Dashner, James. The Death Cure. Delacorte Press, 2011. 324 pages with an appendix. ISBN 13: 978-0-375-87030-9. This book is for grades 6 and up, or ages 12 and up, depending on reading level (2 stars out of 4).

As long as I am willing and able to stand in front of a group of students and manage a school library collection (or two in my case), I hope to always remember to not apply my standards to my students’ literary choices. As an English teacher, I never liked Dickens whereas I did like Steinbeck and Orwell, but I still cheerfully taught all of them (although I must admit in my heart of hearts that I probably had more enthusiasm for The Grapes of Wrath and 1984 than I did for Great Expectations). As a librarian, I can never let my biases about literature blind me to what my students want. I walk a fine line between what is popular, what is age-appropriate, what is deemed acceptable by community standards, what is in demand, and what is reviewed a certain way or given certain awards, but what I personally like or dislike is irrelevant. Ironically, this is working against me these days, because I love dystopias and always have ever since I was a teenager, so I have to fight the temptation spend half of my budget on the ever-expanding dystopian titles available these days. I would like to cite The Death Cure by James Dashner as one of the most highly successful and well-crafted young adult dystopias, but unfortunately, after his amazing start with The Maze Runner, Mr. Dashner has disappointed me with lots of running and fighting but not lots of substance. My students who have read it disagree with me, but the story felt hackneyed. However, as I stated above, my opinion is irrelevant: I have several copies on the shelf (and on hold) and I am glad I read it, if for no other reason than to learn the answer to the ongoing series question: is WICKED good or bad?
After surviving the various tests, betrayals, and trials of the Scorch, Thomas finds himself in a room of what he assumes to be WICKED’s headquarters. During three weeks of isolation, Thomas has plenty of time to remember all of the reasons he hates WICKED (World In Catastrophe, Killzone Experiment Department) and to plan his eventual escape, but he will need help from Minho, Newt, and whoever else made it this far and was deemed worth saving. Fortunately, Thomas and some of his fellow Gladers are “munies,” immune to the virus ravaging the earth called the Flare. When Thomas and some of his friends are finally summoned by Dr. Janson (aka, Rat Man), they are given the choice to get their memories back or to remain in ignorance. Also, Thomas, always the most curious of the group, finally gets the answer to the question that has been bugging him for a while: what is the “killzone?” Rat man informs him, “The killzone is your brain. It’s where the virus settles and takes hold. The more infected the killzone, the more paranoid and violent the behavior of the infected. WICKED is using your brain and those of a few others to help us fix the problem” (12-13). Minho, Newt, and Thomas must decide if they trust WICKED and the mantra “WICKED is good” that was Teresa’s last communication with Thomas. If they do not want their memories back and they will not cooperate, will WICKED and Rat Man just walk away from the people in whom they have invested so much time and effort? If they escape, how do they get out and where do they go? The world is not a safe place, but it is unclear whether it is more dangerous with WICKED or on the outside where the Flare is turning people into flesh-eating zombies.
When The Maze Runner series came out shortly after The Hunger Games, I was convinced that James Dashner was the heir-apparent to Suzanne Collins. Sadly, however, Mr. Dashner’s conclusion to the trilogy, The Death Cure, does not have the revelatory, bigger-than-it-seems, allegorical impact of its parents, The Shadow Children and The Hunger Games. This effort is less of a cinematic triumph and more of a movie-of-the-week, satisfying enough if nothing better is on at 2 a.m. However, Mr. Dashner has shown promise and my students like his work, so I look forward to his next project.

Dashner, James. The Maze Runner. Random House Children’s Books, 2009. 374 pages. ISBN 13: 978-0-38573794-4. This book is appropriate for grades 6 and up, or ages 11 and up, depending on reading level (3 stars out of 4).

I was lucky enough to take a linguistics course while still in high school, so I have long appreciated authors who take chances with language, even if they do not always work. Some of my favorite works as an undergraduate English major—Ulysses, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, The Waste Land—all featured experiments in the structure, nature, and power of language. Therefore, when an author starts playing with language, I pay attention. Of course, to authors like M. T. Anderson and Cynthia Kadohata, beautiful, provocative language comes naturally, but some need to work at it, and I am guessing that James Dashner belongs to the latter group. Mr. Dashner creates a mini-slang vocabulary a la Battlestar Galactica (frak it!) for his new novel The Maze Runner, and I like it, even if it gets a bit stale after a while. It does manage to hide some weak dialogue, a result of the novel’s excessive length. However, more importantly, the story moves well albeit a bit slowly, and although there are many hints to the ending, it is both reasonable and well-planned. A dystopian series is clearly planned, and if the author can maintain the tension and excitement, it is welcomed as well.

Like all of the other boys before him for two years, Thomas wakes up one day in a metal box with all specific memories of his past wiped clean. Outside of the box is the Glade, home for the 60 or so boys who live there, the place inside the maze. None of the boys know why or how they are in the maze, why they cannot remember more, or the purpose of the obviously artificial environment in which they are trapped: “He remembered lots of little things about life—eating, clothes, studying, playing, general images of the makeup of the world. But any detail that would fill in the picture to create a true and complete memory had been erased somehow. It was like looking at an image through muddy water” (33). However, Thomas feels different somehow, as if he may have knowledge or experience trapped underneath the corners of his brain. He vaguely recognizes this simulation, and he somehow feels responsible for it. Thomas wants to become a Runner, a person who goes out into the maze to map it and search for an exit (the walls shift nightly and the four entrances lock each night), but the other members of the group are unsettled by the newcomer. The tension between Thomas and leaders Alby, Newt, Minho, and Gally is obvious, but if the “Gladers” are to ever get out and find the Creators to learn the secret of their enslavement, they will need each other more than they can imagine.

Suzanne Collins recently succeeded in combining science fiction sub-genres with the Hunger Games series, and James Dashner walks down a similar path. I like the way Mr. Dashner incorporates the sub-genres of post-apocalypse dystopia, the enslavement of Man by his own technology, and the boogeyman-gonna-get-ya adventure/thriller. In this case, the boogeymen are Grievers, half-man/half-machine monstrosities that live in the maze and hunt anything that moves. It is a good effort that I believe my students will like, but I fear they may agree with my overall assessment that it is too long (and they may subsequently lose interest). If the novel was 100 pages shorter, I would have felt more comfortable with the language and the Lord of the Flies mentality, but at 374 pages, it got old, like that moment you realize a movie is too long and you start wondering when you can use the bathroom instead of how the protagonist will solve his problem. But the themes of isolation, feeling lost in a confusing world, and not being able to control one’s environment will resonate in students’ brains, and I admit that I am already looking forward to the sequel and making my own guesses about the next installment, the standard mark of a successful series starter.