The Maze Runner (book review)

BOOK: The Maze Runner
AUTHOR: James Dashner
GENRE: Post-Apocalyptic/Action
AUDIENCE: Males 12-15 y/o

I get such a kick out of the author's last name having 'dash' in it. It's the little things I suppose.

Whenever I try to give a synopsis of this book I always fail quite miserably, so hopefully this makes some sense.

Unexpected sun flares have destroyed most of the earth around the equator and introduced a virus called The Flare. Basically it strips away a persons humanity slowly until they become "animals" (wow can of worms about humans and animals and are we better etc etc but that's not the point of the book so moving on). Shock horror THERE'S NO CURE!! So this group called WICKED set up some test site where they basically chuck in a bunch of kids and submit them to 'variables' to try and determine which of the kids has the intelligence, determination, will to survive etc to find a cure to The Flare.

What does a maze have to do with anything?? The test site is surrounded by this massive maze that shifts around every night and there are runners that every day go out exploring the maze trying to find an exit. Why would they want to find an exit? Because they've all had their memories wiped and can't remember the state of the world or why they are in the test site. All good grounds for escape.

So there you go, that's kind of the context of the book.

To be honest, this book isn't that great. I mean the ideas behind it are interesting and I guess if you want to get deep it draws on a lot of humanity's common fears about nuclear annihilation, earths degradation and that zombie kind of obsession which I've explained in a previous post.

The problem with this book is that it is very very simple in terms of the writing. Sure, it's meant for a younger age group and also more for boys seeing as the entire population of the test site are male (bar one female who, you guessed it, is a love interest to the main character). So lots and lots of dialogue, probably like 70% of the book is dialogue. The author has made up slang terms which get used a lot, the most popular being the term "shuck" which is used to excess as an insult between the boys. But maybe boys do that a lot in real life. I wouldn't know. But lots of sentences akin to "shut your shuck-face you shuck". Pleasant reading.

But my main problem is not with the slang, but the lack of character exploration. Particularly in the second book in the series, The Scorch Trials (I've yet to read the third one but probably will just for some kind of resolution... or I'll look up a summary online). It's just very basic character archetypes and not a lot of explanation for when characters go through a personal transformation, if you will. And like there is maybe only one or two characters for whom that applies anyway.

The only reason I persevered through the books is that it is being made into a movie with an actor I like. Although I did not find the books appealing or overly enjoyable, I can see the movie being more worth while. So if the ideas of the book series sound appealing to you, even though the movie is not out yet, I'd recommend it over the book. Let's just hope they make it more complex in an ideological kind of way.

Until next time.

Read the review of the movie adaption here