The Death Cure by James Dashner
Genre: Dystopian
Published by: Chicken House
Pages: 325
Format: E-Book
Rating: ★
Series: The Maze Runner (#1) | The Scorch Trials (#2)
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

All was for nought, my friends. I have finished the trilogy in exactly the same place as where I started: knowing nothing about anything. After ‘The Scorch Trials’ ended, probably with Thomas being knocked out because that’s his favourite state of consciousness, I thought: ‘Am I finally going to get some answers?!’ Turns out, the answer was no. So, here I go, with my one star review. There WILL be spoilers from here on out.

Problem One
First of all, let’s get straight in there and talk about Newt. Newt was ‘The Glue’. He was one of the four developed characters of this series, but had the Flare. And he wasn’t immune, like the rest of the four. You knew he was going to die. That’s what happened to Cranks: they went crazy and died. So, for Thomas not to accept this, was only natural. No one wants their friends to die. BUT, did Thomas really have to go back for Newt three or four times? I didn’t like how Thomas didn’t respect the boy’s decision to not be around his friends. If no one likes the thought of death, they’re not going to want to see it happen. Newt’s ‘death’ stretched out for the whole book, and left me desensitised to the whole issue, because it was going to happen, no matter what Thomas or anyone else did.

Problem Two
Next, there’s Teresa. She told so many lies in the second book, even I found it hard to discern what was real and what was false. Did she ever really love Thomas? They’re relationship was never really cemented to begin with, only a notion of a past life. That’s one of the reasons why I felt OK with Brenda. Can you really love someone you don’t know? So, when Teresa met her untimely end, I was like ‘She didn’t have time to redeem herself!’ but also ‘That’s a convenient way for Tom to be with Brenda.’

Problem Three
Don’t get me started on Gally. Didn’t he die in the movie? How are they going to bring him back?! So, Gally turned up in the safe city, working for the rebel group that wanted to bring down WICKED and their experimentations. Is he good? Is he evil? I don’t know. It was weird. I expected Alby to turn up, suddenly revived and raring to go…it didn’t happen.

Problem Four
Was WICKED good or was Teresa just crazy? I’ve seen some reviews that say they loved the grey areas of this series, that in the end, no one really knew whether Teresa was telling the truth. Sure, it was nice to see that not everyone is either good or bad, and there are always going to be some people with more radical idea (like cutting out someone’s brain?!) but for me, this series really didn’t cut it.

Problem Five
The ending was messy and optimistic. Throughout the whole book I didn’t understand the logistics of the location. If a save haven existed to begin with, why couldn’t the human race just have been put there at the start? It might have been because I skim read the books, but I felt that people giving this book five stars reviews must have read something I missed. None of my overall questions were answered. Everything was just so unsatisfactory. I just can’t, so, I grant ‘The Death Cure’ only one star.