A Book Review

Let's just say I was less than pleased with a certain book: The Maze Runner.

I really didn't enjoy this. At all. This review contains spoilers: be warned. After finishing the book and discovering all the characters in The Maze Runner were suppose to be geniuses this is what I had to say: These people are supposed to be geniuses? No, no, no, no, no, Dashner. If you’re going to have a book where all the characters are geniuses you have to be one because your characters are only as smart as you are. You cannot forget to put question marks after questions. “Tom, Teresa screamed inside his head, What are you doing!” “How could he leave me here? Thomas thought. How could he do that!” You can’t have me ripping out my hair at the fact that there are about 70 people in the Glades. That the person who’d been in the Glades the longest had be there for two years “no one longer”. That one person is supposed to arrive every month. That’s 24 people, minus around seventeen for all the people who’d died (12 in the grave, 5 lost bodies), add two (Thomas and Teresa) and you have a grand total of nine. Nine flipping people. But wait, that’s not all. Dashner has me so pissed off at this and then 300 pages later, he decides to tell me that a large group came at the beginning… well then. Couldn’t you have told me that earlier? And, um, dude, it still doesn’t work. Gally, the guy who’d been there longest, well he said that there were people before him but they all died, therefore giving us twenty four again. Great math skills Dashner. They’re almost as good as your English ones. You don’t capitalize words that don’t need to be capitalized. We don’t capitalize farmers and yet you capitalize Track-Hoes. We don’t capitalize butchers and yet you capitalize Blood Housers. We don’t capitalize doctors and yet you capitalize Med-jacks. We don’t capitalize jail and yet you capitalize Slammer. We don’t capitalize banished and yet you capitalize, well, Banished. So on and so forth. It adds nothing to the book. But then again I guess there’s not much to add to. You don’t have Thomas get attacked by Ben and not mention that he hurt his ankle and then have him limp. What was going on in your head, Dashner? *typing* He was limping, his ankle screaming in pain… *thinking* Hey, wait a minute, he never hurt his ankle. I should probably go back and fix that. *a gorilla playing the cymbals* Nah. I’ll just put this down instead: *typing* …though he had no memory of hurting it. Nice save Dashner. You’re absolutely brilliant. And you know what’s worse? We never hear mention of that screaming ankle again. You don’t make Thomas (and a whole crap load of other people) touch ivy and in Thomas’ case, climb it and then have them show no sign what so ever or actually touching it. Did you forget it was poisonous, Dashner? Did you forget that the most commonly known poisonous plant was just that, poisonous? If you’re a genius, your ‘genius’ characters cannot act as if Sloppers (hey look at that, it’s capitalized! We don’t capitalize janitors or cleaners and yet you capitalize this) are completely useless. Let’s see them function without them. They’d all die of the plague. They wouldn’t continuously threaten to kill Thomas if the Grievers didn’t get to him first. Dudes, what good would that do? Seriously. Not that I like Thomas or anything, but if I do recall correctly (which I’m pretty sure I do seeing as I finished the book ten minutes ago) he’s the one that save all of your *synonym of butts* at the end of the book.  They wouldn’t use the word “shuck” all the time. I told my brother about it and he said it reminded him of a loser seventh grader who wanted to swear and be cool but wasn’t allowed to swear and be cool for real. To me it sounds like a bunch of idiots saying "corn", calling people “corn-face”, and “I don’t corning believe you.” Oh yeah, that’s real threatening. They wouldn’t have destroyed all the Grievers and then had this conversation: “Hey Thomas,” Minho said from above him. / “Yeah?” Thomas was so tired the word barely came out. / “What do you think happened to the Gladers who stayed behind?” / Thomas hadn’t thought about it. His mind had been occupied with thoughts of Chuck and now Teresa. “I don’t know. But based on how many of us died getting here, I wouldn’t like to be them right now. Grievers are probably swarming all over them.” They wouldn’t act like they do. As for Thomas… well. Dashner wants us to like you but we don’t. At least, I don’t. You’re an idiot. Stop saying you’ll never be able to eat or sleep again because we all know you’re *synonym of pooping, or klunking if you want to be all stupid* yourself. Stop trying to be heroic and sympathetic, it’s not working. Stop wanting to go around punching people in the face. Stop wanting to go kill people. You’re bloody psychotic and suicidal. Am I Going to Read the Second One? As a wise man once said, otherwise known as Sips_ from the Yogscast, “I mean, if somebody was holding a gun to my head… no.” How I Wanted this to End I have two ways it could have ended. Pretend Number 1 is in past tense because I’m too lazy to go back and fix it :) Number 1: Thomas lays on his back, staring up and the wooden boards that support Minho’s mattress. He’s thinking about Teresa, trying to use his stupid and frankly impossible telepathic powers to talk to her. Thankfully, it doesn’t work so we don’t have to read their stupid conversation filled with choppy dialogue and crappy punctuation. As he closes his eyes, sleep finally grabbing hold of him and pulling him in there’s a bright flash of light and a thundering boom. Then nothing. Everything is destroyed and sent spiralling into the atmosphere. Everyone is dead. Hooray for anti-matter!  Number 2: He began his new life standing up. But then he fell down because he died.

Author's Note

And yeah. I really, really, really didn't like it.