Obaid Haroon's Reviews > The Maze Runner

Ok so I have been meaning to read this for a while. Ever since I saw that there was a film coming out for it. What a coincidence right? But so it goes. This is a review. Assume there are spoilers (and yes I'm talking to you, idiot who ignored my warning, read the review of the 7th book in a series and then blamed me for it)

The first thing that struck me was how SHORT it was. And not short in the "its so wittle!" kind of way. And not short in the "Oh my God I just read it in one day without breaks and I've finished it" kind of way. But just plain short. Now I know that I read fast but still, it wasn't a long read at all.

Saying that I definitely enjoyed this book. Now I don't know when this came out relative to the other dystopian books, but I read this after Hunger Games and Divergent so the plot is already familiar to me. Something big and bad has happened forcing the world to fuck with the teenagers of the day resulting in the aforementioned teenagers saving the world. Now I'm just assuming that's how its going to play out.

But on with the review. Because of the length of the book, or rather the lack of, I found the whole "I'm meant to be a runner" thing very forced. Yeah he is an odd guy but that was more than a little unrealistic. Newt and Alby were a good pair of guys. One keeping everyone in line while the other keeps everyone together. Minho too was always fun to read. The leader of the runners is a strong, smart character and I'm glad he survived. Chuck was kind of annoying but also very loyal. One thing's for sure is that they all had their parts to play in the group. Even Gally.

Then Thomas comes in and then Teresa comes in and things get crazy.

End of days bitches.

That's basically what these two were. Heralds for the end of times. A stimulus of change. They forced these guys to stop living in a sort of limbo and actually move forward. Looking at the maze more closely. Staying out in the maze at night (fucking awesome scene by the way), it was all a really interesting investigation to read. And that is probably one of the things that benefitted from the shortness of the book. Everything had a sense of urgency to it.

I liked the play between Teresa and Thomas. Feeling like they should trust each other and at the same time not knowing why and hiding things from one another because of it. The telepathy was very cool too.

The embedded code in the maze was brilliant but also kind of obvious. When random changes start repeating themselves they stop being random. But that's me talking. Behind a desk instead of in a maze.

The end was the great reveal. Charging out into the maze and going to battle against the grievers, ugliest sons of bitches I've ever read, all to give Tom, Ter and Chucky enough time to shut the whole thing off. That rage. That RAGE! Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Because that's exactly what would happen when for so many years you've been living in fear and anxiety of these creatures. When everything is taken away, all they had left was anger. And they fought amazingly. Case in point. They managed to shut them down.

And that is when shit went to hell. Gally Reappearing. Killing Chuck. The attack on the site. Everything went to shit really fast. In a way it was very reminiscent of Divergent. The big twist at the end of the book. And yeah I know it happens in a lot of books. I don't know why the Divergent trilogy sticks out in my mind as being a really obvious example of that but it does.

Either way. It was a well written but also slightly typical dystopian book. I've already finished the second but this is the honest review of the first book without any influences from the sequel.

My one complaint? It could've been longer. Did I mention it was a little short?