Book review: The Maze Runner
May. 1st, 2014 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seerofbread(Whoops I've been inactive again. Will I work on that after this? I don't know, but I REALLY have to whine about this book.)
If you're looking for a plethora of strong female characters, look elsewhere. I've only read the first book so I can't say if it's ultimately worth it because there are so many in the next books, but nobody even outright says why there are no girls, they just accept it? It's weird and I personally don't think it has any qualities that QUITE make up for the horrendous failure here.
Also, dystopian fiction in limited third-person past-tense is surprisingly disorienting for me suddenly. Generally speaking, I found the writing style a little clunky but mostly acceptable. A bit gratuitous on the fight scenes, I think--by which I especially mean that it was a little nit-picky (which was sort of necessary given the nature of the combat but still) and when fight scenes get nit-picky I give up on keeping track of things because I usually will be proven wrong anyway. And for some reason every Plot-Significant Noun has to be Capitalized despite having Pretty Precisely the Same Meaning. (I can get the Glade and the Maze, maybe the Box, but then you get into like Changing and the Serum and Med-jacks ???? Is This Even Necessary) I also felt a lot smarter than the characters at some points which is always sort of frustrating.
Here's the best thing I can make of a silver lining: It's a quick read, reasonably fast-paced (though I wasn't really feeling it in the action scenes as much). The main character actually seems to manage to at least temporarily fill all his quadrants, which I'd be more invested in if I liked him more but hey free shipping. Also, cool imagery for people who like Shingeki no Kyojin, definitely 10/10 there. And there are 50-60 male characters in the Glade which means that statistically there should be 5-6 gay male characters, which will cover most combinations of male characters, so if anyone tells you that your that your favorite slash ship is impossible because of how uncommon gay people are, they're wrong and you're right, please rec me some fics if you find any.
And the single best thing: It's short enough to read in a day so I didn't have to be disappointed in it for very long.
There is literally one girl in the entire book. ONE GIRL, who JUST SO HAPPENS to be the ROMANTIC INTEREST. She spends half the book in a coma, the only physical descriptions of her emphasize that she's beautiful (and obviously without makeup here! I bet that detail will magically be irrelevant in the movies!), and when the moment comes for her to save the day it's actually the "lame younger brother" character who helps her into it. I can't say that she was totally useless, but ultimately she functions much more as a source of deux ex machina than as a cool character, and I'm kind of pissed about that.
Why is she even the only girl? I'm hoping that this book was for one "maze trial" and that they'll meet some people from a girls-only one (possibly with key plot point "the leader's boyfriend") that'll balance things out later. I might look for spoilers on the series for this--I'm probably not going to continue reading it without some promise of a bit more diversity. In some ways this might make me shallow, but in other ways I think that there should be a bit more pressure out there for more good female characters. And, just, I wasn't that impressed in the first place, so pretty much anything would be better.
Like how about the WICKED acronym? It might have been luck (I'm often slow at these things) but particularly considering that these people are supposed to be particularly clever I think that they should have been able to figure that out at some point in two years. Same with looking at the maps, and PUSH as a command instead of a word--like I know that Homestuck has made me more sensitive to this but IT'S THE ONLY WORD THAT ISN'T FIVE LETTERS, you don't think that's A LITTLE STRANGE? This is a human-made test, you are metaphorically lab rats and they put you in a maze, do you really think this is below them?
Basically I'm super unimpressed and don't think I'll be looking for the next book. If it stumbles in my lap I probably will because it should be fast and I'm a sucker for completion, but, just, meh. It's not that great to me.
If you're looking for a plethora of strong female characters, look elsewhere. I've only read the first book so I can't say if it's ultimately worth it because there are so many in the next books, but nobody even outright says why there are no girls, they just accept it? It's weird and I personally don't think it has any qualities that QUITE make up for the horrendous failure here.
Also, dystopian fiction in limited third-person past-tense is surprisingly disorienting for me suddenly. Generally speaking, I found the writing style a little clunky but mostly acceptable. A bit gratuitous on the fight scenes, I think--by which I especially mean that it was a little nit-picky (which was sort of necessary given the nature of the combat but still) and when fight scenes get nit-picky I give up on keeping track of things because I usually will be proven wrong anyway. And for some reason every Plot-Significant Noun has to be Capitalized despite having Pretty Precisely the Same Meaning. (I can get the Glade and the Maze, maybe the Box, but then you get into like Changing and the Serum and Med-jacks ???? Is This Even Necessary) I also felt a lot smarter than the characters at some points which is always sort of frustrating.
Here's the best thing I can make of a silver lining: It's a quick read, reasonably fast-paced (though I wasn't really feeling it in the action scenes as much). The main character actually seems to manage to at least temporarily fill all his quadrants, which I'd be more invested in if I liked him more but hey free shipping. Also, cool imagery for people who like Shingeki no Kyojin, definitely 10/10 there. And there are 50-60 male characters in the Glade which means that statistically there should be 5-6 gay male characters, which will cover most combinations of male characters, so if anyone tells you that your that your favorite slash ship is impossible because of how uncommon gay people are, they're wrong and you're right, please rec me some fics if you find any.
There is literally one girl in the entire book. ONE GIRL, who JUST SO HAPPENS to be the ROMANTIC INTEREST. She spends half the book in a coma, the only physical descriptions of her emphasize that she's beautiful (and obviously without makeup here! I bet that detail will magically be irrelevant in the movies!), and when the moment comes for her to save the day it's actually the "lame younger brother" character who helps her into it. I can't say that she was totally useless, but ultimately she functions much more as a source of deux ex machina than as a cool character, and I'm kind of pissed about that.
Why is she even the only girl? I'm hoping that this book was for one "maze trial" and that they'll meet some people from a girls-only one (possibly with key plot point "the leader's boyfriend") that'll balance things out later. I might look for spoilers on the series for this--I'm probably not going to continue reading it without some promise of a bit more diversity. In some ways this might make me shallow, but in other ways I think that there should be a bit more pressure out there for more good female characters. And, just, I wasn't that impressed in the first place, so pretty much anything would be better.
Like how about the WICKED acronym? It might have been luck (I'm often slow at these things) but particularly considering that these people are supposed to be particularly clever I think that they should have been able to figure that out at some point in two years. Same with looking at the maps, and PUSH as a command instead of a word--like I know that Homestuck has made me more sensitive to this but IT'S THE ONLY WORD THAT ISN'T FIVE LETTERS, you don't think that's A LITTLE STRANGE? This is a human-made test, you are metaphorically lab rats and they put you in a maze, do you really think this is below them?
Basically I'm super unimpressed and don't think I'll be looking for the next book. If it stumbles in my lap I probably will because it should be fast and I'm a sucker for completion, but, just, meh. It's not that great to me.
