Book review: The Maze Runner
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
I’ve been listening to the audiobook for The Maze Runner for the last month. I’d seen the movie and it didn’t make a whole helluva lot of sense, so I thought I’d give the book a listen. That didn’t help much. It’s probably the most poorly written thing I’ve listened to in my audiobook adventures. The main character was overly emotional in extreme ways, constantly shocked, surprised, and confused. While there were good reasons for it, after a while it tired me out, bored me, and made me lose sympathy for the guy. Somewhere after the first day of his adventure, I was thinking to myself, ‘Come on, dude. Get over it. Accept reality and move ON.’ But no. He was obsessive, thoughts running in circles, constantly freaking out over the world he’d found himself in.
Towards the end of the book, it was revealed the cast of characters were supposed to be really smart. I didn’t have that impression, truly. They were pretty dumb, showing no innovation, determination, or the other traits they were supposedly being tested for. They were stubbornly incurious and often dense to the point of it being painful. They were suspicious, closed-minded, and risk-averse. And yet these people are supposed to be modeled after the great minds of our known history? Meh. Clearly I’m supposed to be burning with curiosity about the ‘creators’ and the dark, mysterious purpose of their experiments. I’m not. I’m just annoyed, suspecting it’s going to turn out to be a let-down based on what I’ve read so far.
Like the movie, book 1 answers virtually nothing. If this were a paper book, I’d jump to the ending of book 3 and see what the resolution was. If it was good, then I’d come back and read how the story got to that point. I don’t think I’ll bother. It just didn’t move me. I didn’t like it. I don’t recommend it.