The Maze Runner

Dashner, J. (2009). The maze runner. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

New York Times Bestseller Children’s Series List for 46 weeks

(The last week it was on the list was the week of February 3, 2013, and it was ranked as #10.)

Though The Maze Runner has spent so many weeks on the New York Times’ Bestseller List, it took more than one hundred pages for me to really get into the story.  Dashner immediately made me interested in why Thomas was in the Glade, the reason for the Maze, what was their purpose there, and who was responsible for placing the boys there, but it took a while for him to get the story moving.  Too much time was spent characterizing Thomas and establishing his relationships with the other Gladers in the beginning before the rising action really started to accelerate. 

Once the plot finally got going, however, the book was difficult to put down.  I loved how Dashner used tension to hook the reader, placing little teasers throughout the story – Gally remembering Thomas in the “Changing,” Ben attacking him for an unknown reason, Thomas automatically feeling drawn to be a runner, remembering Teresa though not knowing why, being able to speak to Teresa telepathically, the Grievers falling off the cliff, Alby remembering him in the “Changing” also, the “WICKED” label on the beetle blades, and Teresa writing “Wicked is good” on her arm – to make the reader keep turning each page, trying to figure out why.  But even after all of the events leading up to the conclusion of the book – Thomas and the other Gladers finally making it out of the Maze through the Griever Hole, meeting up with the Creators who are shot by a group of civilians, being taken by the civilians on a bus to a dormitory, and learning about the experiment and the solar flares – the reader is still left confused by what is going on.  Hopefully, The Scorch Trials will have more answers.