The Death Cure by James Dashner

Genre: Young Adult, Dystopia, Science-Fiction

Publishing Info: 2013 by Chicken House (first published 2011)

Pages: 327

Star Rating: 3/5

Back Cover Summary:

Thomas knows that Wicked can’t be trusted, but they say the time for lies is over, that they’ve collected all they can from the Trials and now must rely on the Gladers, with full memories restored, to help them with their ultimate mission. It’s up to the Gladers to complete the blueprint for the cure to the Flare with a final voluntary test.

What Wicked doesn’t know is that something’s happened that no Trial or Variable could have foreseen. Thomas has remembered far more than they think. And he knows that he can’t believe a word of what Wicked says.

The time for lies is over. But the truth is more dangerous than Thomas could ever imagine.
Will anyone survive the Death Cure?

The Death Cure is the third and final book in the Maze Runner series. Although I persevered with the series, it has never really blown me away or done anything particularly different or interesting. At times the plot and purpose of the books seems to make little sense. Most of what kept me motivated to keep on reading was hoping to find an explanation for everything. Thankfully, most things were explained in this final book, but in some ways I was still left feeling confused.

I found myself caring for the characters more in this book, which is an improvement. It’s taken three books for Dashner to properly flesh out his characters and actually make me like and care about them. There weren’t many new characters in this book, but the ones that were new were nothing interesting or different.

The plot was okay but I found myself a bit bored in the first half of the book, wanting them to just get on with things. In the second book the Gladers went out into one aspect of the real world – the Scorch – but in this book they go to one of the remaining cities which was interesting to see. It provided a different setting and finally showed me what the situation in the real world was like, something which we didn’t have much conception of in the first and second books.

The pace picked up the second half and a found the last quarter quite exciting and gripping. I don’t want to spoil anything but I liked how the end action sequence linked back to the first book.

Frustratingly, the epilogue leaves more unanswered questions as it makes a big reveal which put a new spin on things. I think it would have added more to the plot to have this revealed earlier on in the book and see how the characters reacted to the information. Instead, we get this massive plot turn on the last page with no proper explanation or show of this. It just sort of gets put there on the last page and I was left with more questions which I knew there could be no answer to as this was the last book.

Overall the book was fairly average like the first and second ones, maybe even not quite as good as them. It provided an adequate conclusion but didn’t stun me and wasn’t overly memorable.