Scorch Trials? Try half-baked zombie writing, Dashner.

Despite my reservations about The Maze Runner (namely, poor plotting and lots of really gratuitous VIOLENCE), I decided to keep reading. And then, despite my reservations about The Scorch Trials, I have requested and received The Death Cure from my library. Apparently, my interest is enough to keep me going.

So: Thomas and his band of Maze cohorts, including his friend Teresa, are out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak. Without giving too much away, for those of you who want to read/watch The Maze Runner, I’ll only say this is a challenge that takes us out of a maze and into a world that is ravaged by ecological crisis, including sun flares that cause a virus (the flare). This virus, naturally, turns you into a zombie (more or less). Thomas and company must reach a destination point in order to find a cure, or all will be lost. But there’s a twist. Because of course there is. And it’s a game changer, as you might predict.

This book definitely got me interested at the end. But I almost stopped reading at the beginning because it was just so.violent. I don’t want to tell you about it, but I also really do, because there was something in there that just made me cringe. Ick. The Chancellor refused to read The Scorch Trials, so I had to forge on by myself. Thankfully, Dashner remembers that he’s in the YA business and not the dice-em-slice-em business, so the novel does focus on something besides the horrors of WICKED and the ways they can terrorize teenagers into doing their bidding. At least that’s how I see it. Maybe The Death Cure will tie it all together? Or maybe not.