Review-The Maze Runner

With the movie coming out this book seems to be thrust into the spotlight more and more recently, so after having seen the trailer and met the author I decided to actually read the book in preparation for the September 19th movie release.  Surprisingly in the five years that this book has been out and the three years the series has been finished I don't think I've come across any major spoilers for the series, unlike say, for The Hunger Games.  While the underlying plot, a teenager in a dystopian world who becomes the catalyst for change, isn't overly original the surface plot, boys trapped in a maze full of monsters that changes every night, is wholly original.  One thing that stuck me as odd was that while reading most books it takes me only a minute or so to read each page, while in this one it felt like it took me at least twice as long.  I'm not sure why this is, I suppose it might be because I was attempting to solve the mystery in the book before the characters did (and if you're wondering I did not), and while it wasn't unpleasant it was slightly frustrating in the sense that it seemed to take me longer than I thought it would to read the book.  Overall I was pretty happy with how the book played out, and while there were a few things I was expecting to happen because of the trailer (don't kill me for saying that) I feel like everything that Dashner did in this novel worked well.  The biggest complaints I've seen for this book in particular is the lack of character development and the excessive use of slang swearwords.  For me I didn't have a problem with either of those things because the book itself takes place over less than a month (and really, how much do YOU change in a month, especially if you're in a crazy high-stress environment 24-7), and if you're in said environment and are a teenage (actually any age) you would probably swear a lot, so the fact that Dashner managed to incorporate swearing into his novel without actually swearing was pretty impressive in my mind.  Now that I've read the book I'm even more excited to see the movie, which I hope to do opening weekend before school starts, and now I really wish I could jump into book two instead of having to read other books that need to be reviewed before they come out.  Dystopian fans are sure you enjoy this novel and as an added bonus it's a great book for males to read.  Action reigns supreme and romance definitely falls to the way side, although I can see where it might come into play later on.

4/5 dust spirits