(This review may contain spoilers).
I bought this book quite a while back, after having watched and thoroughly enjoyed the movies, but it’s taken me a while to get round to reading it.
I did really enjoy this book. Even though I had a broader sense of knowledge about what was going on, due to having seen the movies, it was easy to engage with the Gladers and how the memory loss affected them in their society. I really liked seeing how they’d formed a sufficient community and even though Thomas was clearly the main character, there was enough detail about the other characters that I felt like I’d got to know them too.
I found it really easy to empathise with Thomas in this book and it was really good to see how he attempted to adapt to life in the Glade. Chuck alternated between annoying and endearing; just like a little brother.
I liked being able to see the depth to the book characters that the film hadn’t been able to show. However, by the end of the book, I kind of went off Alby; and I disliked Gally right from the start.
Another character I wasn’t especially sold on was Teresa. I would have liked more background and depth to her rather than just the stereotypical, ‘Thomas feels drawn to her for some reason’. I did really like both Newt and Minho and I especially liked seeing how they both interacted with Thomas.
It was a little more difficult to get a handle on the Maze; which made sense, as it was supposed to be constantly shifting and changing. As this was expanded upon in the book, I was disappointed to realise that the film makers had allowed much of the depth to the maze to fall by the wayside.
One of the strongest descriptions in this book was the Grievers. The maze was the unknown danger, while the Grievers were a physical manifestation, even though there was still a lot of mystery surrounding them.
All in all, I found this book an engaging read with a main character I could really care about. Despite having watched the next two movies, I plan to read the next books in this series, so I can see more of the world and the characters created by the author.
Ink of Blood 