As of the moment I read The Maze Runner’s blurb I needed to know the ending. I still approached it with caution because in my experience, the biggest danger of dystopian novels with a mysterious premise is that nothing the author produces ever tops my expectations. I’m happy to report I got hooked from the first minute up to the very end, the solution was unexpectedly satisfying, and, extra brownie points, I wasn’t able to figure it out for myself.

A taste of the plot: when Thomas wakes up, he’s inside a lift and doesn’t remember anything except his name. The lift brings him to a glade in the middle of a huge maze, where about 50 boys live. Thomas is the colony’s most recent newbie and he needs to be taught the rules of the Glade and about the boys’ efforts to find out who they are, what’s the Maze and who built it. Think Lord of Flies meets Lost meets The Hunger Games.

But to both Thomas’ and the Gladers’ surprise (and suspicion), after his arrival strange things start to happen, the strangest of all is the appearance of another newbie – the Glade’s first girl.

The Maze Runner is a quick read, the pace expertly and tightly controlled by Dashner, with a good balance between fast action scenes and slower ones for character-development.

I didn’t have many qualms about the book, but unfortunately my biggest one was about the only female character. Teresa spends most of the book in a coma and even afterwards becomes one the only main characters not to have a distinguishable personality. Her physical description was also a bit cringe-worthy: she was (as expected but disappointingly) extremely beautiful, with flawless skin, fabulous hair, etc, etc. I was hoping she’d be a kick-ass heroine, that would go with Thomas on his maze runs, but alas, it was not to be (I suspect Katniss ruined all future YA dystopian female characters for me). I can only hope Teresa will come into her own during the next books in the series.

Still, The Maze Runner is really addictive and I’m not surprised the movie is already on the way, to be directed by Catherine Hardwicke of Twilight. I can’t wait to see how the Maze will look like.

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Other thoughts: Devourer of Books, Life in the Thumb, Books and Movies,  My Friend Amy, The Cheap Reader,  Presenting Lenore, Rhapsody in Books, Beth Fish Reads, That’s What She Read,  Muggle-Born, Thrillers, Horror and Comics, Books with Bite, The Book Bind, The Geeky Beach Babe (yours?)

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