The first installment of The Maze Runner series by James Dashner features one hell of a dystopian society. Rating: 3/5

*This is book #15/28 for my 2014 book challenge. Take a look at the rest of my reading challenge.

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers–boys whose memories are also gone.

Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out–and no one’s ever made it through alive.

Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.

I can’t say that I liked The Maze Runner. I felt like the writing was repetitive and annoying, assuming that the readers weren’t intelligent enough to pick up on things. I found it to be incredibly predictable as well. I knew things far before the characters. I mean, they couldn’t even figure out what WICKED stood for. It was embarrassing. There were so many secrets. Keeping secrets from the reader is fun sometimes, but I felt like we were kept in the dark for too long. The answers to those secrets were life-changing or revolutionary enough to warrant them being secrets in the first place. Perhaps the book would have been more tolerable had there been a prologue? Perhaps.

The book got better toward the end of the book, but that is because action finally started to pick up. I feel like nothing happened but whining and unanswered questions for the first half. Once the action kicked in there was less time for the author to annoy me, which was a blessing. Yet still, even toward the end of the book, more questions. Yes it makes me want to read the rest of the series, but not because I actually want to. I just want to know what the fuck is going on.

While I didn’t like the writing, I loved the premise. It was intriguing and I feel like it’s going to make a really great movie. Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf) will be portraying the main character, Thomas, and I could instantly picture him. He’ll be great for the role. The imagery will be really interesting to see on screen as well.

This gets a 3/5 rating for only two reasons. One in that it is unique and has a boy as the main character. I feel like that doesn’t happen enough in YA books. Two is because of the premise. If this had the same concept and was written in someone else’s style I feel like it would have been much more enjoyable.

Rating: 

If you’re interested in reading my GoodReads updates from this book you can do so here. I must say, they’re quite entertaining. It will tell you exactly what I was thinking on certain pages.

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