James Dashner

The Maze Runner

Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.

The maze runner

Angelica Garcia

Teresa rolled her eyes. That’s your name isn’t it? Yeah, but most people call me Thomas. Well, except Newt - he calls me Tommy. 

Minho stumbled up ahead, fell to the ground. They weren’t going to make it. Time was up. That was it. Thomas heard Newt scream something from behind him. “Don’t do it, Tommy! Don’t you bloody do it!”

When the doors of the lift crank open, the only thing Thomas remembers is his first name. But he's not alone. He's surrounded by boys who welcome him to the Glade - a walled encampment at the centre of a bizarre and terrible stone maze. Like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how they came to be there \- or what's happened to the world outside. All they know is that every morning when the walls slide back, they will risk everything \- even the Grievers, half-machine, half-animal horror that patrol its corridors, to try and find out.

Jessica Saunders

"I'm the bloody chair right now , and if I hear one more buggin' word out of turn from you , I'll be arrangin' another banishing for your sorry butt"

It wasn't a smile, exactly. Not quite a happy expression. But almost.

Thomas didn't respond, and for a long time they just sat there, holding hands, no words spoken, in their minds or aloud. He felt the slightest hint of peace, as fleeting as it was, and tried to enjoy it for however long it might last.

Gwenifer

Tilly Franklyn

l "If you ain't scared," Alby said, "you ain't human. 

Giovanna Marulli Borges 

the plot idea is good and i might have liked this book more if the writing style wasn't average

julia

i can't believe this trilogy got adapted into a movie tbh. teresa might be one of the worst written female characters, plot devices do not make sense. and i hate their colloquial made-up language. funny because i remembered seeing james dashner once have a q&a session w his fans online and replied to a few of their questions about the plot with a "hey i failed to think of that! maybe you could explore that in your own interpretation!" that about explains everything. also gave me faith that maybe i could be an author someday. please read better fiction

claire sim qiu yan

Didn’t capture me so it was slow going. Partly could have been the drab narrator for the audiobook.

Jordan

Anna 

Tak tohle bylo něco skvělýho. I když už jsem film kdysi viděla, kniha mě nenudila a potřebovala jsem prostě číst dál! Asi jsem právě ve věku, kdy mě dystopie neskutečně baví. 
Myslím, že pokud se vám líbí Hunger Games, tohle si oblíbíte taky, stejně jako jsem si to oblíbila já. Knize opravdu nemám co vytknout, teda až na Teresu, ta mi je nepříjemná, nevím proč... 
Jo, za mě skvělý, můžu vám to jen doporučit, nemá to ani tolik stránek, takže vám to uteče rychle. Myslím, že nudit se vážně nebudete. 
✩
5*/5*

Kellie Davis

This book is amazing! I loved the characters, the pacing, story line, and just everything about it. I was sucked in completely by the first chapter. The best part is I kept guessing. I wasn't what was going to happen next and each chapter left me wanting more. I can't wait to finish the series!

Sumaiya 

Sarah Sammis

Back in March of this year Megan at Posey Sessions asked me to read The Maze Runner and write a guest post for her blog on some aspect of the novel. For the guest post, I focused on the maze.

Many of the reviews I've read compare The Maze Runner to Lord of the Flies by William Golding but I disagree. Yes, both are about boys forced to live together in a remote location under extraordinary circumstances. But that's where the similarities end.

In Lord of the Flies, the students crash land on an island when their plane crashes. The teens in The Maze Runner are selected one by one and appear on a certain schedule. As they are specially selected and arrive with the memories wiped clean, they don't have the same pre existing history as Golding's schoolboys do.

Frankly, the teens in Dashner's world are more civilized. The main theme of the book isn't the degradation of friendships and social norms when people are removed from society. The Maze Runner is the opposite; it's the building of society from unlikely choices (rowdy teenage boys).

What gets in the way of the discussion of building society is the very thing that's there to make the story interesting – the maze. To present his unusual and artificial world to us, Dashner starts the story with a newly arrived boy, Thomas, who then has to learn everything and as he learns, we learn. Sorry, but this technique of story telling gets old really fast and it's by far the weakest part of The Maze Runner. I would have much preferred to have had the story told from one of the other boys who had a longer history of living in the maze.

That being said, the second thirds of the book are much better as Thomas comes into his own as a character. After the info dumping on the world stops, Thomas and the others get to work on understanding the maze and mapping it. This part is fascinating and it's shoved in after all that unnecessary explanation.

Dani

Thrilling and certainly entertaining until the end, the first book of The Maze Runner trilogy is an easy read without a dull moment. I'd recommend it for everyone who wants to be kept at the edge of their seats while immersing completely in a world with its own rules. And a plus is that it definitely leaves your hands itching to get ahold of the second one, which --in my humble opinion-- is a deed most YA books can't seem to manage these days.

dulce yasmin 

Naiya

Geoffrey Froggatt

Thomas wakes up in a metal elevator that brings him to the Glade. He has no memory of who he is or how he got there. He gradually discovers that the Glade is run by two boys: Alby, the leader, and Newt, the second-in-charge, who both maintain order by enforcing simple but effective rules. The elevator box surfaces from under the ground once every month and supplies new food, tools, medicine, and sometimes weapons. Every month, a new boy with no memory of anything but his first name finds himself in that elevator box. The Glade is surrounded by a square of four-mile-high walls made of concrete. The walls have openings in them, which slide shut like doors every night. Outside the walls is the Maze, a labyrinth of high concrete walls covered in ivy that changes every day. The Maze houses strange, lethal creatures known as Grievers. Not much is known about them. The Gladers are trying to stay alive as well as "solve" the Maze by appointing "runners" to run through it as fast as they can while they track movements of the walls and try to find an exit to escape.

One day after Thomas's arrival, a girl, Teresa, is delivered through the elevator into the Glade. She was the first ever girl to arrive into the Glade. She had a note saying "She's the last one. Ever." The girl later lapses into a long coma. When Thomas comes to visit her, he recognizes her but cannot remember her name until he hears her voice in his mind, telling him her name. Teresa then wakes up and tells Thomas that they knew each other before they were sent into the Glade, revealing their ability to communicate telepathically.

Very intriguing read for teenage readers. I enjoyed it and wanted to know more of the details and answers to questions and waiting for all that to unfold, although there are still unanswered questions left at the end of the book. I did pick up on what WICKED stood for as soon as Thomas reads it, although it takes until the very end of the book for him to figure that out. It was obvious to me right away, so it was unbelievable to me that a smart teenager like himself couldn't figure it out. I was very bothered by the word "shuck" used in the book. I understand the author was trying to create a lingo specific to these kids who'd been stuck in the maze for years, but I really thought something that didn't rhyme with such a bad word when it was obviously used in so many instances to replace that word would have been much more appropriate, and it just grated me every single time I read it. After having read the whole trilogy, there are definitely plot holes, but I consider this book a gateway book for newer readers to get a taste of dystopian stories and continue reading better books in that genre. I recommend this book for younger readers.

Megan During

This book was good but a little confusing at first. Once you read the entire trilogy it all makes sense though.

Sabrina W

So I did the complete opposite of what I normally do. I normally read the book and then watch the movie and get annoyed at what they didn't follow, or how the characters looked nothing like I imagined.

This time I watched the movie before I read the book. Such a strange way, and I don't know if I thank myself for it. It was nice to have pictures in my head of what the characters looked like but I also couldn't fathom how different the book is to the movie! Absolutely crazily different. Everything is there in both but just gone around so differently. And characters acted differently too. The book also seemed a lot more brutal than the movie.

I must admit it was a very good read, considering I read it in a week. I really enjoyed the story line and the development of characters. Very intrigued and will be starting the scorch trials very soon!

Iconic for its time. I wish I had read the books before watching the movies.

the movies to this trilogy were a huge part of my childhood, which is why i wanted to read them in the first place. it was totally alright but i felt like it was kinda boring for me since i already know what was gonna happen, although there were still a couple differences. for example when i read the hunger games i didn't have this problem, even tho i have also watched the movies before.

kristin :)

Lauren Grey

I have been excited to read this book since I saw the trailer for the movie awhile back. I bought it a week before the movie was going to be released. I had such high hopes for this novel and figured I would be done within a week, but it was a total let down.

Instead it took me three weeks and I have yet to see the movie. I feel like the story is such a good idea, but I felt like the beginning took far too long. It was all this confusion and whining… like get to the maze!

Also the language was really strange to get used to. It really bothered me that they used the word “shuck” and “klunk” as cuss words. I felt that was strange and unnecessary. I also thought it was weird how they remembered some stuff and not other stuff. I understand they got their memories wiped, but I felt sometimes it was really convenient what they remembered.

Now once I got about 100 pages in, I was hooked. The ending was fabulous. Intrigue. Sadness. Mystery. I am very excited to read the next one now.

Overall, it starts out slow, but just keep trucking, because the ending is totally worth it. A little bit of the dystopian mind-boggling, but it is good all the same.

Briar's Reviews

I could not put this book down. I was highly addicted reading about Thomas's world as the boys, and one singular girl, dealt with the Maze. This book moves very fast and has constant action, making it very hard to put down. Each chapter ends making you want to read the next one immediately, even if you don't have the time. I originally read this book just because I heard a movie was coming out but I definitely enjoyed it.

The perfect gift for fans of "The Hunger Games" and "Divergent," this boxed set includes all five hardcover editions of James Dashner's #1 "New York Times" bestselling series--"The Maze Runner," "The Scorch Trials," "The Death Cure," "The Kill Order," and "The Fever Code." The first and second books, "The Maze Runner" and "The Scorch Trials," are now major motion pictures featuring the star of MTV's "Teen Wolf," Dylan O'Brien; Kaya Scodelario; Aml Ameen; Will Poulter; and Thomas Brodie-Sangster! Also look for James Dashner's newest bestselling series The Mortality Doctrine: " The Eye of Minds," "The Rule of Thoughts," and "The Game of Lives." "If you ain't scared, you ain't human. " When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He's surrounded by strangers--boys whose memories are also gone. "Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade." Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It's the only way out--and no one's ever made it through alive. "Everything is going to change." Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying. Remember. Survive. Run. Praise for the Maze Runner series: A #1 "New York Times" Bestselling Series A "USA Today" Bestseller A "Kirkus Reviews" Best Teen Book of the Year An ALA-YASLA Best Fiction for Young Adults Book An ALA-YALSA Quick Pick "[A] mysterious survival saga that passionate fans describe as a fusion of "Lord of the Flies," "The Hunger Games," and "Lost."" EW.com Wonderful action writing fast-paced but smart and well observed. "Newsday" [A] nail-biting must-read. Seventeen.com Breathless, cinematic action. "Publishers Weekly" Heart pounding to the very last moment. "Kirkus Reviews" Exclamation-worthy. "Romantic Times""

the the end arch of the book felt like it would be the middle

very visually descriptive - i sometimes had a hard time following the phasing (funnily enough, the last book i reviewed had the main complaint of not being visually descriptive at all)

Reagan

good but slow paced

the the end arch of the book felt like it would be the middle

very visually descriptive - i sometimes had a hard time following the phasing (funnily enough, the last book i reviewed had the main complaint of not being visually descriptive at all)

Giving Static

** spoiler alert **
           ACHTUNG! SPOILERS AHEAD!

I don't care.
I hate the protagonist. Everybody else, I could care less.
Dozens of nameless kids died? What am I supposed to do with that? The characters in the book don't give a fuck about those people, and they lived with them for some time.
Oh, Alby died? Well, ok, whatever.
Chuck died? And?

The thing that annoyed me above else is this part:
So, Thomas helped build this maze and collaborated with the creators. That's ok everyone. They must've forced him to do that.
Hey, Gally is crying his eyes out while trying to say he is being controlled, is seen chocking himself until he stops. 
After he kills Chuck
Thomas runs up to him and is starting to beat him. That's okay, you see, Gally nobody gives a fuck now if you're being controlled, we supposed to hate you, so, go ahead Tommy beat him up.
The Logic is here!!! To bad "here" is not the book.

alexandra

rating: 2.1/5

spoiler-free review:
if you don't mind shallow characters and annoying writing styles, you should be fine with this book. the plot is interesting and has a lot of potential, but the characters are just awful. the writing style is just annoying. james dashner tries to create his own language and it reminds of when i read a bad classic. if you love a decent plot, you could give this book a try, but personally i wouldn't recommend it.

full review:
Spoiler
thomas is the most annoying character ever shallowest character ever. i have no idea what he might think or what he would do. one day he'll be whiny and question everYTHING and the next he'll be a hero and do annoyingly reckless stuff. teresa and thomas's relationship is the fakest, most awkward thing eVER. they can speak to each other's brains and there's just "some sort of connection." uhm.. okay. there goes all the relationship development. are they even a thing now? the only bearable character was min ho.
there is so much i could rant on and on about this book, but i personally don't think it is worth it. the plot had so much potential. it's annoying to see it being wrecked like this.

I love dystopia books bc I know I wouldn't make it past the first chapter

Megan Christensen

Maite Alarcon Leon

Horrendously good and sad. Dashner builts hope, crashes it and leaves you crippled and broken, hoping for more.

Bri Billaney

I only read this after I watched movies, but I was pleasantly surprised that I could read this and not just picture movie scenes whilst doing it. I think the first book in the series was the first ever book I read in a single day, much to the displeasure of my family. I loved every moment of this book, was on the edge of my seat and the edge of tears many times throughout.

Emily Ann Guerreor 

I read this book because I loved the movie. I loved everything about it. My review is more of a 4.5. It made me sad that the doll chuck made in the movie was not a part of the book but overall I liked how the book included so much more than the movie. The movie should have been more like the book in terms of sequence and details. I did not enjoy how everyone just seemed to have a bad attitude all the time. Seems like more progress would have been made if they actually talked about their situation.

The Maze Runner

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