Are you a fan of dystopian novels like The Hunger Games and the Divergent series? If yes, then The Maze Runner is amongst those novels that are a must read.
Are you a fan of dystopian novels like The Hunger Games and the Divergent series? If yes, then The Maze Runner is amongst those novels that are a must read.
The Maze Runner is the first book in a trilogy written by the American author James Dashner. The book was published in 2009 and was adapted into a movie last year after it gained popularity among the book lovers. Of course, this book cannot be compared to the great dystopian literature novels such as A brave new world or 1984, since the target audience is completely different. The Maze Runner is a simple book free of complications and hidden truths of the world and its politics, but has an edgy plot that targets a younger audience. The book has a mysterious plot flooded with twists and turns that are bound to leave the readers baffled.
Coming to the storyline of the book, it starts off with a teenager, Thomas, who wakes up in a dark elevator with no memory of his past, except his name. As the doors of the elevator are pulled open, he is welcomed by a group of boys into a huge glade. Unfortunately, the other boys are exactly like Thomas and have no memory of their pasts, too. They have no recollection of where they are, why they are there and what the real world is like. All they know is that they are sent to this new world by the ‘creators’, and are provided with food, clothes and weapons; all they have to do is ‘survive’.
Sounds simple? Well, there’s more danger coming up than we can imagine. The Glade also has a gigantic maze, and the fifty boys living there make it a task of their existence to solve the maze. Every day, some of them, the Runners, leave the Glade and head out into the unknown to find a way out, and Thomas wants to become one of them. Why? We don’t find it out till the end. All we know is that Thomas has a feeling that he has done this before and he can help as a runner and save everyone from the Glade.
As if solving a gigantic maze wouldn’t be challenging enough, the walls of the maze move every night to create new dead ends and new paths. And each night, the walls directly surrounding the Glade, the place where the boys live, close.
Sounds like a jail, doesn’t it? However, in this case, the boys welcomed the closing of the wall as every night, dreadful monsters called ‘Grievers’ are released into the maze with only one task: eliminate the humans.
So the boys are stuck trying to stay alive as well as “solving” the Maze by running through it as fast as they can in the daytime while tracking movements of the walls and trying to find an exit.
The plot further thickens a day after Thomas’ arrival. A girl is delivered through the elevator into the Glade. The boys are stunned, perplexed and worried because no girl had ever arrived at the Glade before. The girl mumbles and utters strange prophetic words and then lapses into a coma. To make matters worse, her arrival triggers everything in the Glade to change: the sun disappears, the deliveries of supplies stop coming, and the doors stay open at night, which allows the ‘Grievers’ to enter the Glade.
Sounds interesting, isn’t it? If you want to know what happens, then go ahead and buy yourselves a copy of the book. And I suggest you buy the complete trilogy because the mystery isn’t revealed until the end. The book has a lot of adventure, violence and a unique storyline that is bound to keep you engaged.
