and it never ends
omg. why does every book i pick up inevitably have to be part of a series? it’s completely the fashion in book-writing nowadays. especially with YA. my frustration came to a head when i looked over the book selection in my local supermarket this week. i saw a book cover that looked strangely like the three covers of alyson noel’s “the immortals” series. upon further inspection i verified that it was indeed the fourth book in the series. good grief. i have the third book “shadowland” in my TBR pile. now i’m even farther behind. i don’t even like the series but i feel compelled to finish because i’m in so deep. ugh. first “the maze runner” then “prophecy of the sisters” now this. of course, those two are pretty awesome so i don’t have much of a complaint there (especially with “the maze runner” which is completely amazing). but i do desire the satisfaction of finishing a novel and having it be the end of it. i must finish “battle royale”.
the maze runner by james dashner
i admit that i bought this book at SAM’S of all places. it was sitting amongst some other YA novels that i enjoyed. i never heard of it, but the cover looked neato so i figured “what the hell”. strangely, i seem to have really good luck with the books i pick up there. i’ve had it in my book arsenal for, who knows, maybe a little under a year now and i figured it was time to dust it off and get to readin’. my husband chose it as my next read out of a pile of to-be-read books and what an awesome choice that was.
essentially, it’s about a maze, lol. but seriously, some boys are mysteriously sent up to the maze with their memories swiped and they build a way of life while trying to escape. it’s not worth saying anymore because the surprises are worth it. the author is so good at giving you just enough teaser evenly throughout the story to keep it riveting. i had a million questions the whole way through and dashner gave just enough information to keep you hooked without divulging all the answers. a quite even spread. what intrigued me the most was the feeling i got early on that the maze is part of a larger, catastrophic, all-encompassing problem. it was one of the first things i picked up on because i LOVE when stories are part of a much bigger picture. and the best part of getting to the end of a novel like this is when it says “END OF BOOK ONE”. that kind of thing sends me straight to google to discover that it’s going to be a trilogy!! could you die?! ——>next book “The Scorch Trials” out October 12.
as far as the characters go, i didn’t feel one way or another about the main guy Thomas. i was mostly thankful he was there to tell me about all the craziness of the maze. i felt that the secondary characters were fleshed out a lot more for some reason. one maze runner named Minho and one sort-of leader named Newt were totally awesome to me. i felt for them more than anyone else i think. there was one little guy named Chuck who grew on me by the end as well. i’m happy that dashner was not afraid to appropriately kill off characters. it helps make more of a solid story to me. this is one of those stories where little details mean a lot at some point toward the end, so don’t skim over things that have no meaning yet. of course, dashner has a way of introducing meaningless details with an air of foreboding so it’s not likely you’ll forget them easily.
one last point, the slang in this book is hilarious. but i could understand if someone thought it was dumb. it came off as cute and clever to me. read: shuck-face, slinthead, klunk, shank. they are used A LOT. enjoy 🙂
the bookend. 