The Maze Runner by James Dashner

*Warning - There are some spoilers in this review.*

With my month of science fiction reading coming to a close, I finished off January with a book that my students have recommended to me countless times, The Maze Runner by James Dashner.  This book is unbelievably popular with middle-schoolers (especially boys), so I expected it to be like a male version of The Hunger Games.  It was interesting enough, but disappointingly, I thought it had some problems.

The Maze Runner opens with our protagonist, Thomas, riding upwards in a darkened elevator-like contraption.  He has no memory of his past aside from his name; he remembers basic information about how the world works, but nothing specific to his life before that very moment.  He emerges into a strange community made up entirely of teenage boys called The Glade.  All of the boys arrived at The Glade under the same mysterious circumstances as Thomas.  They are all trapped there, and have been forced to form their own community and work together to survive.  They have their own system of government, grow their own food, slaughter their own meat and maintain their own buildings.  The Glade is surrounded by a gigantic stone-walled maze.  The maze is open to the boys during the day and is relatively safe.  At night, the walls to  the maze close, and half slug/half metal monsters called Grievers come out and attack anyone unlucky enough to still be trapped inside.  A group of boys called the Maze Runners race through the maze each day in an attempt to map it out and possibly find an exit.  Instantly, Thomas feels vague memories of being in The Glade before and feels especially drawn to the Maze Runners without knowing why.

Thomas just starts learning the rules of the community when The Glade is thrown into chaos with the arrival of a girl in the elevator.  She's the first girl ever sent there, and she arrives mumbling something about how she was sent to trigger the ending to the maze before collapsing into a coma.  The rest of the novel follows Thomas over the course of the next few days.  Things begin falling apart in The Glade and he must race to figure out the maze and help the rest of the Gladers escape before their time runs out.

The most enjoyable aspect of this book for me was its premise.  This whole idea of a giant maze, robotic monsters and a huge mystery to solve is interesting.  Even though the characters were one dimensional and the writing was clumsy, I kept turning the pages just to find out what was going to happen next.  I wanted to know the big secret.  What was the maze for?  Why were the boys there?  Is there a way out?  I enjoyed the first part of the novel, where Thomas was trying to figure everything out, because I really wanted to know what was going on too.

Unfortunately, the entire mystery aspect of the novel was completely wasted with lazy writing.  Thomas eventually finds a way to unblock some of his memories, and he suddenly remembers everything important.  He suddenly knows what the maze is and how to escape.  The reader is completely robbed of the mental satisfaction of watching a mystery be solved through the ingenuity of the characters.  After being so invested in trying to figure out what was going on, this felt cheap.

It's obvious that The Maze Runner is meant to be plot-driven rather than character-driven, but the characters are among the most flat I've ever encountered.  Most are reduced to showing one single character trait.  I came to think of most of the Gladers not by their names, but as "the mean one," "the babyish one," "the reasonable one," and so on.  Thomas actually has no discernible personality himself.  He is bland and brave in that teen action hero kind of way, with absolutely no depth or shades of gray to his character.  The lone female character, Theresa, is described as being beautiful, and not much else.  Is the avoidance of deeper characterization a sacrifice for the sake of increasing the action?  Is it a deliberate strategy to keep male readers tuned in?  If so, that's rather insulting to teen boys, who deserve to have well-written novels to read just as much as teen girls do.
   
Speaking of Theresa. the treatment of women was another issue for me.  Aside from her, there aren't any major female characters and there is no explanation as to why in the entire novel.  It is eventually revealed that the maze was devised as a kind of test to find the best and brightest people to help save the outside world (which is in typically bad dystopian shape).  So, I guess the message is that the best and brightest people in the world at this time are all teenage boys - a dubious and offensive proposition.  I honestly don't think that a book written to appeal to boys needs to eliminate female characters to be effective.  Perhaps in the sequels there will be an explanation for the lack of women.  I hope there is.

In the end, what could have been an entertaining sci-fi dystopian adventure became a tedious narrative in which information is simply told to the reader rather than explored.  Characterization was weak, the writing was clunky and the world building was non-existent.  The most interesting aspect of the story, the mystery of the maze, was spoiled with a deus ex machina that robbed the reader of the pleasure of figuring things out with the characters.  Oddly, despite all that, I still kind of want to see how the story continues. I especially to see if there's ever an explanation for the lack of female characters.  I'm not in a rush to read the sequels, but I can see myself getting to them eventually.  The Maze Runner had a lot of potential.  I believe that efforts to make it appeal to male readers weakened it tremendously.  Too bad.