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Nevermore is the 8th book in the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson.

Plot/Summary

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS MAXIMUM RIDE.

A girl. A fighter. A leader.

A superhuman with a mission to save the world.

She's gone to the ends of the earth seeking her destiny.

AND NOW THE END ISN'T NEAR...

IT'S HERE.

The prologue is Angel's vision of Max's death.

With Angel missing and Fang absent, Max and the Flock live in Oregon in a house given to them by the billionaire Nino Pierpont. They prepare to go to a private school called Newton. The media is currently focused on a new and growing group called the 99 Percenters.

At school, a teacher tells Dylan to capture Fang so they can perform tests on him, but Dylan refuses to do so. The teacher tell him that they will kill or hurt Max if he doesn't.

Meanwhile, Fang and his gang are caught up with a new threat: the Apocalypticas, another name for the 99 Percenters. On the road, they're attacked by two monster trucks carrying Erasers and Ari, who has yet again risen from the dead. In the fight, Star and Kate betray Fang, and Maya battles Ari and dies in Fang's arms.

A grieving and injured Fang tells Ratchet and Holden to go home. As he is resting in a graveyard and thinking about Max and Dylan and the flock, he is told by the Voice that he has to go home to Max. With a broken wing he begins traveling on foot, only to encounter three men who throw him off a cliff.

Angel has a vision of all this, and is relieved when she realizes the girl who died was Maya, not Max. She is still captive and being experimented on. During an operation, she realizes that Jeb and Dr. Martinez are working for the 99 Percenters. Sometime after, the whitecoats clip her wings. The operations leave Angel blind.

Meanwhile, Max and Dylan are having a date in a treehouse built by Dylan. Their candlelit dinner is interrupted by Nudge, Iggy, and Gazzy spying on them and filming them kissing. Max, in a fit of anger, kicks the table and knocks over the candle, accidentally setting fire to the treehouse. Once the Flock gets to safety, she apologizes to Dylan saying that the treehouse was the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen. Dylan tells her that she's the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

An alarm goes off that night and the Flock sees Fang arriving. He and Max reconcile, angering Dylan. Fang tells them about a comment on his blog saying that a kid named Mazin Nourahmed knows where Angel is. They go looking for the location, and find the building on fire and whitecoats dead. They encounter Mark, who seems diseased and jumps out of the window to his death. They find Angel, and it turns out that she is not completely blind, but can see a blur. Reunited, the flock heads back to Oregon.

Dylan, infuriated by Fang and Max's reunion, begins a rampage destroying things around a town. The Flock sees this on TV, but Max is unable to track Dylan down.

At night, the alarms go off again. The Flock runs out expecting to find Dylan, but instead it's Jeb, Ari, and a hundred other Erasers. Jeb tells them that Fang must die, as he has a gene which is the next link to immortality and scientists will hunt him down to get it. Max refuses to let that happen, and knocks out Jeb. Dylan comes in and kills Ari, which kills all the Erasers as they are connected. Dylan then tries to kill Fang and almost succeeds until Max begs him not to. He leaves.

Dr. Martinez comes and explains that she was brainwashed by Jeb. There is a jet sent by Nino Pierpont to take all of them to a safe place. Bringing Jeb along under guard, they travel to a tropical island paradise. It is already inhabited by other enhanced kids including other avian-human hybrids. Iggy and Ella are reunited and kiss. Each member of the Flock has their own unique treehouse, and there's even a shared one for Total and Akila.

As they gather, Dr. Martinez explains to Max that a deadly disease called H8E has been released to kill all humans. The bird-kids are immune to it, and the island is a protected place where the inhabitants will be safe. It also has underground caves where they can hide out until the danger passes.

Fang and Max are kissing in Max's tree house when Dylan arrives. Although Fang and Max are angry and ready to fight him, he tells them that he saw something he cannot describe, and everyone must hide in the caves. Max and Fang refuse to believe him, but he says he's going to warn others, and if Max decides to stay and die, he will do the same.

Max tries to dissuade the Flock from entering the caves, but only Angel hears her. Angel says that Max should listen to her because Max always listens to the Voice…and Angel is the Voice. Max declares that she will go die with the humans, and Fang tells her that whatever the outcome, they'll face it together. An upset Angel leaves.

The sky appears to burst into flames and rip in half. Max and Fang try to fly away, but an explosion knocks both of them out of the sky. Max falls, breaking her wing, only to see a tsunami approaching. As the water comes down on them, Fang stays with her and kisses her.

The first epilogue leads the reader to believe that Max is dead, but in the second epilogue, Max gains consciousness and finds that she is alive and breathing underwater. Dylan pulls her out of the water. Fang and Angel are also there, and Max discovers that the island has been broken into smaller, charred islands. The earth has been hit by a meteor. Angel detects Dr. Martinez's thoughts and says that the island's inhabitants are alive in the underground caves, monitoring satellite connection all over the world. Elsewhere, whole countries may be covered in water, ash, or flame. Seeing the island half-flooded and left with only towering cliffs and trees, Max thinks to herself she and the others were made to survive in this world. As she and Fang kiss, she tells the reader that this is the time of Maximum Ride.

New Characters

Trivia

  • The novel's book trailer depicts Max as a redhead. Both the trailer and the book cover show Max with silver wings.
  • Nevermore was originally intended to be the final book in the Maximum Ride series; however, a ninth "encore" book—Maximum Ride Forever—was released in May 2015.

International Editions

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