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3.39 AVERAGE
3.39 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I enjoyed this prequel as its own standalone story and it gave some back story to the world of The Maze Runner. The prologue and epilogue felt really disjointed from the rest by referring back to Thomas and Teresa because they didn’t relate to this story at all. This was action packed, so I sped through it. Some aspects did still feel unexplained and so I would have appreciated some more time spent on explaining some unanswered questions. I was a bit underwhelmed with the ending of this one, felt a bit lost at what had just happened.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Kidnapping, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Pandemic/Epidemic
Too much action compared to lack of action in first book.
You ever read a series of books, love it, and try to read a sequel or prequel hoping to tie some loose ends? Well, this my friend, was not the book to do that. I seem to have gotten more confused and more questions than I did before. It seemed rushed to me and just too much at one time. So much is going on that I feel like the purpose was drowned out by the unneccesary action. I was okay with them not being about Thomas or the guys because I thought they were going to eventually connect back to them but nope. Disappointed.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
3.5? Fun and plot-y. I liked Mark and Alec a whole lot.
Rating: 2.5 stars
Review: While traveling on the subway during an ordinary day, a natural disaster alters the future of humanity forever. Solar flares kill or maim most of the people on the surface in an instant, and those underground or deep inside buildings suddenly need to find ways to survive in an environment that is too harsh to live in directly due to radiation, and too violent to trust anyone outside the immediate groups that form as a defense against other groups doing the same. This is revealed in a series of flashbacks in nightmares experienced later by teenager Mark, who has settled into somewhat of a family group with two older, former military people and some younger like him, including his school crush from the "normal" times.
Unfortunately, the relief from terror was only temporary because now they face a new threat: some survivors have targeted the rest of the refugees and are attacking them from the air with darts that kill. As Mark and the others flee from the slaughter, their only thoughts are escape. But when some of their group begin to get sick as a secondary reaction without ever having been hit by a dart, Mark and his friends start connecting the events, and then they get angry. As they start searching out the source and reason for the attacks, they uncover a plan of survival desperation, with Mark and his new family on the wrong list.
Written after his popular Maze Runner series, this is meant to be an origin story of sorts for the events of that series. Though I haven't read the series, I was hoping that reading the prequel wouldn't require that I had. I don't know now if that was a good plan. My interest in the series has been tweaked, so I've now added it to my list for future reading but I wonder if I would have liked the prequel better if I'd read it after. I was surprised by the violence of this story, though perhaps in the era of Hunger Games popularity and other post-apocalyptic tales, I shouldn't have been. It felt a bit like we were moving from one fight to another, especially during the latter half; I wonder if it would have seemed different had I read it rather than listened to it.
The audiobook was read well, with slight alterations in tone and pitch to reflect differences in characters speaking, but I think it may have impacted my enjoyment of the story. I think part of the problem was the method of telling the start of the issue in flashbacks that were broken up by the "current" story. Since the prequel was already telling an origin story, having another origin story buried within it felt like too much bouncing around, especially as I was listening rather than reading it.
I didn't feel satisfied when the book ended, and I'm not sure why, but it felt a bit like the story wasn't fully told. Since this was apparently meant to do just that, provide some answers to how things got started before the Maze Runner events, I don't know that it was successful. Having read some reactions from people who read this after the series, I get the sense I'm feeling much the same that they did, so it doesn't seem to be just me. I'm still intrigued enough to keep the series on my radar for reading eventually, but I think I'll skip audiobook and try reading it directly.
Review: While traveling on the subway during an ordinary day, a natural disaster alters the future of humanity forever. Solar flares kill or maim most of the people on the surface in an instant, and those underground or deep inside buildings suddenly need to find ways to survive in an environment that is too harsh to live in directly due to radiation, and too violent to trust anyone outside the immediate groups that form as a defense against other groups doing the same. This is revealed in a series of flashbacks in nightmares experienced later by teenager Mark, who has settled into somewhat of a family group with two older, former military people and some younger like him, including his school crush from the "normal" times.
Unfortunately, the relief from terror was only temporary because now they face a new threat: some survivors have targeted the rest of the refugees and are attacking them from the air with darts that kill. As Mark and the others flee from the slaughter, their only thoughts are escape. But when some of their group begin to get sick as a secondary reaction without ever having been hit by a dart, Mark and his friends start connecting the events, and then they get angry. As they start searching out the source and reason for the attacks, they uncover a plan of survival desperation, with Mark and his new family on the wrong list.
Written after his popular Maze Runner series, this is meant to be an origin story of sorts for the events of that series. Though I haven't read the series, I was hoping that reading the prequel wouldn't require that I had. I don't know now if that was a good plan. My interest in the series has been tweaked, so I've now added it to my list for future reading but I wonder if I would have liked the prequel better if I'd read it after. I was surprised by the violence of this story, though perhaps in the era of Hunger Games popularity and other post-apocalyptic tales, I shouldn't have been. It felt a bit like we were moving from one fight to another, especially during the latter half; I wonder if it would have seemed different had I read it rather than listened to it.
The audiobook was read well, with slight alterations in tone and pitch to reflect differences in characters speaking, but I think it may have impacted my enjoyment of the story. I think part of the problem was the method of telling the start of the issue in flashbacks that were broken up by the "current" story. Since the prequel was already telling an origin story, having another origin story buried within it felt like too much bouncing around, especially as I was listening rather than reading it.
I didn't feel satisfied when the book ended, and I'm not sure why, but it felt a bit like the story wasn't fully told. Since this was apparently meant to do just that, provide some answers to how things got started before the Maze Runner events, I don't know that it was successful. Having read some reactions from people who read this after the series, I get the sense I'm feeling much the same that they did, so it doesn't seem to be just me. I'm still intrigued enough to keep the series on my radar for reading eventually, but I think I'll skip audiobook and try reading it directly.
This was a really good book. I could really tell that Dashner planned out everything in the story. All actions seem deliberate and flow very nicely together. The book was very paced out which was refreshing. I loved the overall story, vibes, and characters. I know this is a prequel to the Maze Runner Series, but I was still confused in some parts. I feel like you have to read the main series before picking up this prequel.
The only good part about this book is its short chapters.
Stop me if you've heard this one before:
The Kill Order was about 300 pages too long, and it's only about 325 pages.
The book begins with Teresa watching Thomas undergo the procedure by which his memories are erased, and then thrown into the lift to be delivered to the Glade. Then we flash back to thirteen years before that, to a bunch of unrelated characters as they endure the actual sun flares and the virus called the Flare. They might be mentioned in book two or three of the series, but I didn't pay close enough attention to remember.
The whole Mark/Trina/Alex/Lana/etc. story, which is really 95% of the book, was just not that interesting to me. I wasn't clear why we were following these people, what they had to do with the Maze Runner series, or why we should care about them. I'm still not clear.
And then the ending
As this was being billed as 0.5 in the Maze Runner series, I had expected a story about the creation of the Glade and its creators, especially given the prologue. That the story wasn't felt kind of bait and switch-y to me.
The Kill Order was about 300 pages too long, and it's only about 325 pages.
The book begins with Teresa watching Thomas undergo the procedure by which his memories are erased, and then thrown into the lift to be delivered to the Glade. Then we flash back to thirteen years before that, to a bunch of unrelated characters as they endure the actual sun flares and the virus called the Flare. They might be mentioned in book two or three of the series, but I didn't pay close enough attention to remember.
The whole Mark/Trina/Alex/Lana/etc. story, which is really 95% of the book, was just not that interesting to me. I wasn't clear why we were following these people, what they had to do with the Maze Runner series, or why we should care about them. I'm still not clear.
And then the ending
Spoiler
flashes forward two years after Mark et. al and eleven years before the prologue. But the entire epilogue is one scene: a boy (who we find out, in the last sentence, is Thomas) being taken from his mother by the unnamed authorities.As this was being billed as 0.5 in the Maze Runner series, I had expected a story about the creation of the Glade and its creators, especially given the prologue. That the story wasn't felt kind of bait and switch-y to me.