The Maze Runner
Synopsis: "When the doors of the lift crank open, the only thing Thomas remembers is his first name. But he's not alone. He's surrounded by boys who welcome him to the Glade - a walled encampment at the centre of a bizarre and terrible stone maze. Like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how they came to be there - or what's happened to the world outside. All they know is that every morning when the walls slide back, they will risk everything to try and find out."
What I love most about this novel is that you are instantly thrown into the world of the Maze with no explanation of what, why or how; you remain as clueless and dumbfounded as the protagonist, Thomas, allowing you to build a greater connection to the story and Thomas. James Dashner enables you to experience the world he so cleverly created first hand, keeping you on the edge of your seat and begging you to read on as the plot unfolds. This technique creates a sense of realism for the reader and enforces the belief that such an event could happen in the real world.
Although the book was at times quite menacing and terrifying to read, I felt as if the Maze itself lacked creativity. As you learn more about the Maze you expect it to be like another world out there filled with an array of horrors and beats, but it isn't. You've just got the Grievers, which are mechanical like bears, and the curiosity of who WICKED are, but after a while you lose interest in them both because they come up so often that you're almost expecting them to appear in every chapter. They lose their novelty and there isn't much else for the reader to look forward to, until the last few chapters.
I thought the epilogue however was so cleverly written. Whilst reading the ending I became quite disappointed because it was just so predictable and almost too straightforward to be true. As a matter of fact I hated the ending, until Dasher dove right in there and created a twist I was not expecting.
I give James Dashner and The Maze Runner ★★★★
The Scorch Trials
Synopsis: "Thomas was sure that escape from the maze meant he and the Gladers would get their lives back. But no one knew what sort of life they were going back to. The earth is a wasteland. Government and order have disintegrated and now Cranks, people driven to murderous insanity by the infectious disease known as the Flare, roam the crumbling cities hunting for their next victim...and meal. Thomas can only wonder - does he hold the secret of freedom somewhere in his mind? Or will he forever be at the mercy of WICKED?"
I found The Scorch Trials far more enticing, action packed and exciting to read than The Maze Runner. I simply could not put this book down. From the very first page to the very last you are without a dull moment. It's action from the word go that does no disappoint.
Again, Dashner cleverly maintains that level of confusion between Thomas and the reader for this novel and that remains an important aspect to the series as Thomas and his friends discover that they're far from being out of the trials.
Each twist within this novel provides a windowed opportunity for attempting to figure out what is really happening and what WICKED are really up to, yet every time you get close to having a hunch it's dashed by yet another plot twist. Now, some could argue that this novel is full of too many twists to keep track of but I personally have to disagree because they ultimately lead to the one thing you question as a reader, who created the Trials and why?
I found this such a well written story that keeps you hanging on the edge of a cliff by a fingernail with each chapter more terrifying than the latter.
I give James Dash and The Scorch Trials ★★★★★
The Death Cure
Synopsis: "The Trials are over. WICKED have collected all the information they can. Now it's up to the Gladers to complete the blueprint for the cure to the Flare with a final voluntary test. But something has happened that no-one at WICKED has foreseen: Thomas has remembered more than they think. And he knows WICKED can't be trusted. The time for lies is over. But the truth is more dangerous than anyone could have imagined."
The Death Cure is the final book in this trilogy and I'll be honest, I was a little bit disappointed with it. I'd say that I enjoyed this as much as the first book, The Maze Runner, but nowhere near as much as The Scorch Trials.
Just like the two previous books, there is little space for a dull moment in this novel. The level of action and suspense leaves you anxious throughout the read and I found myself shaking through most of it as I was so eager to see what happens to Thomas, his friends, WICKED and the remainder of the human race, all of which have been effected by the destruction the sun flares brought to the Earth many years before the Trials began.
However what I didn't like about this book is that Dashner continued with keeping the reader as dumbfounded as Thomas. Although it worked well and was needed in the first two books, the third is where loose ends were supposed to be tied up, yet not all of them were which results in a slight struggle to understand some basic concepts such as what first happened when the flares hit the Earth and how WICKED found the most intelligent children and where they came from. There was such a lack in detail and I felt that the novel really needed that detail in order to stand out.
Another thing that I didn't like about this book was the end. I actually found it quite ridiculous and the story just lost it's sense of realism. Throughout the trilogy there's this sense that such events that Dasher portrays in these books are possible in real life, however the ending tarnished that. The whole world faced destruction and is still in it, even those areas that are quarantined are facing the effects of the flares, yet somehow and somewhere this 'paradise' had remained untarnished and undiscovered by so many, allowing Thomas and many others to escape the horrors of the real world to build a new life and restart civilization. I just couldn't process how that was even possible. Maybe if there was some explanation as to how it was located, survived etc it would have been slightly more realistic, but it wasn't.
I give James Dashner and The Death Cure ★★★★
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