The Kill Order by James Dashner
Genre: Young Adult, Post-Apocalyptic
Publishing Info: 2013 by Chicken House (first published 2012)
Pages: 331
Star Rating: 2/5
Back Cover Summary:
Sun flares have unleashed devastation on the earth. Mark and Trina were there when it happened, and against the odds they survived.
But now a violent and high contagious disease is spreading like wildfire. Worse still, it’s mutating, and people are going crazy. Mark and Trina will do anything to save their friends – if only they can avoid madness and stay alive…
The opening few chapters got my interest, and I wanted to know more. I wanted to keep reading to find out why the virus was happening. The opening action sequence was exciting and gave me high hopes for the rest of the book. Unfortunately, it didn’t continue as well as it started.
The plot is vague. It just didn’t really go anywhere. Despite the constant action, I lost interest because there wasn’t anything else to keep me engaged. There was a lot of action, maybe too much. The action scenes become quite repetitive. Some of them were hard to follow. There was a scene at some kind of base, where I just couldn’t visualise the awkward attempts at describing the characters’ surroundings and spent a few chapters feeling confused because I couldn’t visualise what the characters were doing. In a couple of places, Dashner made the odds the characters had to face (e.g. the number of enemies in a fight) so difficult that it seemed unrealistic for them to get out of those situations.
The fast pace also meant there was little time to develop characters. As with the Maze Runner trilogy, most of the characters were bland, and the book lacked any kind of character arcs. Only Alec’s personality came through, but only through repetitive emphasis on his characteristics.
I wasn’t keen on the flashbacks, but that may have been to do with the way they are written. The narrative switches to present tense for the flashbacks. Dashner’s writing seems to read even worse in present tense than it does in past tense. His writing is simple, which I didn’t have too much issue with in the other books, but for some reason in this one it’s very clunky. I also felt the dream flashbacks didn’t add anything that couldn’t have been conveyed in other ways, such as through Mark’s thoughts.
There is a strange prologue and epilogue with Teresa and Thomas which doesn’t connect much with the main story. I wasn’t sure why Dashner wrote this book. It showed more about how the virus broke out, which was interesting, but beyond that I didn’t see the point. If I hadn’t previously read books by the same author, I likely would have given up on it, but as I enjoyed The Maze Runner, I thought I would give it a chance and read to the end.
After finishing the book, I did an internet search to find out how the book connects with the main series. I felt there must have been a bigger connection. It turns out one of the characters from The Maze Runner is in The Kill Order. Was I supposed to remember one tiny bit of dialogue from the main trilogy? I don’t even remember reading the bit of information that shows the connection to the character. Maybe I missed something totally obvious, and I’m the odd one out. There was nothing in The Kill Order to suggest one of the characters was one from the main trilogy. I think there is too much reliance on memory of a small detail included in the other books. If I had to do an internet search to understand what I was reading, then it was too subtle.
I would have enjoyed the book more if I’d realised the big connection to the Maze Runner trilogy. However, the book and characters should have been able to stand on their own without reliance on the connection to the main series. The fact that only understanding the connection to the Maze Runner trilogy character would have made me care about the characters and plot, just highlights how flawed The Kill Order is.
Book reviews of the trilogy:
The Last Book On The Left 