celinasureda

** spoiler alert ** Once again, James Dashner takes us into his rather sick mind to present us with, yes, more mindless slaughter of children. I am flummoxed that people can possibly give this book or the previous book, The Maze Runner, five star reviews. Mr. Dashner is NOT William Golding where we had a group of boys marooned and saw the savagery that they sank to. There, only one boy died and the other characters in the book and the majority of readers felt the death like a fist to the chest. Nothing like that with The Scorch Trials. Orson Scott Card wrote a book about children being trained and tested to fight alien invasion. There, also, we see a single boy die (accidentally, kind of) and it is dealt with as a major event that has to be covered up and kept quiet to keep it from affecting the other youths in training. Here, Mr. Dashner runs kids through a meat grinder while chuckling good-naturedly the whole while and thinking he is adding to the drama of the series. The main character, Thomas, manages to show what a bonehead he is as well. The most aggravating instance was where he was warned by Teresa that things were going to be dangerous and painful the next day. Thomas warns...nobody. For that reason alone the rest of the boys should have shanked Thomas as he just proved himself unreliable to the group. This is also lazy writing on the part of the writer. But then, as you have probably guessed, I am not extending much praise for Mr. Dashner. As a writer, Mr. Dashner makes use of way too many cliched situations and tropes. He then goes and does his best to desensitize the reader to the mindless child slaughter that he engages in with his writing. The only redeeming quality is that finally there seems to be a little emotional distress by at least a few of the characters. In honesty, though, how often do we see the response to mindless teen murder or traffic fatalities in real life? People, including boys, cry and have emotional distress. No such thing here and that makes all of the characters diminished in their character depth. I have not paid for either book in this trilogy. If I do decide to lower my standards yet again and read The Death Cure I do not plan on paying for that book, either. I also would never recommend this book to anyone, especially not children. I think Nabakov's Lolita would be much more wholesome for them to read.

2020-09-17 08:00