Book Review: The Maze Runner

I'm extremely late jumping in the bandwagon, which is probably because I've never given it much thought. The Maze Runner seemed like a second-tier Hunger Games (spoiler: I was right) and I didn't want to read a book with a mediocre plot. My friend recommended it to me back in 2010 when it was first published but I swatted the idea away. But when the trailer came out and it starred my loverboy Dylan O'Brien, I knew I had to read it. I have this annoying habit of forcing myself to read the book before watching the film adaptation just so I can compare the two. So I read James Dashner's first installment of the trilogy this morning for four hours straight without drinking or going to the bathroom. I swallowed every word and totally immersed myself in this dystopian science fiction novel.

Let's get to it:

Spoiler Alert.

The story begins with Thomas, who wakes up in an ascending metal box with no memory of who he is or where he came from. He arrives in a large square field—named the Glade—enclosed with giant stone walls, each side bearing a gap that leads further into a maze. Thomas is harshly greeted by around 60 teenage boys and is introduced to the leader of the Gladers, Alby, who has been here for 2 years, and his second-in-command, Newt. They show him around the Glade, including all the jobs available such as cleaning, slaughtering, agriculture, etcetera. A small 13 year-old boy named Chuck befriends Thomas, and they begin a strong friendship. Thomas confesses to Chuck and Newt that he wants to be a Runner; a highly-trained and dangerous job in which the Gladers run out to map out the maze (which changes each day) and arrive back before dawn when the walls close and the Grievers—deathly mechanical monsters—come out. Newt tells him that no Newbie can become a Runner. Only a handful has ever been out there, and most don't survive. The next day, the Glade is shaken by a new arrival, a comatose girl with odd and mysterious clues. They take care of her in a room and track her health, believing that she must be sent for a reason. Not long after, one of the lead runners, Minho, brings Alby to see a dead Griever back in the maze. When they do not come out before dawn, the Gladers worry, and Thomas rushes in to save them, trapping him in the maze as well. Minho and Thomas survive the night for the first time in Glade history by fooling the Grievers, and learn about a secret hole in the process. In the morning they bring Alby to get treated after being stung by a Griever. The Keepers (the leaders of the Gladers) appoint Thomas as a Runner under Minho's training. But soon enough, the sun disappears and the Glade is left grey and dull for the first time in two years. Not only that, but the weekly supplies didn't come, and the walls that kept the Grievers from the Glade didn't close either. Coincidentally, the girl, who reveals her name to be Teresa, wakes up and harnesses an existing telepathic connection with Thomas. They both start discussing about what they know, and Thomas is struck by a brilliant theory involving the moving maze. Thomas, Alby, Newt and Minho discover the secret message of the maze, and they realized that if they were going to survive, they had to act quick. The Grievers took one boy each night, until one fateful afternoon when more than half of the Gladers decide to escape to the maze with the leadership of Minho and Thomas in order to escape once and for all. The Gladers fight off the Grievers while Thomas, Teresa and Chuck jump in the secret hole to enter the code they deciphered into the computer. Half of the surviving Gladers arrive in the hole and they all find themselves in an empty space with odd adults staring at them, motionless. Chuck is murdered by one of the Gladers after being controlled by the Creators of the maze, but the Gladers are saved by a bunch of people who reveal to be the resistance to the current government. 

Whoa, that was a long summary! Did you actually read that? Probably not. I wouldn't either. Halfway I just wanted to copy-paste a Wikipedia link but that had an even longer plot and I know you wouldn't want to read that. So technically I'm doing a justice by writing the shortest concise summary of The Maze Runner.

Anyway, I need to get right down to it. I don't like it. I mean, I've read the entire Hunger Games trilogy, and even then I didn't really like it. But hear me out before you show up on my doorstep with a rusty old knife. The writing style was very... elementary. It was as if Dashner had peppered the book with profanity and the editor went, "we have to keep this PG-13!" and subsequently went to Word and replaced all the curse words with kid-friendly 'Glade talk'. It was reminiscent of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. The narrative language itself was pretty descriptive and had good imagery, but I couldn't help but wonder if this book was meant for junior school kids. But it might also be because the last novel I read was Hermann Hesse's 1927 masterpiece Steppenwolf and the juxtaposition between classical English to modern young adult literature made me cringe. But I didn't like his style of writing. It was way too simple for me. It felt like it could always be more expressive somehow. It just didn't communicate the urgency and stress of the characters and the situation. It was like, 'this happened, and this, and that, and this too.'

The plot itself was pretty interesting. Not absolutely original, but interesting enough to spark Hollywood's interest. I have a feeling that Dashner wrote the book with a screenplay in mind more than a literary narrative. Some of the chapters felt so movie-like that I could already picture the terrible CGI as the scene was unfolding. Especially with the death of Chuck. It was so dramatic for a written work that it became anti-climactic; comedic even. A sad moment became a highly exaggerated scene that looked like it belonged to an early 2000's B movie. The dialogue was written so tastelessly in that chapter and the characters were so out of sync with the whole ordeal that it was purely laughable. If the death of Rue in the Hunger Games was a 10, the death of Chuck would be a 1.

The character of Thomas was well made. He was a round character with a lot to root for. The side characters of Chuck, Minho, Alby, Gally, and Newt, were also pretty good. I had a sense of each character as distinct individuals with their respective pasts. They were believable and good supporting characters. However, the character of Teresa was flat and unlikeable to me. She seemed to be the token attractive catalyst apparent in many thriller novels and films. I mean, of course she's strikingly beautiful. Because beautiful girls just sprout out of nowhere and land in the middle of a killzone experiment center. The moment Thomas described her as 'striking', I wanted to throw the book at Dashner's face and tell him to make her at least average. I'm sick and tired of beautiful characters amidst chaos.

The entire book was a cliché. The narrative had a clear protagonist and antagonist that didn't leave any mystery or room for doubt. The puzzles were pretty solvable (I already had an inkling of how to solve the moving maze in the beginning, and I also worked out what WICKED stands for the moment Thomas saw the stone slab), so the book wasn't really a nail-biter for me. Reading it was a collection of 'oh's instead of 'OMG's. The book didn't really make me think about my existence in the universe or question humanity. It was just that. A book.

Lovers of great works of literature will not appreciate the simple narrative style of Dashner, and those who are fans of action-packed novels will be slightly disappointed. This book has the cogs to be a great movie, and Hollywood has the grease. But as a stand-alone novel—pushing aside the succeeding books—it wasn't really my cup of tea. 

I give it a 5.3. Not good enough for me to want to read the sequels and prequel, and definitely not a book I would recommend to anyone. But if you want a quick read on the plane, then go ahead and buy it. Don't say I didn't warn you. If you're used to thrills and chases written by Dan Brown or Stieg Larsson, then you're going to be severely disappointed. But if all you've read are the instructions behind your instant noodle packets, then you'd probably find this book splendid.