Review and Movie chat: The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner #1) by James Dashner

The Maze Runner
The Maze Runner #1

Author: James Dashner
Published: August 4th 2011
Publisher: Chicken House
Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 371
Source: Bought
Purchase: TBD, Amazon

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.

My Review

I started the Maze Runner just after seeing the movie (my bad, I know); I liked it so much that my boyfriend thought well about giving me, as a present for my birthday, the whole trilogy and ... I AM SO GLAD I'VE FOUND ANOTHER AWESOME TRILOGY. Yep, because after reading Allegiant, City of Heavenly Fire and soon The Retribution of Mara Dyer, I was starting to feel a little bit lonely with all these amazing series coming to an end.

In my opinion, The Maze Runner is one of the best dystopian I've ever read so far, after The Hunger Games trilogy, and I really can't wait to see how the story develops in the following books. What I loved most about this book is the general unpredictability of the story, you can never know the Creators' plans, how the Maze is gonna evolve, how the characters are gonna react. And what's even more impressive is how much I felt caught up in the story despite having seen the film just a couple of weeks before; sounds silly maybe, but I though that reading the book, knowing already the story and the ending, would be so boring, but I couldn't be more wrong. The book, indeed, takes a different tack from the movie (obviously) and especially, gives a better view of the ending and of the world outside the Maze. 

Generally speaking, I loved the originality of the story but if there's one thing that kept me really glued to the pages is the curiosity to find out how the Gladers organised themselves in such a productive, small society, and the admiration I felt for their sense of duty. Order was the Gladers' key word but unfortunately a tornado of events will upset their neatly built world.

The characters' development was great, they all had different abilities and talents that address them in specific areas of work. Speaking the truth, if there's one thing I felt while reading is that it's more easy to feel pity for the Gladers' general condition than to really grow fond of the main characters. I mean, I did like Minho, Thomas, Newt and Chuck but I didn't felt that close to them as I used to while reading other books (The Hunger Games for example). I think that one of the few problems I had with this book, that probably caused this little separation, is the Gladers' language. Well, they kind of spoke slang, didn't they? I really hated how they spoke, it was awful and difficult to understand sometimes and I really wished they would suddenly start to talk like normale people do. That's also why I really loved Theresa's character, she felt so close to normal that I saw her as a foothold to reality.

Last, I really enjoyed the fact that you actually don't know if you can trust Thomas and Theresa until the very end. The author made immediately clear that they were not like the other Gladers but the story starts to get clear just at the very ending... and that's why you should better buy the whole trilogy and not just book 1 !

Straight to favourites !

Rated 4.90