The Scorch Trials Review

Book Review #7: The Scorch Trials by James Dashner(Sequel to The Maze Runner)

Overall Rating: 9.6/10

Plot: 9/10

Characters: 9.7/10

Writing: 9.8/10

Originality: 10/10

SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE MAZE RUNNER, YOU SHOULDN’T READ THIS BECAUSE YOU WILL BE RUINING A FANTASTIC SERIES FOR YOURSELF.  AND IF YOU LIKE RUINING THINGS FOR YOURSELF, THEN YOU PROBABLY NEED SOME HELP.  CHECK IN WITH YOUR LOCAL PSYCHOLOGIST.  IMMEDIATELY.

Sample Passage: Thomas was just about to say something stupid when he stopped dead in his tracks.  Somebody almost ran into him from behind, tripped around to his side, but he couldn’t tell who—his eyes were glued in front of him, his heart completely frozen.  Thy sky had lightened considerably, and the leading edge of the mountains’ slope lay just a few hundred feet away.  Halfway between here and there, a girl had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, rising from the ground.  And she was walking toward them at a brisk pace.  In her hands she held a long shaft of wood with a large, nasty-looking blade lashed to one end.  It was Teresa.

Genre: Young Adult Dystopian Fiction
*New Feature!* Ages: 13 and up 

Number of Pages: 360 | Paperback Edition
Published: 2010 by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

Summary: Thomas and the other Gladers may have solved the mystery of the Maze, but WICKED has many more things in store for them.  Just when the Gladers think their safe, Teresa gets taken away and is replaced by a boy named Aris, who claims he came from a group of girls who he helped escape the Maze.  Things get even stranger when a man shows up telling the Gladers and Aris that they are all carriers of the Flare, a terrible disease that destroys your brain slowly, and the only cure is hundreds of miles away in a desert called the Scorch, where the sun is so hot that it can burn a person up when it’s highest in the sky.  They have to cross the deadly Scorch in two weeks to get the cure, or they will die a slow, painful death from the Flare. There are many questions on the Glader’s mind, but the biggest one is: how many of them will die in the Scorch Trials, and how many will live and get the cure to save their life?

Review:  Most sequels to books, especially if the book is fantastic, can be a complete let-down.  When I read the Scorch Trials, I was very relieved that it did not disappoint me in the slightest, though it definitely was not up to par with the Maze Runner. 

In The Maze Runner, the plot was very simple.  The only goal was for the Gladers to escape the Maze.  The plot gets a lot more complex in this book even though there is still only one single prominent goal: to cross the Scorch. You also have Thomas’s memories, which come back to him randomly in his dreams on some nights.  You also have Teresa, who goes missing at the beginning.  And then you have every single one of the Variables that WICKED throws at the Gladers and the others.  When you combine all these factors together, that’s a lot, and sometimes you see authors struggle trying to make sure that every aspect of the plot they have created is well-explained without making it too boring.  Writing is all about balance. And Dashner can totally pull it off.

So that’s not even why I took off a whole point for the plot.  Dashner’s balance with all of it was border-line perfect!  I took a point off because there was so much action that it became hard to create the heart-pounding suspense you got in the Maze Runner, for instance when Chuck was killed.  Even though that was very sudden, it definitely made my heart pound, and it was a major shock!  But since there is SO much action and SO much suspense that is supposed to be there, I found myself not being as surprised, if that makes any sense. 

Also, there was a little less of the dry humor you get in the Maze Runner with Minho and Newt.  And I thought there was a little less character development with the characters in the book.  You have a couple of new characters in the book, and the rest is pretty much Teresa and Thomas, obviously. This disappointed me a little because I LOVE Minho and Newt, and I totally wanted to know more about them!  But hey, no book can be completely perfect.

There were a lot of good points.  Action, first of all. I found it a little overwhelming but it still kept me interested in the story.  Also you know a lot about what Thomas is feeling! I love how some authors can do that, even though the book isn’t in first person.  It’s sort of like with J.K. Rowling’s work, sometimes you forget that you’re not reading any “I feel,” or “I felt,” you’re only reading it from the unknown narrator’s perspective.  I love it when a book does that.

The originality for this book is fantastic.  All of the things that happen to the characters and everything, it’s so fresh and new. I’ve never heard anything like it before! Like in the Maze Runner, the main character being a boy like Thomas instead of someone like Katniss in the Hunger Games still continues to be very refreshing.  It’s nice how guy main characters don’t let their feelings overwhelm them like girl main characters sometimes do. (Not all the time, just sometimes.)  It’s like guy characters just get what needs to be done done. And girls do that too, it’s just harder to find in young adult writing today.

Overall, this was a fantastic sequel. It was not as good as The Maze Runner, but it still kept me intrigued the whole way through. I am so excited to read the final book in this trilogy, the Death Cure.  If you’re a person who has read the Maze Runner, but not the sequel, then you should continue with the series. I promise it will be worth your time. And I keep promises. So go read it. Now. Seriously. Go.

Coming Up Next: Looking for Alaska by John Green and Blue Moon by Alyson Noel.