The Death Cure (Maze Runner Trilogy) [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

*Warning -- potential spoilers below. You have been warned.*

I struggled with this book.

On the one hand, it's a good read. Fast, page-turner. I couldn't set it down, and arrived at work today tired for lack of sleep. Curse you, James Dashner!

In each installment of this series, we get to see more of the world around Thomas and his companions. From the insular maze in the opening pages of "Maze Runner" to now, our view of the world has slowly pulled back. We can see more.

Really, this is interesting stuff. So THIS is how the rest of world is dealing with the zombie apocalypse! (And let's not kid ourselves, that's basically what this is about). There are answers, finally. But not enough. I don't mind stories that are full of questions. I don't mind characters and groups with plots so thick, with so many twists and turns you'd need an entire fourth book just to explain it. But it got tiresome. Not a single character can make any kind of decision whatsoever without another character asking "But what if that's what WICKED *wants* us to do!"

And finally, when we get to the truth...

...

...

...except we never really do.

Thomas never does get his memories back. Hints are dropped that he was a mastermind of the whole thing, but we'll never know. What a wonderful struggle that would have been, as old-Thomas and new-Thomas tried to reconcile what one had planned and the other had experienced. Now THAT would have been interesting. Alas, it was not to be.

Other characters do choose to recover their memories, but that's essentially the last time the reader sees any of them. Sure, they show up at the end, but they show up just to show up, or to get killed off. Not to tell anyone what happened. Not to offer insight into the "whys" and "hows" of WICKED. Just to show up. For all the fuss that was made about them getting their memories back (if they actually did get them back, that is, and not just some fabricated recollections of WICKED), when we do see them again, I'm not sure it really makes any difference. They certainly don't seem to contribute to the final solution, really.

And speaking of the final solution... the final Death Cure... the ultimate responce to the Flare...

I don't want to call it a deus ex machina, but I'll gladly give a shiny new dime to the person who can tell me exactly where it is that Thomas and the others ultimately end up.

I realize I've been critical. Perhaps unfairly so. As a whole, the Maze Runner trilogy is a solid tale. I do not regret purchasing the books, and they shall -- for a time at least -- take up space on my bookself.

My biggest issue is that Dashner has created a story that evokes a great deal of mystery. The first two books weave a story that is intriguing not only in its own right, but also because of what is left in the dark.

My criticism is this: the final book of such a story must bring that hidden portion to light. Not necessarily all of it, but enough so that we, the readers, can have that moment when we look up from the page and go "Oooooohhhhhh! Now I get it!"

Maybe I missed it. But for me, that moment never came.

*Contains spoilers*

I'll be the first to admit that books with this level of violence and horror do not generally appeal to me, but I took a chance with Maze Runner and found it a gripping and a wholly unique tale. The story was well written, creative, compelling, and I could find absolutely nothing within its pages that smacked of Harry Potter, so I considered it a win.

I enjoyed Scorch Trials, but enjoyed it less -- it seemed a bit weaker and filled with endless horrific tribulations that became rather tedious to read through. Still, I looked forward to the Death Cure and hoped it would explain the many mysteries left dangling.

The Death Cure was fascinating in its own right, but in a less substantial way than Maze Runner. Where Maze Runner had lots of colorful characters working and living together, Death Cure reminded me of a Transformers movie with car crash after car crash and then even more car crashes. I fell asleep in the theater, lulled by the incessant sound of metal grating metal. I certainly didn't fall asleep while reading this book, and don't mean to insult the author by comparing his book to a truly terrible movie, but found myself skimming and skipping chunks just to find out what happened when the dust settled (or the blood pooled, rather).

The Death Cure felt like it leaned too much on (sometimes grotesque) action and too little on character development and story. I missed the vibrant Gladers, the Group B girls are never fleshed out, and the hints at a jealous love triangle fizzled into an anti-climatic nothing.

I read impatiently, looking for answers which never really came.

- Thomas does not get his memory back. I'm okay with this as his reasons why are articulated. But it was hard to believe that of the majority who did have their memories restored, nobody had anything of import to share about WICKED's past or their own involvement in the organization, or Tom's for that matter.

- While Teresa finally ends her "Wicked is Good" refrain, it is sung again in the epilogue. The mysterious rescuer who provides a way out excuses all of the cruelty, abuse, and horror inflicted on the trial "subjects" with the same strain. I'm trying to give Dashner the benefit of the doubt here - perhaps his goal was to create a complex enemy, something that had good intentions but did horrible things for "the greater good." If so, I think the concept could have been fleshed out more.

- I wish we could understand what fueled the original founders' passion in the beginning. Yes, a horrible disease and a fight for the cure. But how did their desire to save the human race lead to things as grotesque as the Grievers unleashed on human beings? Were children like Thomas and Teresa brainwashed? Or did they truly believe in the project, and if so, what kind of person believes in a project that involves great jelly-man killing machines with orange light blub protrusions?

- Oh the characters that could have been! Someone (Brenda or Teresa) should have been in WICKED's back pocket just to give the character more substance, we needed an actual turncoat or double crosser. Or mole. Teresa bites the dust so unceremoniously at the end (and with notably less hand wringing and dramatics from Thomas than he experienced after seeing Chuck and Newt die) I suspect her character was boring even Dashner by then.

- I felt there were some hints and foreshadowing regarding the Cranks coming out of nowhere and seeming to have their crazy amplified or 'turned on.' This left me hoping WICKED would end up being more definably wicked, perhaps controlling them, increasing their crankiness for some nefarious purpose. But no. WICKED was just trying to save the human race! With exploratory brain surgery! And lies, manipulation, and treachery!

- The world is in catastrophe. The books paints a pretty vivid picture of desolate, destroyed cities, mutiny, crime, despair, poverty, and desperation. What feels like millions are plagued with a zombie-esque disease, and very few are immune. Yet fuel to power giant air ships is no problem. Ammo, computers, and electricity are all mysteriously available. Even just a few sentences about advanced fuel technology, hydrogen powered vehicles, or solar power would have helped suspend reality.

- The entire story seems to take place on the North American continent. We have mention of world governments building "Crank Palaces" but learn little else about how the plague is affecting the rest of the globe. Was WICKED a world-wide organization? If so, only 200 immunes were saved the world over? Where was paradise? On a protected piece of planet earth or another sphere?

That said, I'm not sorry I purchased the books or that I have them in my Kindle library. It was nice to read a truly inventive YA story that didn't seem even inspired by any other series. Dashner's 13th Reality series is equally unique (though less violent) and I'm reading them to my younger boys. I think Dashner has an impressive imagination and is a talented writer. This trilogy was interesting and I was able to get wrapped up in the world Dashner created, I suppose I just had higher expectations and greater hopes after the first book sucked me in.

The more I read dystopian/speculative fiction, the more I realize just how difficult a genre it is. Everything has to be placed so perfectly, all plot twists in a nice, neat line. There has to be a great deal of logic to the world that is created and, when the final chapter is closed, all must be revealed or the author runs the risk of leaving the reader confused. Unfortunately, as I finished the last word of this book, my first thought was, "Huh?" Spoilers will follow, so don't read any further if you don't want to know any of the details.

When I read The Maze Runner, I thought it was a really innovative, creepy idea. It was interesting to speculate about who had thrown the boys and Teresa in the maze and why they were there. The small details that were doled out really helped this atmosphere. When I read The Scorch Trials, though, I felt like things started to fall apart a bit. There was still so little known, so little that made sense. And now, with The Death Cure, I can't help but feel unsatisfied with the story overall. There is still so much of it that I don't understand. As I read the book, I realized that a few things should have been happening: for one, more information should have been doled out over the course of the series. I didn't want Dashner to give everything away in the first book, but there should have been more flashes of memory on Thomas's part, particularly after he went through the Changing. This would have helped solidify details about the world, which would have gone a very long way toward making the events of The Death Cure make sense.

The biggest problem I had with The Death Cure was that it felt to me like Thomas was just flailing along the entire novel, with one instance of sheer dumb luck after another. The world was like a blur, and it was hard to figure out exactly what was going on. I had the sense that Dashner was rolling out setting after setting to show the reader, "See, this is what the world is like!" This would have been fine, had there been an actual purpose to each setting, but it felt more to me like I was being taken on a tour of the world, rather than watching the plot unfold. I strongly feel that there should have been a plan, that Thomas's actions should have had a more deliberate course of action. I just can't buy that he somehow manages to bumble around and, ultimately, is successful. I guess you could say that WICKED orchestrated this, but that just doesn't feel right to me. There were too many variables (yes, I know how much WICKED loves those) for there to be any reasonable expectation that things would play out the way they did.

The other major flaw, to me, lay in the fact that Thomas decided not to get his memory back. While I understood his reasoning, and could buy it, I think it did the novel a real disservice. Had Thomas regained his memory, and had the reader been given a window through which to view the gradual decline and collapse of the world, WICKED's motivations would have made more sense. As it is, I really feel that their motivations made little sense at all. Yes, they said they were trying to find a cure for the Flare. But that doesn't answer the question of why they had to set up such elaborate, physical experiments as part of their research. While one of the characters does explicitly state that WICKED was out of control, using up what few resources remained in their mad pursuit for a cure rather than trying to preserve what was left of the population, I felt that there was still just no good explanation for what they had done. Why couldn't they have simply hooked Thomas and his friends up to machine, induced hallucinations, and measured their brain activity that way? Why did they have to drop them into a maze to get the information they wanted?

Thomas's choice not to regain his memory also had a very adverse affect on Teresa as a character. She just does too many 180 degree turns to really be believable. I liked her so much in the first book, considerably less in the second, and was completely disappointed in her in the third. She becomes nothing more than a plot device, really. Her moment of redemption in sacrificing herself to save Thomas just fell flat because, by that point, she was such an enigma. Had Thomas regained his memories and had the reader been given more insight into what drove Teresa to become what she did, she'd have been more of a well-rounded character.

Lastly, I just couldn't get behind the idea of Jorge and Brenda, and the fact that they had been inserted from day one solely to achieve the ends desired by the Chancellor. Thomas trusts them much too quickly, and his friends acquiesce much too easily, even though they never cease to be suspicious of Brenda in particular.

The ultimate revelation also just didn't make sense to me. Exactly why was the Flare released? The Chancellor says that it was meant as a means of controlling the population, but there's no explanation of why the population needed to be controlled after the solar flares. If an author is going to drop a bomb like this, the reader should have a sense that everything is coming together, a sense that I felt was entirely lacking.

I'm really disappointed by the ending of this series, which is a shame because it was off to such an intriguing start.