Maximum Ride is...kind of odd. You see, James Patterson originally wrote a book called "When the Wind Blows", which is an adult novel about a woman named Fran who lives in the woods of...somewhere (can't remember which state now, but I think it's Oregan maybe) and a guy named Kit. They find a girl named Max who has wings that grow along her arms, and it turns out that there's an evil science lab in the area that's full of various mutant children who are either dead or have been severely screwed up. The rest of the book is Fran and Kit trying to get the mutant kids to safety and not get killed themselves.

Maximum Ride is pretty much what happens when you take the above concept, remove Fran and Kit, have the leader be mid-teen instead of about ten, and focus on it being a totally radical action adventure instead of a philosophical science story. The first one and two were...passable. The fanbase was divided on the third one, although I myself didn't mind it. The fourth was just...gah! I haven't really read past it. There's just a ton of Mary Sue-ism, stuff that keeps getting dropped or ignored, and just a lack of effort.