James Dashner's The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner was written by James Dashner in 2009, “he had an idea when going to bed about a bunch of teenagers living inside an unsolvable Maze full of hideous creatures, in the future, in a dark, dystopian world. It would be an experiment, to study their minds.” Thomas finds himself in a glade with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He arrives in an elevator metal box which returns every month with new food, weapons and a new boy. In the glade there are walls surrounding them with high concrete doors that close every night. Outside of these walls is a maze, each day some of the boys go through the doors and into the maze, these boys are called “Runners.” The Runners are trying to solve the maze by running as fast as they can while tracking the walls as they move each night and trying to find an exit. The maze contains
mysterious “monsters” that will kill the runners or anyone else encountered. I found this book because my sister recommended it to me and thought I would enjoy it.
A couple days after Thomas arrives, a girl is brought up in the metal box with a note saying, “She is the last one ever,” which means that no more children will be brought to the glade. She is the first girl to enter the glade. When he visits her after she lapses into a coma he hears a voice in his head telling him her name is Teresa. After her arrival in the glade everything starts to change, the food and supplies stop coming, the sun disappears and the doors don’t close at night, which allows the Grievers (previously mentioned monsters) to enter the Glade. Grievers are monsters of metal and flesh who hunt the children. Thomas has an idea that the walls changing isn’t random but that it is a code, which they then find out is spelling words. Thomas thinks he needs his memory to escape the maze so he purposely gets stung by a Griever to make him go through the changing.
After Teresa wakes up she tells Thomas that they knew each other before the glade and that they can communicate telepathically.
Most of the boys and Teresa decide that it would be better to be stuck in the maze then take down the Grievers after they invade the glade. Working together they find a way to escape the maze only to find that what they’ve been doing this whole time was an experiment controlled by W.I.C.K.E.D. The teenagers find themselves in a lab and meet Galley, one of the Gladers who hated Thomas for being different and who originally didn’t escape with them. Galley is acting as though he is being controlled and attacks Thomas by throwing a knife at him but Chuck, Thomas’s friend, jumps in front of him to save him and is killed. After briefly mourning the death of Chuck, the Gladers are rescued by a group of people who explain to them “The Flare” -an occurrence that killed half of the world’s population.
I think the ending of this book was great, it ended with you wanting to read more and more. Although Dashner could have made it without Chuck dying in the endng. Overall it was a good book and I really enjoyed reading
it.
I recommend this book to teenagers because it demonstrates that teenagers are capable of controlling their own destinies which I find very inspiring, I would give this book a four star rating. I think that James Dashner did a very good job on this book yet the monsters are a little unbelievable and it’s mostly focused on guys, what I did like about the book is that it empowers teens to figure out their environment and question authority and the way things are.