Monday, January 13, 2014

Dual Review: The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure by James Dashner

Book: The Scorch Trials
By: James Dashner
Published: October 12, 2010

Published By: Delacorte Press

Description: Solving the Maze was supposed to be the end. No more puzzles. No more variables. And no more running. Thomas was sure that escape meant he and the Gladers would get their lives back. But no one really knew what sort of life they were going back to.


In the Maze, life was easy. They had food, and shelter, and safety . . . until Teresa triggered the end. In the world outside the Maze, however, the end was triggered long ago.
Burned by sun flares and baked by a new, brutal climate, the earth is a wasteland. Government has disintegrated—and with it, order—and now Cranks, people covered in festering wounds and driven to murderous insanity by the infectious disease known as the Flare, roam the crumbling cities hunting for their next victim . . . and meal.
The Gladers are far from finished with running. Instead of freedom, they find themselves faced with another trial. They must cross the Scorch, the most burned-out section of the world, and arrive at a safe haven in two weeks. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them.
Thomas can only wonder—does he hold the secret of freedom somewhere in his mind? Or will he forever be at the mercy of WICKED?



By: James Dashner
Published: October 11, 2011
Published By: Delacorte Books for Young Readers


Description: Thomas knows that Wicked can't be trusted, but they say the time for lies is over, that they've collected all they can from the Trials and now must rely on the Gladers, with full memories restored, to help them with their ultimate mission. It's up to the Gladers to complete the blueprint for the cure to the Flare with a final voluntary test.

What Wicked doesn't know is that something's happened that no Trial or Variable could have foreseen. Thomas has remembered far more than they think. And he knows that he can't believe a word of what Wicked says.

The time for lies is over. But the truth is more dangerous than Thomas could ever imagine.
Will anyone survive the Death Cure?


My Thoughts: I have decided to put these two reviews into one just because I finished them so quickly and didn’t want to do two reviews, and also because it came out long enough ago that there are a bunch of other reviews that will probably give you a better idea of this story as a whole. The same issues I had in the first book, The Maze Runner, are prevalent in these. I couldn’t seem to care one way or the other about the characters. I merely wanted to know what would happen.


The stories by themselves were great. I liked seeing how Thomas would get everyone out of the situations they were placed in and liked seeing what they would encounter next. The worlds and settings James Dashner created were good ones. Still, there was a huge disconnect between me and the characters. Thomas didn’t think like me, and oftentimes I thought he was naïve and stupid. I just wanted to shake him or punch him in the face. I felt the same with the other characters. 

Still, this series is a good one that I would totally recommend if you like Dystopian. Just don’t expect to connect too much with the characters. 4 stars.

2 comments:

Lan said...

I love dystopian but I really do need to care about the characters to get invested in the story. Do you think it could be a POV thing? I find it really hard to engage in a male perspective a lot of the time. Which is probably why I didn't get through Maze Runner!

Sherre said...

I totally agree Lan. In this sese, the story was good, the characters just annoyed me to death. I think if one of them died, I wouldnt have cared one way or another. I just couldnt follow their logic or reasoning. They just didnt make sense to me.

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