Book Review: Dashner’s The Maze Runner & The Scorch Trials
by Ted
It’s a two-for-one special! Which is just a nice way of selling the fact that this is a long post… made longer by this rambling introduction. //sigh/
James Dashner: The Maze Runner
Having finished James Dashner’s The Maze Runner about the time I posted my review for Orson Scott Card’s The Worthing Saga, and not wanting to butt up reviews too closely together, I decided to finish the second book in the Maze Runner Trilogy, The Scorch Trials. Let’s just say I burned through it (bad pun, my apologies).
Mr. Dashner, you rock. This YA sci-fi is fantastic. Both books are aggressive, uncompromising, and a helluva lotta fun. The pace is quick and sure, and Dashner is able to balance the high levels of action with the appropriate emotions (and there are a lot of them).
I can’t tell you too much about the setting of either book without giving away significant parts of the tale… unravelling just what the hell is going on is a great part of the fun.The Maze Runner begins with the main character, Thomas, appearing in the center of a massive maze, one that changes every night. The boys who live there have had their memories wiped… all they know is that they need to survive and escape.
It’s a book all about the mind: the frustration of lost memories, of new challenges, of puzzles that are almost too big, and of the will to simply survive. Dashner keeps a rigorous speed, and each time you think you’re about to get a break something new gets sprung into your lap.
James Dashner: The Scorch Trials
The Scorch Trials is the sequel (“Thank you Captain Obvious!”). Those that survive the maze must now face the desert. But where The Maze Runner was all about the mind, The Scorch Trials is all about the heart. Emotion rings true in this book. Camaraderie, hatred, determination, betrayal, and some rightly confusing love. I can’t say there are many books that have built such empathy between myself as the reader and the main character, Thomas.
My only critique is that too much is left to the nebulous powers-that-be to provide answers. I’d rather be provided more clues and given the chance to suspect some answers a bit in advance of their revelation. But, I already have two counter-points:
- The speed at which these stories move – and the quality of writing that allows them to be read so seamlessly – doesn’t lend itself to much pondering. There are simply too many corners to turn.
- Much of the power of these books is derived from the will of the characters to keep going in the face of incredible adversity, frustration, and utter lack of understanding. If the wicked ones didn’t hold so many secrets, their world wouldn’t be the same.
You see, every once in a while I feel bad, because I treat YA fiction in much the same way I treat “adult” fiction. I give little forgiveness just because it’s being written primarily for a younger audience (see my review of Westerfeld’s Leviathan). YA fiction should be (and, thankfully, often is) just as captivating. In fact you could argue that it should be even more so. So every once in a while I feel bad… and then I read something like these two books by Dashner.
Perhaps I’m going as easy on Dashner as I went hard on Westerfeld. But then I know Westerfeld can do better (Uglies was great, read it), and Dashner did indeed create something masterful.
VERDICT:
Buy them! And then buy the third book in the series, The Death Cure, when it comes out Fall 2011. I can’t wait.
UP NEXT:
Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I just started it, and it’s fairly massive. So don’t hold your breath for the next book review.
It is my fervent hope that Dashner won’t go the way of Suzanne Collins and drop the ball in the third book. I happened to find Dashner while I was up to the armpits in Collins’s world, and for a while there, I was firmly convinced that all was right again in the Land of YA Lit…but then Mockingjay came out, and I started losing faith. And I think a certain amount of my concern on this topic arises from my sense that Scorch Trials was about 10% less amazing than Maze Runner, at least in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong–10% less than 100% is still an A for the semester; I just hope that he can pull the reins good and tight and deliver a third book that will make me want to go kiss him on the head instead of vaguely regretting ever having gotten involved at all.
So i read the review of Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials and i must say they have hit the list of books to read. Then also seeing MockingJay and the Hunger Games in the comments i realized those are also on the list.
My only comment about sequel books is although they are a let down they can still have their own personality. I think of the Ender Saga. Speaker for the Dead was the complete opposite as far as story but if he could muster the story line the next 2 books and in essence the saga were wonderfully done. A bit drawn out at parts, but overall just wonderful.
Second comment/question-do you own these or was the library your best friend during these because i would love to give them a read
I hear ya sis. Mockingjay was a disappointing ending, especially because the story could have been strong even as it was with better writing. But instead I got the feeling that her editors/publishers/powers-that-be were saying “it has to be done NOW!”, and so instead of being completely solid and awesome, it was found lacking.
I see your point about The Scorch Trials, because it was lacking the mystique of The Maze Runner. But that was inevitable, given the setting. I maintain that the emotive strength was impressive, more so than in the first, and so it was a wholly different kind of strength. I was pretty satisfied. But then, I was after Catching Fire as well. <>
I concur on all parts Rob. Second stories (as I somewhat said in the reply I just posted to Tricia) have a different strength. The hard part isn’t the second story, but the finish. It’s always the finish that makes it crazzzzzy good. Of course, the finish to The Maze Runner was what took a pretty cool book to the next level… but that’s virtually impossible to replicate. You shall see, my friend, you shall see.
It’s been a long time since I read the core Ender’s Saga (i.e. not having read Bean’s stories) past Ender’s Game, but I remember the drawn-outness… and yet I remember avidly reading Speaker, Xenocide, and Children. When a book in a series gets drawn out, is it because the writer is trying to actively continue a whole series of books, or because that’s just the nature of that particular book?
As for the books I’ve been reading/reviewing, you’ll have to ask Tricia (my sis-in-law) and Nate (my bro). When I was down there for Turkey Day I raided their library, and consequently have a rather nice shelf dedicated to their books, in my house (muwahahahaha).
[...] anything wrong with those books either. Uglies and The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner (my review here) are all brilliant. But this is simpler, cleaner, and just as captivating. It has airships, strange [...]