Con: Trust issues, a few questions, and one death
The Bottom Line: If you want dystopia but feel wary about this since it’s teen – read it anyway. These kids go through stuff that would break most adults.
Let me put this in perspective for you.
I didn’t ever intend to read this series. Nothing against James Dashner, but it just wasn’t high up on my already massive reading list. But then I saw The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials in theatres. And I wanted to know the end. Like, now. So I went to two different libraries on the opposite sides of town to get both books. This book wasn’t available, so I put a hold on it, figuring that by the time I finished the first two, I’d be able to pick this one up and read it. That is, until I looked at the queue and saw that I was 30th in line. NOPE.
So I bought the book. I don’t do that. I don’t buy the third book in a trilogy if I don’t have the first two. But that’s how badly I wanted to read this book. That’s how much I wanted to know just wtf is happening to these kids and how it’s all going to end. Now I do.
Thomas is finally free of WICKED, but there are prices to be paid. He doesn’t know who he can trust, how he’ll stay clear of WICKED, is still ignorant of his past (although maybe that’s for the best), and the world seems to be falling down around him – figuratively and in some cases, literally. He wants nothing more than to make WICKED pay for what they’ve done. But how can he? And at other times he still finds himself asking – should he?
I had trust issues throughout this book because I kept thinking, “How do I know this is for real? That these people aren’t a part of WICKED’s plan?” Eventually you have to be like Thomas and hope that for once something isn’t fake. That there are people that want to help, and that it is possible to have something go right for once.
Just like the previous two books, there’s a ton of stuff happening almost every day for poor Thomas and his crew, and things just never really get any better or easier. I sort of wished this more in the second book than this one, but it still applies – how no one completely went off on any of the WICKED people. Just simply yelling at them about what they’ve been through, how awful, sick, and twisted WICKED is. I don’t care what they were trying to accomplish – the way they were doing it…WICKED is not good. Adults would sneer and look down on Thomas and his group, and no one ever snapped back that they’d been through way more than any of those people, and all of it much more horrific.
It’s all interesting and exciting and comes together in the end, though I was kind of confused as to Teresa and her group’s escape (was it an escape? Fake? Did they decide to escape after getting their memories back? I don’t get it). I was also surprised at the lack of reaction to someone’s death near the end. Especially given Thomas’s attachment and despite previous events…I don’t know. It was just like, boom, it happened, bummer, moving on.
But no matter what, it was a really good ride. Will I have to reread it when the movie finally comes out in the future? Hell no. This story will stick to my mind like glue for a long time to come. And the only thing I ever saw coming? The truth of where the Flare came from.
NT
Future Movie Thoughts (in case you’re interested)
I do look forward to the movie. I’m very, very curious as to how they’re going to handle things, from the plot itself to character deaths. I’m sure other folks who have read these books can make guesses as to who might bite it in the end – and who we hope they might change in order to survive to the end.
But I will say one thing – I’m still glad they changed what the Flare does to a person. Because going mad in that fashion is frightening and terrible…but what the movie version does to people is far, far worse. I’ll live with Dashner’s Flare and lose my mind. But if the movie’s Flare takes root in my brain – and body – that’s when I eat a bullet.
Note:
I do know that there is a prequel that Dashner put out after this was complete - but I'm still dubbing this a trilogy and counting it for my reading challenge. So nyah nyah,
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