Name: The Maze Runner series (books 1-4)
Rating: 3.92230183609494 (2233 reviews)
ISBN: 9781909489356

James Dashner

The first four books in the pulse-pounding Maze Runner series! 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. But the maze is just the beginning ...

The Maze Runner series (books 1-4)

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

The W.I.C.K.E.D Organization seems really performative in how they care about kids and this all being for their "own good".

Susan

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.

The Maze Runner

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

julia

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.

Naiya

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.

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.

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.

The Maze Runner series (books 1-4)

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