forgot this was allegedly her written version of what happened, she’s a charming narrator; her sarcasm never feels forced, and she feels genuinely young, not like an adult trying to use a young voice. And she somehow hits the balance between young and nervous and deeply jaded and wounded from her childhood. She trusts no one but the flock, but loves them deeply, and that love is her ultimate motivation for everything. Another balance she hits well as a character is her need to take care of the flock in a parental role and her frustration with not getting to be a regular kid (with or without wings). So clearly, there’s a lot going on in Max’s character, and that’s without getting into how she relates to boys (which I certainly will in a minute). My only problem is that the POV does skip around—the vast majority of the time, it’s Max’s first person perspective, but for random chapters it skips to third person for other members of the flock (and for a couple of the villains, particularly Ari, the head Eraser).There are pros and cons to switching POV; it does sometimes establish information that’s useful to the reader but Max can’t know yet, and the other members of the flock are often hilarious when out on their own. But at the same time, the scenes often don’t accomplish anything in terms of establishing necessary information, and the sudden change can be really jarring and abrupt.

My other main complaint is that the books wander like crazy, often feeling like the writer might not know where the plot is going. Members of the flock keep developing new skills—mind-reading, hacking, breathing under water, super speed, ventriloquism, to name a few, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to why this happens. The Voice Max begins hearing works similarly; it’s there, but there hasn’t been a hint of what it is or why it’s there. Ditto for the saving the world thing—near the end of the second book, we get an idea of how the world may be in danger, but not a very clear one. But between the Angel’s kidnapping in book one, which kicks off the plot, and the discovery of who the real villains may be near the end of book two, a lot of basically superfluous stuff happens and the plot wanders a bit. When it’s focused (saving Angel, searching for their parents, escaping attacks) it’s fantastic; the bits that wander—probably a third of each of the books—are still pretty fun, but not as exciting. And there’s some as-of-yet unexplained retconning: in the first book, the kids learn that they did have real parents, who either gave them up or were told they died; but in the second book, they learn that they were kidnapped as infants and their parents were heart broken. So far, no explanation of why their backstories changed between books.

Oh, and there’s basically no physical description of any characters. That doesn’t bother me, as I’m not a visually oriented person, but it’s lacking to the point where I didn’t realize one of the members of the flock was African-American until halfway through the second book.

That said, I found these books awesome. They were basically everything I want in my kids’ sci-fi: a dynamic lead who can kick ass and take names (but still screws up and has to deal with the consequences), interesting (if not evenly fleshed out) secondary characters, creepy villains, superpowers, lots of action…Honestly, I think the series would work really well as a weekly TV show. But what I truly loved about these books were the relationships between Max and the other characters—her mothering towards the younger kids in the flock, her I-don’t-know-where-we-stand, not-quite-relationship with Fang, the next-oldest flock member, and the extremely conflicted emotions that she and Ari have towards each other.

First, Max is great in that her need to take care of the others feels very real. When, at one point, she breaks down everyone is freaked out—and she knows it and all she wants is for them to not see it happen, because she understands that it’s unfair, but everyone depends on her. And she wants to be the person they can depend on; the one constant in lives full of fear. All of which translates into her being kind of snappy and mad at the world, because the bottom line is that she has to keep the kids out of trouble, no matter what they want, and in the end she’s the one who’s going to make sure they have food to eat, somewhere safe to sleep, and that no Erasers are about to attack. When she does get a chance to rest, she can’t decide if she’s glad or irritated; she’s exited to find out that she can pass as a regular kid when she needs to, and that she does clean up to be pretty if she’s got the time—but blowdrying her hair is never going to be worth the time when she’s on the run, and frankly, most good fashion won’t hide a 13-foot pair of wings. She never lets her regrets that she can’t be feminine get in the way of doing what needs to be done.

And then there’s Fang. I wasn’t sold on the idea of her falling for him when she first kissed him, but it never felt as though she was being shoehorned into a relationship. The first kiss is in the first book, from there…well, things between them are pretty much awkward, with them both pretending it didn’t happen, because they aren’t sure how they want to relate to each other. When Max sees Fang kissing someone else, she’s jealous; but that jealousy doesn’t consume her. (Also, when she meets a boy she really likes and their date goes well, she’s excited…but not so excited it changes her core character. When it comes to the split-second choice between trusting him and running when she’s being chased, she runs for it. It’s a great, if sad, moment, that really shows Max’s consistency and strength.) Through the second book, the tension between Max and Fang grows—not even sexual tension, just awkwardness because she’s no longer a maternal figure to him, and not quite a sibling, either, and yet they aren’t at a point where they can acknowledge any other potential relationship between them. It isn’t rushed, or forced; I could still see it not working out between them in the end (though I suspect it will). I think the books handle that relationship really well.

The relationship between Max and Ari is also interesting, especially form Ari’s point of view. Ari was just a normal kid, who wasn’t made into an Eraser until he was a toddler—he’s chronologically seven years old, but biologically older. Further confusing him is the fact that his own father is Jeb, and all through his childhood, his father was obsessed with the flock in general and Max in particular—even leaving him behind to help them escape at one point. While Jeb was gone, Ari got turned into an Eraser, clearly hoping that if he had mutations of his own, his father would care about him more. But it didn’t work, Jeb is still more concerned about Max than Ari, and Ari can’t handle it. He blames Max and hates her for it—but at the same time is fascinated by her, in some way loves her. Not in love with her, but one of his fondest fantasies is one where they’re best friends and she’s basically his older sister and his guardian—without the flock, and if necessary, without his father. He’s truly conflicted about what he wants from Max, he’s bitter about this father caring too much about her, and he has no idea how to handle any of it—after all, he’s still a little kid, somewhere underneath all of it. (Max grasps little of this—the POV change to Ari is one of the ones that works well, because, while Max’s confusion about Ari’s motivations is interesting, it’s also pretty slow-going, where as Ari’s POV is fascinating.)

So, like I said: I really enjoy these books (I ran out and bought School’s Out the day I finished Angel, and I’m really excited for the third book [Saving the World, and Other Extreme Sports], which comes out in about a week.) They definitely have flaws, but I honestly adore Max and the flock (especially Iggy, the blink explosives genius), I’m really interested in Ari as a villain, and despite the fact that the books have some noticeable flaws, they’re solid, awesome adventures. Three and a half cupcakes.