Review: The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Summary (from Goodreads):

When the doors of the lift crank open, the only thing Thomas remembers is his first name. But he's not alone. He's surrounded by boys who welcome him to the Glade - a walled encampment at the centre of a bizarre and terrible stone maze. Like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how they came to be there - or what's happened to the world outside.

The Maze Runner is pretty damn original, I can't say I've ever read a book quite like this before. Yes, there is plenty of sci-fi dystopian fiction on the shelves and an influx of them being made into motion pictures at the moment but this particular sci-fi dystopian adventure with its crazy ass ever changing maze and grotesque half flesh half metal killing creatures is just.. wow.

For a girl who likes to relate as much as possible with characters in novels reading a book about a guy dropped into a guy filled world didn't really appeal to me but I'm so glad I gave this a chance. Thomas, our main character, may not have boobs but his clear and raw human characteristics that Dashner writes incredibly well for Thomas and other Gladers in the novel is enough for me to easily relate the characters and to become crazily attached to them.

It's true that I was crazily attached extremely invested in the characters by the the end of The Maze Runner but that's not to say I was so at the beginning. When starting the novel many of the characters blended together, each of them simply a Glader and not separate people, which made it really hard to carry on reading let alone care for any of the characters. Thomas being the only character who wasn't just a Glader even still didn't truly grab my attention at the beginning of The Maze Runner. His behaviour which I would describe as arrogant was extremely irritating to read, he seemed to believe that everybody else should be falling over themselves to answer his questions and grant his wishes.

It is only 100 or so pages in that game changing and unexpected things happen and Gladers turn from Gladers to Chuck, Alby, Newt and Minho. From this point on, albeit the annoyingly repeated thought of Thomas that although he can't remember his past this must be the most traumatic/scariest/happiest moment of his life, I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the book.

If you haven't read The Maze Runner, I don't want to spoil it for you (this is me presuming you will go read it if you haven't :D ) so I'm just going to vaguely say that the ending AND THE FREAKING EPILOGUE is crazy shocking and if I'm the only one who was surprised I must have missed something really important and this is embarrassing... Anywhooo I am eagerly anticipating reading the next book in this series, I am majorly excited to see developments in the various relationships in the novel and even more excited to see where Dashner decides to take the story line.

Music choice: I seem to pick Linkin Park quite a lot but I think the confused and lost feelings and the desire to belong shines bright in both this song and the book.. 

Somewhere I Belong by Linkin Park 

itunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/meteora/id528435845