The Scorch Trials

by James Dashner

Date Read: 9/14/16
Rating: ★ ★ ★

The entire time I was reading this story I was blown away by how different it was from the movie. For both “The Maze Runner” and “The Scorch Trials” I had watched the movie first. I love the movies, I’m just wondering why they chose to make the second movie so vastly different from the book. It’s almost just loosely based on the book. But that also made it fun to read the book because I still wasn’t sure what to expect.

I feel like this book was a little slower than the first book. Most of the book was about the gang traveling across the desert. Yeah, there were some action scenes here and there, but it was still basically just a traveling book. I wish it had been a little more exciting and diverted from the Scorch more often.

Thomas also passed out or slept (and dreamed) a LOT throughout this book. It really slowed everything down. While I get that the author is making it real, it just really stopped the story and jarred me out of my rhythm.

The change between Thomas and Teresa in this book was done really well, I thought. It was very believable and just like Thomas, the reader has no idea who to trust. I definitely have some strong emotions about this and I tend to side with Thomas.

Several new characters are introduced in this book. Aris is an interesting character. I’m still on the fence about him. I liked Brenda a lot…but I didn’t like how forward she was. But once I got past that I really liked her.

We get a little bit more information on what the world is like now. There are still plenty of questions left open. The main ones being “What the heck is the killzone?” and “How is torturing children going to create a cure?”. Dashner does a wonderful job of giving you just enough to keep reading and wanting so much more. Curious as to what this is all really about.

I hated the ending. It felt like the author just had a long story and decided to chop it right there. There was absolutely no wrap up at all. The story just ended. All of a sudden there were no more pages. What the heck? Ok, I get that you want a cliffhanger, but you can still successfully have a cliffhanger in your book while still having a little wrap up in other areas.

A little disappointed in this book following The Maze Runner. It’s still entertaining enough to get through, but it definitely took me a while to get through it … i.e. had to re-request from the library several times before I finished it… I’m looking forward to reading The Death Cure to finally get some answers and see how this series ends.