Maze Runner Book Review

Trevor Marbut

American Literature

Blog Post: Book Review

May 15, 2014

The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner is the first book in a series of science fiction books directed towards young adults. I am usually not the biggest fan of reading books, but I found this novel extremely enjoyable, and at times nearly impossible to stop reading. This book had elements from the book The Hunger Games seen throughout, which adds a serious touch of enthusiasm to the plot line.

The book opens up with the main character, a teenage boy named Thomas, waking up in an enclosed room with no previous memory of anything other than his name. Doors open up and as soon as he knows it, he is surrounded by 75 boys all about the same age as him. As he looks up he sees walls close to 100 feet high enclosing them in, making it seem like they are trapped. At first not much is explained to Thomas but he is able to piece together that they are all in a place called the glade, which is the area inside of the surrounding walls.

As the book progresses some, Thomas learns that they are all inside of a gigantic maze, which was created by an unknown group that is referred to as “The Creators”. The Creators put them in the maze as a test with the goal of figuring out the maze and getting out. The creators have cameras all over the maze to watch them attempt to figure out the maze. To try and accomplish their goal, everyday they send out “runners” into the maze to try and map it out, and figure out how to get out. The only rule that they have in the maze, is that unless you are a runner you can never leave the glade and go out into the maze, and no matter who you are you can not go out into the maze at night. Thomas learns that this is because creatures are released into the maze at night that will kill anything they see.

This book is the first in a series comprised of four books. The ending of this book is very unclear, and leaves a lot of unanswered questions. The ending leaves the door completely wide open for another book to me made. This is frustrating when you first finish reading the book, because there are a lot of questions I had when reading the book that I thought would be answered at the end, that were left untouched by the author. That saying, I highly recommend reading this book, it is a very interesting thriller, and leaves you wanting to read more.