“After struggling for so long to remember his life, his family and childhood – even what he’d done the day before he woke up in the Maze – the idea of having it all back was almost too much to comprehend. But as it sank in, he realized that something had shifted. Remembering everything didn’t sound so good anymore. And his guy confirmed what he’d been feeling since the Rat Man had said it was all over – it just seemed too easy.”

Thomas and his friends escaped the Maze and survived the Scorch. They thought the trials were over, that they’d get their memories back and everything would be fine. But Thomas knows that something’s not right, and he knows that if he gets his memories back he won’t like the person he used to be. He knows there’s something the Rat Man and the other Creators aren’t telling the Gladers, but he doesn’t want to stick around long enough to find out what that is. When he breaks away from WICKED and tries to survive in the real world, he discovers just how badly the Flare has affected everyone else, and he knows the Trials wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Thomas believes that the Trials were doomed from the beginning, and nothing WICKED or anyone else could have done will save the human race from extinction. Nothing.

The Death Cure was an okay ending to an okay series, but I found I was disappointed with the book as a whole. While Dashner’s writing definitely improved from book one to book three, the overuse of certain phrases – “or so,” for example, which seemed to pop up at least once every two pages – was distracting, as was his insistence that his core characters remain in the dark about their pasts. The characters that did regain their memories were absent for a large chunk of the story, and when they became relevant again they didn’t share their knowledge with Thomas, which meant they didn’t share their knowledge with the audience. When the previous two books left loose ends, I was annoyed but knew there would be another book to follow, so I just waited to see what would happen. There is no book to follow Cure, though, so I was extremely frustrated by the questions that were never answered, particularly the ones that have been floating around since The Maze Runner.

In all I found The Death Cure to be a disappointing end to the series only because it left so many questions unanswered. I would not recommend the series as a whole because of this – I know I’m not the only one who finds continual cliffhangers aggravating. The Maze Runner Trilogy is an unsatisfying read because there really is no point to them; other dystopian novels usually have a moral or a warning of some sort, but this “moral” is weak and unmemorable, and many could argue that the point is hard to discern. I say pass on the series as a whole, but if you’ve already read the previous two, this one won’t have the answers you’ve been wanting.

I GIVE THIS BOOK THREE OUT OF FIVE STARS

I GIVE THIS SERIES ONE AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE STARS