The Death Cure by James Dashner

Wow, how disappointing. Granted I found the series just average anyway, with the first being the most interesting, but this one just completely fell flat for me. Still, I'll put my usual disclaimer here, don't bother reading this one unless you've read the others. This series is meant to be read in order.

Having defeated the trails by Maze and the barren land known as the Scorch, Thomas and the other survivors are taken to WICKED headquarters. There, they are presented with the opportunity to regain the memories taken from them, but Thomas is suspicious. He hatches a daring plan to escape, but with all the variables that are presented by WICKED, he's never sure he's doing what he's supposed to do, or what they have planned for him. And as the disease known as The Flare keeps spreading, will they even have enough time to come up with a cure.

I didn't really have any compassion for Thomas at all in this book. Nothing he did was logical or made any sort of regular sense. It's like he was just doing things to keep the plot moving without rhyme or reason. And everyone else kind of fell into the backdrop as a result. Characters that were such a big part of the first two novels barely got any time in this one and I think it really lost something because of that. The only other character that really had any time in the book was Brenda, and even she wasn't the character that we were familiar with from the previous book. It might as well have been another person.

The plot also didn't have much of a point. The ending was a cop out in my opinion, but I won't say anything further than that as not to spoil it for anyone. And the variables and trials made no sense whatsoever even after the end of the novel where you would expect it to be explained. It's almost like Dashner didn't think that part out and had to throw something together to at least make an ending. And it doesn't work. There is a lot of violence in this book too, and while some of it is appropriate, some of it just seemed meaningless, like filler. If I have to summarize everything about this book, it just didn't provide satisfying answers.

Not a good ending to the series and as a result not a series I would particularly recommend. There are better dystopians out there.

The Death Cure
Copyright 2011
324 pages