Maximum Ride; School's Out - Forever

In this eagerly awaited follow-up, brave bird-kid Max and her flock are discovered by an FBI agent and forced to go to "school." There is no such thing as an ordinary day as Max deciphers how and when she's supposed to save the world, and she faces her greatest enemy--a clone of herself.


Violence
The usual slapstick take-out-the-bad-guys stuff. Nothing too intense (snapped necks, anyone?) Ari bites himself several times, trying to take his mind off the fact that his father loves the 'bird kids' [experiments] better than he loves Ari, his own son. I felt bad for the poor kid.


Language
Stepped up a notch here. The Lord's name is misused 12 times, mostly in "Oh, God"[I wasn't sure if this was a prayer or a profanity, so I marked it down here] or "Oh My God" context, and crap is the most popular phrase, being used 9 times. Gosh, gol, dumb a**, hell, what the h, appear once, buggers, pissed and Jeez appear twice, and a** appeared three times. Freakin' is also used a lot. Max "shoots the bird", which I suppose is technically not language, but...

Sexual Content
There's a joke about someone being sexist. As Max is in the bathroom, Iggy comes and knocks on the door, in a slightly amusing scene, asking to come in. Max reminds him that she's in a towel, and he responds with "I'm blind, remember?". She goes into her room, and Fang knocks on the door. When she tells him he can't come in, he promptly does. While she's still in a towel. Ari is walking through Walmart and sees a woman holding up a bra, to his credit, he is disgusted. Fang kisses a girl at the school they attend for a brief time and Max kisses a guy she dates once. I'm not sure, but I think Max kisses fang in this one. They're starting to blur together! :)

Other Negative Elements
Max mentions that Angel's mind reading seems kinda witchcrafty. Fang and Max pretend to be 'avenging angels' to frighten away some goons. Well, not exactly but Fang says "God doesn't like mean people" a couple times.


Spiritual Content

I get the impression from this book that James Patterson is a Christian. For one thing, Nudge says she's reading the Bible "Trying to improve her relationship with the Lord." To explain the difference in their skin colors, Max says that their parents were missionaries. 

I liked this book just as much as the first. Although the language was ramped up, I've seen worse in PG romances. The bathroom/towel scene didn't feel so much sexual as it did common brother/sister conflicts and aggravation. I mean, come on, who among us hasn't yelled at our brothers about their loud music while wearing a towel? Normally those sorts of things bother me, but it didn't feel weird in this book. I think that a lot of times, people look at language in a book and go "Oh My Gosh! It's in a book and we can repeatedly point at it! Horrible!" whereas in a movie, it passes right up, and you cant 'reread'. Wacky huh? The story here is great, the ending astoundingly...hmm...how do I say it? Merciful? It shows that Max is taking a better road than her creators. 

I rate it PG for language, violence and some sensuality. There's a reason people read these books; they're awesome!!