bipasha's Reviews > The Maze Runner

"Avoiding other people was his new goal in life."

Perhaps the only likable line Dashner could come up with, and that gets him a very generous 2.5 stars on the verge of winking out from me. And one of those is for the movie's stellar cast.

Maybe it's because I haven't picked up a novel in almost 6 months or maybe it's just because, but does a novel real seem so mundane and unexciting after one picks it up after seeing the silver screen adaptation? Which btw, was also equally unbearably predictable. But good, because bgm and vfx and cgi and shit, y'know. Yeah, anyway, um.

I remember reading to Chapter 45 or so, and then keeping the book as a pretty decoration for my shelf for the next months, carrying it to school and back everyday and yet, re-reading the same paragraph about a dozen times in total, before finally having it natched away from my librarian. Probably the nicest thing she's done to date, even if she's unaware.

I dropped the book about two months ago but to even now I'm questioning myself as to why such an acclaimed trilogy is lead by a Gary-Sue with a bunch of happy, deus-ex-machina'ed coincidences randomly heading his way to sort everything out very conveniently. And amnesia means jack to our precious MC, isn't it? And all that noble sacrifice cliched shit jerked in. And to top it off, he's boring. Everyone else is reasonably well-written (and killed off?) and yet the most engaging speech I came across was Minho's spitting remarks and even that paled due to the overall charmless and dull feel of the book.

Part of the attraction of THE MAZE RUNNER will be the world the boys inhabit for most of the book, a world with no adults where kids make their own rules. The story makes up for the sometimes bumpy prose, and the invented slang is a little jarring since there are no clues about how far in the future the story is supposed to take place, or why the boys have made up their own words, especially without no memory of their past life and what kind of environment it could have been, and it all falls a bit flat once it's clear that the Lord of the Flies aspect is secondary to the mystery of who or why these boys are in this horrible prison.

I'm not very keen on writing a meshed out, complete review, because my reviewing and critiquing skills, are currently rusty(made a score of typos until now), but if I had to sum it up, I'd recommend taking to the movie instead. Yes, bring on the hate now, but. But, but, but. There was something I did like:


The fandom. I meant I liked the fandom. And only the percentage that's on Tumblr. Bye.