Move Over Hunger Games--There is a New Competition In Town

 

The Maze Runner (2009)
 Dasher, James
Fiction
5/5 stars








     Thomas woke up in a smelly windowless room, confused, and alone. He could not remember anything, nor anyone except his first name. He heard the walls of the room starting to shift, and he began to move slowly up. The elevator stopped and slowly opened from above. Thomas saw faces slowly come into focus and was lifted from the elevator by a group of boys. He did not know one person, and had no clue where he was. Thomas was told that he was in a place called Glade and all the boys lived there, and now he would too. Glade is surrounded by four massive stone walls that have doors on each side leading into the maze. The doors close each night protecting the boys from the monsters, called Grievers, inside the maze, yet that does not stop them.  Each day a group of boys, Runners, go into the maze to find a way out of Glade, yet each night when they come back to Glade the walls of the maze shift so the runners have a new path every time. After one day of being in Glade Thomas was more confused then when he first arrive, and to make everything even more confusing another person arrived in the box, which only happens once a month, and the new arrival was a girl. After that Glade changed and more chaos erupted, so they all had to find out what was going on.

     In The Maze Runner one of the themes that the book is really based off of is freedom. Thomas and all of the other people in Glade are trapped by an unknown source forced to find their way out, and not knowing how. This is a violation of their freedom and throughout the book they all work to be free of whatever is keeping them.

     The Maze Runner is written in Third person limited narrator, so the story is told just about Thomas from a view that is not himself, so you know his thoughts and feelings, but no one else's. James Dasher wrote The Maze Runner in a very mixed way because he has humor and other parts that are serious, but not super serious.

     This story is more appropriate for late Junior Hight and High School because it got a bit intense, and a little more of a mature plot, and ideas of what the book is about. In the book the author uses some words that do not actually exist, but the boys in the Glade made them up, so it does get a bit confusing to read because it is hard to tell what they are talking about, but once you get into the book it is easier to understand what they are saying though for younger ages it would be a difficult read because they would not know what the words are.

     This book was such a good book especially if you like the Hunger Games series, or anything like those books because they stories are similar, but they are different enough that the story is very original. I would defiantly recommend this book to anyone because the story was so thought out, original, and has twists and turns that make it interesting and very enjoyable to read.