I usually read the book first and then watch the movie. I’d heard about The Maze Runner about a year or two ago, but with a To-Read list a mile long, I kept picking up other books that were more accessible to me. During Easter, I happened to watch the first movie and I was captivated. Some days later I started reading the book.
Quite often you will hear people saying the book was better. This time I will say, I liked the movie more. I believe it is because the book is quite slow at the beginning. I liked the movie’s pace because it suited the book’s theme. But, that doesn’t mean the book wasn’t captivating. It was hauntingly beautiful and terrifying.
The Maze Runner is the first book of the trilogy. It is a dystopian book, and I need to admit I am not really an expert on those. Still, I believe this one is positively one of the most terrifying ones.
The book starts with Thomas being delivered into this new place called the Glade through a Box without any memory about himself and his life other than his name. He finds himself surrounded by about fifty boys and huge walls. His rebellious mind refuses to accept that he is in a valley surrounded by a maze and there is no real way out. To make things worse, certain boys seem to remember him and accuse of being the one to send them there. In a world that nothing makes sense, dreadful monsters are in the maze, and little metallic spies seem to record their every movement, Thomas tries to make everything make sense. When things get even worse, when a single girl appears holding a note that announced The End, what can all these boys do? They need to survive. They need to run. They need to enter the Maze.
Even though I read the book after watching the movie, I still couldn’t put it down. There are many things that happen differently in the book, but still the gist was the same. I was scared and hooked up at the same moment. People don’t die as violently in the movie as they do in the book, but people still die. Kids die. Also, knowing that there are people that put them in this situation makes you feel sick. It makes you wonder about the future of humanity.
I confess I was annoyed by Thomas. For me, Newt was my favorite followed by Chuck and Minho. Thomas was just so annoying. Yet, the plot was so intriguing that I kept going. Thomas usually gets things done by ‘remembering’ rather than ‘discovering’. Teresa, the only girl in Glade, could have been a powerful character but she mostly comes as a confusing yet pretty part of Thomas’s messy life. Her presence bothers Thomas because she pushes him to find an answer but she is pretty. Also, there is this little trick Teresa does and manages to drive Thomas crazy. Those two talk through telepathy. I didn’t really like that part and was glad it didn’t really make it to the movie, but still, in the book it is important.
I would say that the book is based on the writing technique of withholding information and revealing them later and that it gets annoying sometimes. Also, it could benefit from some development because many things just don’t make sense or look strange, but I actually enjoyed it. I wasn’t immune to these faults, but I was one hundred percent hooked on the book.
I also know that if I were I thrown into that place I would have died as soon as I entered the Maze, but, that didn’t stop me from being part of the story. I believe it is a nice start for a reader that isn’t accustomed to the dystopian genre. Therefore, I’d recommend that if you are new to the genre that you give the book a try.
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