The Maze Runner by James Dashner

I'm gonna be honest, I hadn't heard great things about The Maze Runner. It seemed to materialise near the tail end of the whole Hunger Games dystopian craze, and while it was popular enough for me to have heard of it and to warrant a movie series, I haven't actually met anyone who has seen or read it. That being said, reviewers I admire have not been kind to this book. I had heard it was dull and badly written. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

This is definitely nowhere near being a bad book. It's not brilliant granted but the writing, characters and plot are all decent enough. After finishing this first one I actually sped through the sequel and while I haven't yet read the third and final one, so far I am interested and immersed in this universe. The thing about The Maze Runner is that its biggest weakness might also be one of its strengths. The plot is pretty unique and weird, so much so that it isn't easy to see where it is going. It was refreshing to read a YA dystopian that doesn't info dump and isn't horribly predictable.

Having said that, this book does suffer from being a bit of a mess. The same applies to an even greater extent in its sequel but the plot constantly moves forward at a breakneck pace. You get thrown into the world at the start through the standard device of 'newcomer arrives in established place' but this is one of the most frantic and fast-paced examples I have ever seen. Thomas arrives, has no questions answered, girl arrives, immediately goes into coma for most of the book until she's needed and only then does the novel slow down a teensy bit for some world-building and explanation. Even then, all explanations are extremely limited. This doesn't exactly harm the book (it isn't difficult to follow what's going on for example due to a simplistic style) but it is very unusual compared to other books in a similar genre and it is a little relentless as a reader. You read eagerly to find out what's going on but instead of getting bits and pieces until the ending, you instead get bombs dropped on you which are promptly swept to one side to make room for more action. Maybe this is simply a feature of reading a YA book aimed specifically at boys but it was quite distracting at times.

One thing I did really enjoy were the characters. Dashner succeeded in making each boy feel fairly distinct, and you do become attached to all of them. A minor downside of this is that sometimes the author doesn't bother to explain what's happened to certain side characters (for example, Frypan who I really liked) so you are left wondering if they are okay for several pages until they show up in a scene again. Again, this is a flaw the sequel shares perhaps to an even greater extent because the danger is more frequent in that one.

Despite a few niggles, I still really enjoyed this book. It's easy to read, has a plot which is both unique and interesting and it is a far better series than some people give it credit for. I will definitely be finishing the original trilogy and I will probably even pick up the additional books which have been tacked on. I am keen to see where the story ends up.

Overall Rating:

.5