Imagine waking up in a dark, confined, metal box remembering nothing about yourself or your past life except for your first name. This is exactly what happened to Thomas. He was placed in a new setting with new people and being completely clueless of just about everything. Things are soon explained to him: this is the Glade, there are only boys here, they each have a specific jobs, and each one of them was just as clueless as Thomas when they arrived in the box. Once a month a new teenage boy is sent up in “the box” knowing nothing but his name. There’s something different about Thomas though. The first few nights he has dreams of things that have happened in his past life. The Glade seems unusually familiar to him although the more he tries to think about it, the more it slips from his memory. No one else has had experiences of this sort.
The Glade is surrounded by huge stone walls on all four sides. In the middle on each side, there is a large opening leading to the Maze. Every day a select few called the runners spend the entire day running and recording the paths in the Maze. At the same time each day, the walls close and don’t reopen until the morning. During the night the walls shift forming a new pattern for the next day. To make it worse, a horrible creature roams the Maze throughout the night, screeching, making horrible clicking noises as it rolls along. They’re called Grievers: half machine, half slug-like animal. If someone gets stung by a Griever, they will have to be injected with a serum to heal them or else they will die. Getting stung by one of these creatures is not something that anybody wants to have happen to them, however. It is a painful and excruciatingly long process. The victim that is stung goes through what is known as “The Changing”. During the Changing, memories of their past life come flooding back to the victim.
When Thomas gets used to the maze after a day or two, he is sure of two things: he has had to have been here before and he has to be a Runner. His suspicions on the former are confirmed when Ben, one of the boys that went through the Changing, attempts to kill him while screaming at Thomas that “this is all his fault”. A few of the Gladers become suspicious of Thomas after this incident. However, it is when something uncanny happens that causes everyone to be skeptical of Thomas. The box begins to come up again only a few days after Thomas has arrived. Not only has this never happened before, but in the box is a girl with a note saying “She’s the last one”. For a brief moment she, Teresa, wakes up sees Thomas, yells out his name, and passes out again. Only a while later does she wake back up from a coma.
Throughout Dashner’s first book in the Maze Runner series, Thomas is determined to find a way out of the maze. He uses the help of Alby (the leader), Newt (the second in charge), Minho (the lead runner), Chuck (his first friend), and Teresa (whom with he can somehow telepathically communicate). Together they will attempt anything to make it out of the maze, even if that means sacrificing others.
I enjoy Dashner’s use of a new vernacular used among the Gladers even including new curse words. He slips in just enough twist and turns to keep you on your feet, but not too many as to make it too incredulous. I loved this book and can’t wait to continue reading the rest of the series.
TPSreads 