Review Detail

Holy cow, people. This book was insane. I was completely riveted from page 1, something that rarely happens. Even with books I completely adore, it normally takes me a chapter or two to immerse myself in the world of the book. But with The Maze Runner, I was in that Box with Thomas. I was confused and uncomfortable and determined to make sense of the situation.

As the book went on, I, like Thomas, was completely perplexed and frustrated by the mystery of the Maze and why they were trapped in the Glade. But James Dashner had an uncanny ability to predict what I was going to ask, and then have Thomas ask that very question. For example, when they’re explaining that getting trapped in the Maze at night is a death sentence, I wondered if they’d attempted climbing the walls. Then Thomas asks, “Why don’t you just climb the walls?” So although I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how they were going to escape the Maze or why we were there, I was frustrated with the characters instead of at the characters.

The pacing of this book was excellent. While the action doesn’t really kick up until about 1/3 of the way into the book, I still felt my adrenaline pumping right away just because of the strangeness of the situation. There was suspense simply in not knowing why any of this was happening. Then, once Thomas gets his bearings a bit better, the real action picked up. So basically, I felt like I was having heart palpitations for the majority of this book. In a good way.

The characters were also well developed. While not every Glader was fully fleshed-out, the main ones all had their own personalities and layers. I felt like I knew these kids, and I found myself cheering for some and rolling my eyes with Thomas at others.

Even the dialogue, which I sometimes find really annoying in sci-fi/dystopian books when the author feels the need to throw in a bunch of made-up “future” slang, somehow felt natural in this book. Maybe it’s because Thomas draws attention to it almost immediately, saying it sounds weird and foreign. Since it’s acknowledged in the book, I accepted it and moved on. Eventually, it began to sound natural, to me and to Thomas.

Bottom line: I thought this book was amazing. It’s not for everyone. It’s got an extremely high “weird” factor. And the suspense that kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire book may not be what others are looking for. But for me, I completely and totally adored this book. I couldn’t put it down (literally. I read the whole thing in a day, something I was not planning on doing). It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever read. My only complaint is that my library doesn’t have Book 2 available RIGHT NOW.