WIJFR: The Maze Runner (series sp)

GilliC · February 2015

I thought the writing was pretty bad. The author kept telling me things about the characters that was never really reflected in their thoughts or behavior. I really only kept reading it, because I was curious why someone built an enormous deadly maze and dropped a bunch of teenagers in the middle of it. Of course I got to the end, and it was all, "Haha, sucker! Buy my next book, and maybe I'll tell you!"

I kept thinking while I was reading that I wished I was a person who could just flip to the end and find out what happened. So when the book ended and the preview of the second book showed that it was planning to do exactly the same thing, I finally gave up and read the next two plot summaries on Wikipedia.

Nothing explained why the test needed to be a giant maze that killed people. Is this ever explained? I get the sense that it was not. Or why the grievers needed to be partly organic?

I get the sense from this interview that the answer is actually just "because I thought it would be cool."

GilliC · February 2015

Okay, so I listened to a few other answers linked from the one above and got to this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGn2rxupeMM

Basically, the kids needed to be in an experiment, and The Shining (the film, mind you, not the book by a quite well-respected author) made him think mazes were creepy.

I'm seriously side-eyeing James Dashner.

Do I hold authors to too high a standard? I kind of feel like I'm overly critical. But there are so many great authors who never get a break, so surely we should be allowed to expect more from the ones who do get book (and film) deals?

mbgreenwalt · February 2015

This series was painful to read. It just went in one big circle and there were so many unanswered questions. I was not bonded to any of the characters so when someone died or was injured I just moved on. I was very let down with this series - with all the hype and the movie, I thought it'd be better.