Time to knock this out.

Newt comes out of the meeting to tell Thomas that all of the Keepers have agreed to the plan, but convincing the rest of the kids will be difficult.  …wait, what?  I feel like this book is skipping steps in its haste to get to the end, or maybe I am.  First we had Thomas tell us quite spontaneously that there’s some sort of shut-off control for the grievers down in their hole, and now we’re being told that for some reason all of the kids have to go down in there?  Why?  Where does “take absolutely everyone” fit into the “shut off the grievers” plan?  If you can turn off the monsters with only a handful of kids, then do that and let the others follow at leisure.  If you need everyone for this plan, then tell us why.

Thomas knew he was right about the Hole, the code, the door, the need to fight.

TO FIGHT WHAT?  The whole point of the code they’re talking about is to shut down the only monsters that are in this story so far, so what are they needing to fight?  They’d talking about this with such certainty, but they have no information that would make them this certain.  If they’re just thinking “we should be prepared because who knows” then that’s one thing, but that’s not what’s going on here.

Everyone runs around the rest of the day getting ready for a fight, and Thomas and Theresa slink off together to chat in private.

“Whoa. World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department. WICKED. WICKED is good—what I wrote on my arm. What does that even mean?”

…that whatever that organization is, you should trust them?

I mean, of all the things going on in this book, that’s probably the most straightforward.

Thomas also talks to Chuck right before they leave.

“Don’t forget my promise. You can still plan on it.”

Oh, Chucky, you’re so dead.

Thomas felt a rising tide of worry that somehow Alby was unstable, that somehow he’d screw everything up. He decided to watch him carefully if he could.

Subtle.

We’ll be fine. Just stay close to me and Minho.

Ah, my Knight in Shining Armor. What, you don’t think I can fend for myself?

Actually, he thought quite the opposite—Teresa seemed as tough as anybody there.

Things Theresa has done:

Be in a coma.

Be in a jail cell.

Talk, but only to people already willing to listen.

She hasn’t even had much attitude, since almost every time we see her she’s one-on-one with Thomas or else going along with the flow.  She’s not had to defend herself – physically, verbally, or emotionally – throughout this book.  The only thing that was a problem for her was everyone thinking she was bad news and wanting her in jail, and she sort of shrugged and said “yeah, okay, if you insist.”

Finally it’s time for everyone to run through the maze.

And so it went for him as they kept moving, those Gladers not used to running such distances gasping in huge gulps of air.

Why are you guys running?  No, really, why?  You don’t have some specific time frame you’re working within.  If you need to be there by X hour, then why didn’t you just start earlier?  The doors have been open for days, so it’s not like you had to wait.

When they get to the cliff, they see that all the grievers are just sitting there waiting for them.  Then more grievers show up from various corridors to keep them all blocked in, but they don’t attack, they just wait.

Alby goes ‘trance-like’ and runs straight into the lot of them, for which he gets griever-piled.  The kids, hoping that the grievers are still operating on the ‘one kid a night’ rule, figure this is their chance to go, but no such luck because now the grievers are all attacking.  I guess they were just politely waiting for Alby to wrap up his subplot?

They decide to try and plow through the monsters to get Thomas and Theresa to the hole so they can do the shut-off code.

“We head straight for the Cliff! Fight through the middle, push the shuckin’ things toward the walls.

Noooooo!  Going through the middle of the pack means fighting deadly monsters on both sides.  Going along a wall means fighting deadly monsters on one side and having a non-deadly wall at your back.  Come on, guys, you’re supposed to be smart!

The kids and monsters meet in a bloody fight, but it’s really hard to tell what’s going on in it.  There’s plenty of talk about the sounds of screaming and how it’s all chaotic, but I still have no idea what happens to a griever when it’s hit with a barb-wire-wrapped shovel.  Do they bleed?  Does nothing happen?  Do they rip the squishy skin off and find machinery underneath?  Are the kids getting spiked?  Do the grievers fight back or do they just roll around with their spikes out?  Do they have mouths?

Now, these questions should not be answered right now.  It would slow down the narrative and make what should be a tense scene into a boring one full of overwrought descriptions.  HOWEVER, that’s exactly why it’s important to properly set things up.  If we had seen a smaller fight earlier in the novel, perhaps with one griever and a smaller group of kids, that’s the kind of fight where descriptions are appropriate.  And if we HAD seen that fight, we would have a mental picture of how kid-griever fights go, and then we could carry that picture with us into this fight.  But we didn’t get that, so now we’re stuck with a bloody battle that we can’t even imagine, and not in a good way.

This is what editing is for, people.  This is why, if you write yourself into a corner, you should go back and fix what came before.

Thomas, Theresa, and Chuck all reach the hole and jump through it. They wind up in a dark room with slimy walls and a computer in the corner, so they figure that’s where they need to put in the code.

The whole place is sparse and the “oily” walls make it sure seem like there’s nothing ever down here except grievers, so why is there a computer as well?  The only explanation is that it was put there specifically for the kids when they figured all this out, which means they were supposed to figure it out, the scientists expected them to.  And, really, they should have done so without prompting because none of these clues were that hard.  Sure, I’d forgive passing them over at first or second glance; I’m not saying they should have been immediately obvious to everyone.  But after two years?  Among boys hand-picked for having higher intelligence?  This is not two year’s worth of hard, this is two months, tops, and even that is allowing time to get over the “WTFBBQ” phase.  Maybe three months, if they need to wait to see the maze repeating itself.

No wonder the scientists sent in special snowflakes; I bet they got bored and sick of waiting.

A griever drops in on them, and Thomas fights it off while Theresa enters the code words.  We do finally get to see the mono-a-mono fight that should have come before the big battle.  The thing turns out to be disgustingly easy to fight off, provided you have a weapon that lets you stay out of spike-range.  (Thomas has a long spear.) 

So these things are dumber than dirt and they can have their mechanical arms ripped off?  Why was anyone afraid of them, again?

Thomas kills the monster, Theresa figures out how to input the code, and all the rest of the grievers turn off.  The other kids come down through the hole and report that the grievers upstairs are also turned off, but a full half of their number was killed.

…Thomas defeated a griever going one-on-one in the space of about two pages.  The battle upstairs was 12-15 grievers vs 40 kids.  HOW DID HALF OF THEM DIE?

Thomas mentions being distraught over that for about one sentence and then the story moves on. 

Because apparently all you have to do is mention that you’re upset, even if nothing about your actions, outlook, or mental state actually changes.

Because that’s all the death of 20 kids counts for in this book.  A mention of sadness.

Fuck, those kids didn’t even get names before they died. 😦

They all move on and head down the only exit, a hallway that ends in a freakishly long slide.  The slide ends in a room that has about 20 adults, each pale and emaciated and sitting behind their own window.  The creators.  But none of them are moving (possibly  not alive?), and everyone gets distracted by a woman that walks in and congratulates them all.

“Welcome back,” the woman finally said. “Over two years, and so few dead. Amazing.”

BULLSHIT.

The woman then reveals she brought Gally into the room with her.  Because apparently we haven’t finished assassinating his character yet. Poor Gally tries to warn the others that “they” are controlling him, before he goes all trance-y and pulls out a knife to throw at Thomas.

Chuck dives in front of him and takes it instead.  Wow, sure didn’t see that one coming.

Thomas, in a fit of rage, attacks Gally.  Why not attack the woman?  She’s clearly in control, and Gally just got done struggling to tell them that he’s being controlled in an attempt at warning.  But no, let’s attack the “crazy” “bully” and not the obvious person in charge.

You’re supposed to be smart, Thomas.

The others pull Thomas off after he beats Gally for a little while.

In the Glade, Chuck had become a symbol for him—a beacon that somehow they could make everything right again in the world.

SHOW, DON’T TELL.

We never saw this.  Thomas spent most of the book either annoyed at Chuck, actively avoiding him, or using him.  The only times we saw anything like this, it was very isolated and an abrupt change in tone and attitude.  There was no hint of any sort that Chuck was important at all to Thomas, and even the bits of promising that we saw were self-contained and didn’t affect his thoughts or actions except when he was talking directly to Chuck.

Then a bunch of rag-tag newcomers burst in and kill the woman.

Did we stumble into another book?  We’re less than three chapters from the end, and every bit of this is new.  Like, “okay, we finished that, time for the next.”  There was none of this in the rest of the novel, no hints or breadcrumbs to follow.  This isn’t the culmination of events that happened before it, nor is it the result of the plot.  There was some alluding to the fact that the world outside the maze sucks, but no part of the plot was ever about figuring that out or dealing with it or even preparing for it.  So all of this here?  This is the start of a new plot being shoved into the ass-end of the old plot.  It shouldn’t be here for the simple fact that nothing that anyone did before now brought this about or affected it in any way.

If it were a twist, that would be one thing, but a twist is not the same thing as an entirely new element.

The newcomers tell the kids to follow them and lead everyone to a bus outside.  Just before he gets on the bus, some random old woman tackles him and screams about how Thomas is going to save them all from “the flare” and not to trust whoever these new people are.

She gets dragged off, only to run back again after the bus starts so she can get run over.

While on the bus ride, they do get the start of an explanation.  Apparently we’re in a post-apocalyptic world where the ecosystem was destroyed by massive sun flares.  Now there’s some sort of sickness that people are calling “the flare” that…  ….  …

As the ecosystem fell apart, it became impossible to control the sickness—even to keep it in South America. The jungles were gone, but the insects weren’t.

A sickness that is spread by jungle bugs?

Maybe?

All bugs?

“Bugs” as in germs?

I don’t understand that sentence.  Book, if the rainforest burns up, everything in it also burns up.  The insects that live there are adapted to that environment; they can’t just pack up and move to a new home.  That’s the opposite of how destroying the rain forest works. 

Are you saying that the rainforest is gone, but on a completely unrelated note: there are other bugs still on the planet?

Are you saying that the sickness is spread by insects and the only cure for it could have been in the rainforest, but oops that’s gone now?

“As for you, all of you—you’re just a few of millions orphaned. They tested thousands, chose you for the big one. The ultimate test. Everything you lived through was calculated and thought through. Catalysts to study your reactions, your brain waves, your thoughts. All in an attempt to find those capable of helping us find a way to beat the Flare.”

…the flare is an illness, and you don’t exactly need a trial-by-fire to find people willing to study an illness in order to find a cure.

This group apparently agrees with me and broke in there to stop WICKED from doing pointless tests on small children that have nothing to do with the plague currently destroying humanity.  Fair enough.

The bus finally stops at some dorm building that’s all be set up for them and there’s even some staff there to help them out and feed them pizza. They all sit around and chat for a while about how weird everything is and how sad it is that Chuck and the rest died and then they go to sleep.

The last-page epilogue is a memo from a WICKED executive more or less saying that the experiment was a success, the “rescue” was planned and is part of a phase-two, and also there was another maze with another group of boys.  Which I think is a pretty decent hook for the next book, or it would be if I had any desire to keep reading about shitty logic holes and idiots claiming to be smart and textbook-tells.

However, I do not.  Goodbye, Maze Runner!