THE MAZE RUNNER By James Dashner

The Maze Runner

By James Dashner

Categories: Young adult, adventure, mystery, dystopian

What would you do if you woke up with no memory of anything except your name? Thomas finds himself the newest arrival to a community of about 60 boys, who all remember nothing about their lives before they came to this strange place with many odd rules named “the glade”. Most boys can recall being there for two years at the longest, typically with a new, memory-free boy deposited every 30 days. They must rely on themselves for everything from growing food to keeping livestock. Escaping the Glade is impossible when nightmarish creatures patrol the area surrounding them every night, and the Glade happens to be at the center of an incredibly large, seemingly endless maze. Boys are sent out during sunlight to attempt to find a way out, but to no success. Thomas is just getting familiar with everything that is going on when a comatose girl is deposited in their midst with a mysterious note.

Fans of The Hunger Games series or the Divergent series will love the suspense and intrigue of The Maze Runner series. Author James Dashner has finished them so it’s OK to read all in one go (which you must if you want to find out what the heck is going on!).  This is one of those books that you’ll want to read before the movie come out in September. I was almost annoyed by how many things are left a mystery until the very end of the book (or even series) but never so much that I dared stop reading them. Dashner also wrote a prequel if you finish The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure and still want to dive further into the history of what brought about the beginning of it all, titled The Kill Order.