The Maze Runner

Maze Runner, Book 1

By: James Dashner

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's Summary

Book one in the blockbuster Maze Runner series that spawned a movie franchise and ushered in a worldwide phenomenon! And don’t miss The Fever Code, the highly-anticipated series conclusion that finally reveals the story of how the maze was built! When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers - boys whose memories are also gone.  

Outside the towering stone walls that surround them is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out - and no one’s ever made it through alive. Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying: Remember. Survive. Run. 

The Maze Runner and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, and Maze Runner: The Death Cure all are now major motion pictures featuring the star of MTV's Teen Wolf, Dylan O’Brien; Kaya Scodelario; Aml Ameen; Will Poulter; and Thomas Brodie-Sangster.   

Also look for James Dashner’s edge-of-your-seat Mortality Doctrine series!  

Praise for the Maze Runner series: 

A number one New York Times best-selling series 

A USA Today best seller 

A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of the Year 

An ALA-YASLA Best Fiction for Young Adults Book An ALA-YALSA Quick Pick   

“[A] mysterious survival saga that passionate fans describe as a fusion of Lord of the Flies, The Hunger Games, and Lost.” (EW)   

“Wonderful action writing - fast-paced…but smart and well observed.” (Newsday)

“[A] nail-biting must-read.” (Seventeen)   

“Breathless, cinematic action.” (Publishers Weekly)   

“Heart pounding to the very last moment.” (Kirkus Reviews)   

“Exclamation-worthy.” (Romantic Times)   

“James Dashner’s illuminating prequel [The Kill Order] will thrill fans of this Maze Runner [series] and prove just as exciting for readers new to the series.” (Shelf Awareness, starred) 

“Take a deep breath before you start any James Dashner book.” (Deseret News) 

©2009 James Dashner (P)2009 Listening Library

The Maze Runner

For a person who hates books this was amazing. I am 13 and this book was perfect for me. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. I was up all night listening and loved it all.

Navigating the maze

"Maze Runner" begins with a teenage boy waking in a moving cargo elevator. He can not remember anything about his life prior to that moment, except he knew his name was Thomas. All of his other memories had been erased. Many things brought about a faint recollection but remained just outside his grasp, like looking at images through an opaque glass. The elevator was moving up, and at the completion of this journey the doors at the top were flung open and a rope was lowered to bring him out.

Thomas found himself in an immense square courtyard surrounded by massive walls. In the middle of each of the four walls was a doorway, which he later found led into the maze. He met Alby, the leader, and second in command Newt. All the inhabitants were teenage boys, perhaps 60 total, and ranged in age from about 12 to 18. He had many questions, especially since his memories were gone, but Alby acted like answering questions were an inconvenience he didn't have time for. Newt was a little more accommodating, but for every question he answered Thomas thought of two more. As it was getting late, Thomas was told to get some sleep and he would be shown around the next day. Chuck, the previous "newby," was to find him a place to sleep.

From what Thomas was able to piece together, some of the boys had been there for as long as two years. They had runners out in the maze every day, looking for a way out. The other boys all had jobs to keep busy. Farmers, butchers, carpenters, and more, the little community was almost self sustaining. Once every month a new boy would arrive, Thomas being the latest. Once a week supplies would arrive from the creators, the name the boys gave to their keepers. At the end of each day, the runners would come back and make a map of the portion of the maze they explored. They found that the walls of the maze moved from day to day, making it more difficult to find the solution. At sunset, the walls next to each doorway would slide closed and seal the courtyard.

On his first night there, Thomas was taken to a window to look into the maze. He got his first glimpse of the grievers, a combination of animal and machine. About the size of a cow, the grievers had no discernible head or tail. They had robotic arms with tools attached which could maim or kill. The arms could be extended or retracted at will, as well as small spikes which the creature used for locomotion. If a person was stung by a griever, they would have to take a serum or face death. The serum caused what the boys called "the change" and consisted of about three days of painful withdrawal like symptoms. However, the change would bring some of the victims lost memories back. The grievers could appear at any time, but they always came out at night. Therefore, the two most important rules were 1) stay out of the maze unless you are a runner, and 2) under no circumstance get caught in the maze at night.

On Thomas's second day in the glade, as his new home was known, everything changed. The siren sounded announcing the arrival of another new member. There had never been more than one arrive per month, let alone on consecutive days. Also, this time it was a girl, another first. She was somehow familiar to Thomas, but remained just outside the grasp of his memory. These were not the only things to change. Thomas knew he was there for a reason, but again his lack of memory confounded him. Working with his new found friends, and against his enemies, Thomas must help find a way out of the maze. Time was running short and failure meant a certain death.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this dystopian view of the future. I especially liked the memory wipe and finding out things as Thomas himself was. The cause of the world's problems is very believable and actions of those pulling the strings were understandable, if not loathsome. The action flowed smoothly and the book was hard for me to put down. I would put this on par with the hunger games, although I will have to finish the other two books in the trilogy to get a more complete picture.

Good book, though a little long

I listened to this book on a long car trip with my wife and two kids (boy 12 and girl 10). We felt the story started quickly enough, and within 30 minutes all of us were into it (except my wife --- more on that later). There were parts of the story that were too intense for my daughter, who asked us to turn it off a couple of times because she was getting scared. She is a very mature 10 year old, so I would say 10 is the absolute low end of ages for which this book might be appropriate. In retrospect, I wish I had picked another book for her.

The performance was good. The reading was lively enough to keep us interested for a long book. His voices for the characters were also nice, except that his voice for the one female character sounded more like baby talk than a 16 year old girl. Additionally, sometimes the perfomer's voice didn't match the excitement in the story. Overall, though, the performance didn't detract from the book.

While overall we liked this book very much, parts of the book seemed to drag on without advancing the plot quite enough, and the ending was not quite up to the same quality as the rest of the book. Except for that, it would've been 5 stars.

As an aside, my wife didn't listen to the first 2.5 hours of the book. After a 2 minute catch up from my son, she was able to jump right in to the book after that time without really missing anything.

Great Book

It started out a little slow. Thomas was confused, the gladers were confused, I was confused. A lot of questions that no one would answer -- and that was a little frustrating. However, once the clues started to emerge and Thomas began getting bits and pieces of his memory back, my curiosity was on fire. I had a hard time putting my MP3 player down. I went everywhere with it, listening to the Maze Runner, hoping the mystery would reveal itself. These poor kids never got a break. That means I never got a break. And when it was all over, I was exhausted. That is the sign of a successful storyline. I immediately downloaded the Scorch Trials. I hope there's a 3rd book soon.

Great Storyline and a Fun Read

Being 38 years old, I'm not exactly the author's primary target audience, nonetheless, I found this book a very fun listen. I found myself sitting in my car for quite some time just to hear a bit more before having to go into work or into a store. The story flows well, without any real dragging portions. I did find myself predicting the story line a tad bit on several occasions, but Dashner usually threw in a bit of a twist that kept me on the edge of my seat. This is definitely a book that will have you coming back for part two when it is released.

30 hours before the end...

None of these books are self contained. You have to read all three to figure out what is going on. Do you remember that game from teenage slumber parties where one person starts the story and when timer goes off another takes over and each tries to out do the other and it twists and turns and is seldom satisfying? Yep.

So I felt like these are the rules the slumber party storytellers worked with on this book:
Given 50 teenage boys with no memory of their past and place them in a "Hunger Games" type environment.

1) What is the worse that could happen? For sure that will happen. 2) Choose someone to die and then tell how you feel about it - make the hero do it too. 3) What is the stupidest choice - take it. 4) Imagine a monster or zombie creature a 5th grade boy would sketch and turn it loose. 5) Use "I'm going to count to ____ and then I am going to ______ ." 6) You are going to be knocked out using _____, (its OK if you use poison food a lot cause we never learn from experiance). 7) Make sure you use lots of our secret swear words so moms won't ban this book 8) Have a chase or escape scene using ______ 9) Have a battle using _____ for weapons. 10) Change the location from one extreme to another. 11) Blood, gore, amputations, running over people, stabbing, assisted suicide... yep that is the start.

Then Go back to number 1 and repeat over and over and over...

So the first book had a lot of potential and if it had a closure point I would have liked it... but by the end I couldn't stand the series... and I loved Hunger Games.

1st book is pretty good. Downhill afterward.

Is there anything you would change about this book?

As a stand-alone book, I'll give this one 3 stars (good but not great), but the series as a whole is another matter. I got through the first book and thought "yeah, it's ok. I'll move on to the second." BIG BIG mistake. Now I want the whole 9+ hours of my life refunded! I'd like to tell the author that you only get to cycle the same storyline once (maybe twice in the case of the Hunger Games quarter quell), but try to do the same redundant thing THREE TIMES, and you owe your readers (listeners) that time wasted.

Would you recommend The Maze Runner to your friends? Why or why not?

Nope. Because, then you'll be compelled to check out the second. That's when you'll get disappointed.

Any additional comments?

Despite lamenting purchasing the books in the long run, I thought Mark Deakins gave a very nice performance with good range, nice transitions between dialect and narration, and well-executed changes in voice tone and accent for different characters.

Exciting premise, but sadly stretched too thin.

Young Thomas wakes up in a strange world populated only by boys, with no memory whatsoever of his former life. The boys all give him a hard time for being the newest arrival, and don't seem inclined to help him figure out where he is or how things work in this alien place. Their small community is protected inside an enclave, where they farm and keep the place ship-shape, but outside the gigantic walls which open at dawn and close with dusk, is a great maze filled with danger and gruesome beasts which are half machine and half living creatures. A band of boys called The Runners have the dangerous mission of daily exploring the giant maze and trying to find exit points. But the maze changes every day and after several years, and the monthly arrival of a new boy, nobody has found a solution to set them free, and they still have no idea what they're doing there. Thomas is convinced he must join the Runners as he thinks he'll find the clues they need; one of the boys swears he's seen Thomas before and treats him with contempt and suspicion, though Thomas has no idea why; is it possible he's already been here before his memory was erased?

The premise was exciting and there were great story elements here, but somehow, not much was going on and it seemed stretched quite thin, and some of the writing was so bad I kept wincing and rewinding to make sure I'd heard right. This is the first book in a series, but it stops here for me.

Good book, but a bit violent

This is definitely an older young adult book, theres quite a bit of violence, death, etc. The violence is mostly heroic though, not senseless - except in one situation where one of the bad guys commits an outright murder. It reminds me somewhat of the Animorphs books I read as a kid, they also had an incredible amount of violence, and the protagonists were even younger than in this book, but it (and this) didn't glorify the violence at all - it was just a tragic necessity.

As to the plot, it looks promising. About half way through I decided the best way to describe it was "Like Ender's Game on a bad LSD trip." It also has a bit of a "Lord of the Flies" feel to it however. There are a few things that are somewhat dissatisfying, but not terribly so. I did get a little frustrated by how nobody seems to want to answer any of the main character's questions (he has to pry every scrap of information from them) - but on reflection this does strike me as how a clique-ish group of kids would act towards a newcomer.

Give it a read, and if you are buying it for a kid read it through yourself first if your worried about the violence (also, the violence is the only thing that might not be age-appropriate).

Apparently, really smart kids are really stupid.

I was an "exceptionally intelligent" teenager. I imagine my teenage self reading this novel and being grouped in with the characters in this story. I think I would have been horribly insulted. The author must think that all kids are idiots. Yes, teenagers make bad decisions. But they are capable of learning from their mistakes, and figuring out puzzles without someone having to spell it out for them in great detail. He says these kids are smart, but they can't solve problems that kids half their age could easily tackle, if they were "exceptionally intelligent."

Add on top of that a terribly annoying overuse of made up swear words (I shucking hated that clunk so much that it made me want to go kiss a griever, dude!), a dull protagonist that was basically unsympathetic for most of the novel, teenage kids that frequently act more like 8 year-olds, characters that inexplicably blame each other for things entirely outside their control, change their minds frequently and radically within a single scene, and just generally don't act like real people, and a series of horrifying violent events that the characters only seem to care about for moments, and you have an extremely frustrating novel.

I forced myself to listen to the end (after all, I spent a credit, right, and surely the author was going to make sense of it all in the conclusion, or at least have the protagonist progress in some way), but I certainly won't waste my time or credits on the sequel.