“I know he’ll come for me.”

From James Patterson’s Maximum Ride: Angel.

After Fang and Dylan both faced near-fatal danger, Max and the rest of her human-bird hybrid family flock have been experiencing lots of challenges, especially after Fang decided to leave the flock.  Max is depressed over her boyfriend’s departure, but she is also confused by Dylan’s presence as she continues to train him.  When genetic scientists arrive to inform Max that she’ll need to be the leader of the Gen-77 genetically-mutated teens by mating with Dylan and forming a “royal” bloodline, she refuses the idea.  Still off on his own, Fang has decided to recruit any mutant kids he meets to create a flock of his own, and he soon meets Ratchet, Star, Kate, Starfish, and Max’s clone who calls herself Maya.  Dr. Martinez encourages Max to meet the Gen-77 mutants before writing them off completely, and Max finally agrees to make the trip to see the newest generation of mutants.  However, the group is attacked on the trip by some of the new mutants which leads to Max and Dylan discovering that Gen-77 seeks to destroy humankind because they are so flawed compared to the mutants.  Both Fang and Max realize that evil is building from a Doomsday Group and after fighting evil, mind-controlled forces separately, Fang reaches out to Max to join forces in taking out Doomsday.  Learning of a terrible murder plot, Max and Fang lead their flocks to save humanity, but their tumultuous romantic past threatens to destroy their mission before it starts.

The seventh Maximum Ride book introduces a wide variety of new characters and abilities.  The flip-flop attitudes of some characters are annoyingly distracting, but overall, the story moves too fast for it to ruin the entire book. Angel is a page-turner that readers will find difficult to put down.