Opinion:
The Maze Runner, counts as The Hunger Games to dystopian literature. In a little better future certain children are locked and checked into a kind of arena. Here, they are supervised by an adult. Yet there the parallels to Panem already. There is no competition among them. On the contrary, they work together well structured in order to ensure their survival.
Of the characters none stands out particularly. They are different, but relatively flat and hardly carry out a development. You do not like them either, or flat. A special individualisation there is no but.
What can the book very well, is raising questions without providing answers. That is certainly intentional. The reader never more than the protagonist Thomas knows. I was this sometimes very disturbed when reading. Not so much because you do not always get answers immediately, but rather because I found the way of concealment partly simply unrealistic. After Thomas, for example, arrives in the clearing and understandably has questions, he gets no answers, of living in the clearing partially for two years boy. But he himself is partly unrealistic for me. Gets tired when it just comes a flash of genius, or has no desire about something for his (over) living spontaneously think important because just slightly less important interesting. Sure, so tension is built up and you read further, always in hopes of getting an answer. All in all I found the uncertainty but exaggerated and sometimes frustrating. At the end there is a small ray of hope, and we learn a little bit about this future world, but in the next moment many new questions are raised, so that we know even less.
However, this also means that they would read the second volume of this trilogy prefer immediately. Aside from the points mentioned above, the book is recommended. It reads fluently, if one has once read. The tension is not least due to the many open questions always there. The (at least in the English edition) every 5 pages starts a new chapter and 374 pages are divided into 62 chapters + epilogue, is a matter of taste. For me, it could be less. But it does not disturb the flow of reading itself.
Conclusion:
For those who like dystopias, tolerated a manageable level of violence and not too much on the resolution of outstanding issues hope a book worth reading. I'm at least curious to see if it happens similarly open in the second volume.
