The Death Cure

Title: The Death Cure
Author: James Dashner
Rating: D

Although I was somewhat disappointed with the first book (The Maze Runner) in this series, I was pleasantly surprised by the second book (The Scorch Trials) and had hoped that this series would end on a high-note. Sadly, this book failed to meet those expectations.

After the first two books' long drawn-out series of adventures with few explanations for the mysteries surrounding the Maze, the Flare, WICKED (the list of unanswered questions in the series could continue for quite some time), I was hoping this last book would magically take all these random puzzle pieces and create some amazing unforeseen conclusion. Instead, the novel wandered aimlessly while neither answering the questions raised in the previous books nor creating a solid conclusion to the story-line.

The basic plot is that a portion of the "maze" group from WICKED's research project managed to escape and return to the outside world (to Denver of all places.) The remainder of the book is largely a back and forth asking, "Is WICKED good or evil?" Although the teens (or subjects as WICKED would call them) never really learn the true answer to that question, they eventually have to pick a side during the final battle between WICKED and a resistance group.

The Good: Perhaps the best part of the book is the fact that it finally ends The Maze Runner series (I really wish I had just stood with my original decision not to read the last two books - dang you Overdrive for your limited collection of YA downloads!) The book does at least answer a few of the questions from the first books (though surprisingly most of the real questions weren't even answered until the epilogue, and only then with merely sentence or two in passing...)

The Bad: While I have obviously not been a huge fan of this series, the first two books were at least fairly well-written, fast-paced adventure stories; this book was all the more disappointing in the fact that is lacked both the pacing and organization. (At the halfway point, I was really asking myself, "Isn't something more going to happen in this book?") This book failed to address many of the questions raised throughout the series, while only providing a quick (and seemingly poorly thought-out) ending to the overall storyline.