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Book Review of The Maze Runner (Maze Runner, Bk 1)

The Maze Runner (Maze Runner, Bk 1)
stef140 avatar reviewed on + 28 more book reviews


I love dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction! I mean I really love it. When I hear about a book of this genre that I haven't read before I run right out to pick it up. This was the case with The Maze Runner. It was recommended to me from a friend because I enjoyed The Hunger Games so much. I must say that I see why it was recommended, the two stories are somewhat similar.

I loved the premise of this book. Thomas is a 15 year old, about, boy who wakes up in a dark elevator with no memory of how he got there, why he's there, or anything that happened before that. He still has vague memories, going to a park for example but no idea who was there with him. He has no history except the darkness of the elevator. Then his world opens up into The Glade. There he finds a bunch of boys who are exactly like him, they came in the elevator and have no memory before that, but they all have a burning desire to solve the Maze that surrounds the Glade....even if they don't know exactly why they need to.

This is a fascinating idea and I loved the world that Dashner built. Everything was well described but didn't slow the plot down at all. I appreciate an author that can do that. So for this reason I was falling in love with this book. I also really liked Thomas. He was smart, witty, creative, and interesting.

My biggest complaint with the book was that often the solutions and ideas that I came up with in my imagination were better than what the actual solution was. I was so intrigued and fascinated I speculated through the whole book. Ooohhh, well maybe this is what that means or wouldn't it be awesome if; these things popped into my head all the time. Unfortunately when those questions actually got answered I found myself thinking, oh well that's great but it was way less anti-climactic than what it could have been. It wasn't necessarily disappointing but more routine and run of the mill than what I was expecting.