Thomas doesn’t know who he is. Thomas doesn’t know where he is. All he knows is his name, and that the life
he used to know is gone.
I’m back in the Young Adult trough, and have a good one for
you today. Dystopian future novels seem
to be all anyone wants to write about lately, and this is yet another one. However, this one was much better than Gamers,
the last book I read.
So Thomas is
literally pulled into this new life in a dark cube, and the world is…small. A giant stone wall surrounds the entire
compound, though there are doors that open to an ever-changing maze. Forty or so boys make the compound their
home, but Lord of the Flies this ain’t.
It is run with military precision by a boy named Alby, with his second in command Newt.
The boys in charge use the new guy to exposit a bit about
how things work in ‘The Glade:’ Every week, supplies and things come up in the elevator,
and once a month, a newbie comes with it.
Each day, there is a group of boys that go out to the maze, mapping it
out since it changes every day. They
stay in the walls, which close at night, due to ‘the grievers,’ a monstrosity that
causes any boy it stings to go crazy unless they get a syrum that comes with
the weekly supplies. The rest of the
boys are assigned different jobs around the glade, from cleaning to animal
care, from farming to security.
Thomas takes this all in, and somehow manages not to freak
out. He does decide he wants to be a
runner, one of the maze mappers, but is shot down almost right away as being
too new. Of course, things change pretty
massively almost right away, starting with the next supply run, which includes
something the boys haven’t seen in quite a long while: a girl. Thomas and the girl have an almost immediate
connection, despite the fact that the girl is slightly comatose.
Anyway, Thomas decides the group needs to escape the glade,
and starts in earnest trying to solve the puzzle and save his new friends.
This was a pretty good dystopian future book. Thomas was mostly likeable, even if he did get
a bit whiny in his lack of memory. He
wasn’t immediately liked by all the boys, or liked at all in the case of a
couple of them, and it felt real.
The secondary characters were mostly strong as well, with
the cook named Frypan sticking out in my mind.
Thomas’ antagonist among the boys was relatively menacing, though a bit superfluous
with the oozing robot monsters.
The story was strong as well, with a good consistency throughout,
and a reveal that didn’t completely destroy the continuity of it. The worldbuilding was great as well, you
really feel as though you are in the glade.
This book did struggle a bit in pacing. The first day seemed to last at least a year,
while the escape was over and done practically before it started. The romance between Thomas and the girl,
Theresa, seemed really shoehorned in as well, like the author was going for a
slight Twilight feel, but failed miserably.
All in all, I would recommend this book if you like dystopian
sci-fi, or a good escape story.
I give it 4 out of 5 greenbeans.
“I just...feel like I need to save everyone. To redeem myself.”
Cross-posted to CBR5!
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