The Maze Runner

[calzephyr]

The Maze Runner is the first of James Dashner's series about a group of teens who live in a strange maze, each arriving with a blank memory and only knowing their first name. Thomas is dropped into the maze by means of "the Box", an elevator used to transport supplies and the occasional new boy to the Glade, a pleasant farm where all the prisoners get assigned a job. As the newbie, the reader learns about the place through Thomas. The Gladers have fruitlessly tried to solve the maze that surrounds the Glade for around two years. The Glade is only populated by boys, until a mysterious girl shows up on day in the Box.

The boys constantly fight and argue despite their attempts to keep order. Thomas soon learns that strange monsters, called Grievers, roam the maze at night. Getting stung by a Griever leads to a delirious episode called the Changing, in which memories briefly return to the victim. As monsters go, the Grievers are not really that terrifying.

This first book, published a year after The Hunger Games, was actually written years before, but it's not remarkable enough to make me want to purchase the rest. Part of the problem is that the set up is drawn out far too long with the end spanning just a few chapters. It seems like less time was spent on thinking out the dynamics of the ending as opposed to the overly detailed account of life in the Glade (seriously, the repetitive nature of YA books needs to be addressed. I'm sure the average teenager is not going to forget details from one chapter to the next). Then there's the slang, which are really minced oaths, that gets old really fast from overuse. The fakest British speaking person ever was also annoying. The real thing would have been preferable to constant shuck and klunk. There's only so much of the characters calling each other shuck-faced, pieces of klunk and slinthead that one can take!

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Never heard of this book - I like your reviews b/c it exposes me to books I probably wouldn't hear about on my own. I don't mind spoilers on things like this FWIW, b/c I figure if the spoiler gets me to read the book that's only a good thing.

Does the fact that they finally send in a girl make any difference? I've been sensitive to the role of women in stories lately, like is it just tokenism, or is it important, or even both (does something important and is the only woman). How would this book be different if it had been all boys in the maze and one day a mysterious boy shows up?

[(Anonymous)]

I will have to edit my review as in the interest of brevity, I left this part out.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

The Maze Runner is going to be made into a movie, so I'm sure it will be all over the place :) The girl, Teresa, doesn't do much, although it turns out that she and Thomas helped their captors design the maze. It turns out they are also telepathic with each other (eyeroll!). Teresa is actually a kind of MacGuffin in the plot. Glad you don't fear spoilers!

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

Okie doke - when Teresa first appears in the box, she's actually in a coma, except for when she sits up straight and says that everything is going to change. Her arrival unsettles the boys because of the cryptic message and that there has been a change in the routine (two newbies in two days). She spends most of the book in a coma until she wakes up and tells Thomas that she was sent to "trigger the ending" (eyeroll), then she works on a code that is hidden in the maze. When she first arrives there's a crass remark about the designated boy medic getting "first shot at her" to which one of the leader boys threatens anyone who harms her with banishment.

The boy maze turns out to be "Group A" in the experiment; a "Group B" is mentioned at the end. Maybe they're all girls? I wasn't intrigued enough to buy the sequel. Maybe I'm just too picky about the repetitiveness and poor world design :-D