The Death Cure

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Appropriate for: Ages 13+

Genre: Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi

Length: 336 pages

Year of Publication: 2011

(This book is a sequel to The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials.)

It’s been twenty-five days. Twenty-five days alone in a white cell in the headquarters of WICKED. Thomas is alone—separated from his friends, the rest of the Gladers. They had survived the Scorch Trials, and their promised reward was supposed to be a cure for the Flare, the deadly disease that ravages a world half destroyed by sun flares. Before the Scorch Trials, Thomas and his friends had been told that they were all already infected by the Flare and that the cure would be given to those who survived the trek across the burning desert land known as the Scorch. But it had just been another one of the organization WICKED’s lies. There had been no cure at the end for Thomas or his friends. For Thomas, there was only his white-walled cell and three weeks alone with his own thoughts. Where his friends are—he has no way of knowing.

On day twenty-six of his solitary confinement, however, the door of Thomas’ cell opens. The man who had spoken to the Gladers before the Scorch Trials enters and tells Thomas something he doesn’t quite expect: Thomas is immune to the Flare, and he always has been. In fact, most of the other Gladers and girls from Group B are immune too. The Maze, the Scorch… it was all an experiment. It was a test performed to see how brains of people immune to the Flare react to certain variables. The goal was to find a cure for the Flare.

But every experiment needs a control group. Some of the Gladers aren’t immune. Some of them are already on their way to succumbing to the Flare—on their way to becoming Cranks. And WICKED still hasn’t found a cure.

Which of Thomas’ friends aren’t immune? And is WICKED finished messing with their brains? What more do they want with the Gladers? Can Thomas trust WICKED? Can Thomas even trust his friends? Thomas is let out of his cell and soon reunites with his friends. No more maze. No more Scorch. They must face the real world now. The Trials may be over, but Thomas’ real test is just beginning.

This third and final book in James Dashner’s Maze Runner series is yet another suspenseful and action-packed novel about the teen-aged character Thomas as he struggles for survival in the post-apocalyptic world. This time, Dashner follows Thomas and his friends as they experience the world outside of the maze and the Scorch and as they make decisions that may affect the future of the entire human race.

Although Dashner’s main focus is—yet again—on suspense, action, and intrigue, he does touch on some important life questions. The characters must determine whether an honorable end justifies the unethical means used to reach that end. They must decide if it is right to put the few at risk in order to save the many—if it is okay to endanger some people for the greater good—if it is moral to treat people like lab rats. Thomas and the other Gladers also face the question of what makes someone human. According to Dashner, the characters who have been infected by the Flare disease slowly lose their humanity until they are no longer human. Although this and other assertions in the book are contradictory to the biblical worldview, they still give readers the chance to think over important questions related to morality and human worth. They also encourage Christians to look to the Bible for the answers to these tough questions and to remember that it is the image of God in all of us—not our sanity, not our compassion—that makes us human. Although the questions brought up in this book are important for even young people to consider, the issues presented could likely serve to just confuse teen readers who blunder through this book without guidance. Therefore, teens should not read this book without either an active mind, a Bible, or guidance from an parent or spiritual leader.

The writing style is easy to read, but the philosophical questions mentioned above combined with the overall subject matter of the book make Dashner’s third Maze Runner book inappropriate for younger readers. Teens are best suited to handle the content of The Death Cure, but parents of teens should still be aware of a few content issues in this novel.

As in the previous two Maze Runner books, the characters enjoy spouting certain offensive words and phrases. The Gladers continue to glean many of the expletives from their own made-up vocabulary, but the count of widely known cuss words used by the characters continues to rise in this book. God’s name is also misused about three times. In addition to some disappointing vocabulary, Thomas and the Gladers continue to speak with a disrespectful undertone of sarcasm to pretty much everyone—even their friends. They can be especially rude to adults, most of whom are the “bad guys” in the story. To top it off, the book includes a smattering of crude humor to complement the offensive language and disrespectful bantering.

On the boy-girl side of things, there’s a bit of romance, but nothing overdone or inappropriate. Two of the characters hug and hold hands occasionally. They also kiss each other a few times—mostly on the cheek. That is pretty much the extent of the romance.  

As in the previous two books, the violence and overall intensity of the book is the main cause for this book’s PG-13 feel. To name a few of the violent and intense moments, characters are knocked out, threatened at gunpoint, and shot at. Others are electrocuted by futuristic weapons created for the purpose of stunning enemies. After being hit, the characters are overtaken by spasms as they lay helpless on the ground. One character’s leg is grazed by a bullet. A main character has a bad habit of regularly instigating fistfights with people he disagrees with. Another character shoots someone in the head and later throws a knife into an enemy’s neck. People are crushed by falling debris. Near the middle of the book, WICKED takes over a character’s control of his body and makes him attack his own friends with a knife against his will. The book also contains some talk of brain operations to remove chips inserted there by WICKED. The most disturbing elements of the story are the Cranks. The Death Cure features the creepy, zombie-like characters from The Scorch Trials—including descriptions of their not-so-hygienic bodies and of some disturbing encounters between them and uninfected characters. At one point, a bunch of Cranks swarm a car and try to get at the people inside by tearing away the windows with their bare hands. One very likeable character succumbs to the Flare and becomes a Crank himself. In addition, the huge, slimy, and dangerous “Griever” creatures from the first book return for a final intense fight. In all, the violence is at a level similar to the previous book, The Scorch Trials, if not a little higher. The death toll, however, has certainly gone up from the last book.

The Death Cure is another fun, exciting, and intense sci-fi action book—a must-read for adults and teens who have read and enjoyed the previous two Maze Runner books. Although the author doesn’t adequately answer every question raised by the previous books, The Death Cure brings a somewhat satisfactory ending to Thomas’ story. Even while the story is pretty unrealistic (as with most futuristic movies and books), the book still presents some interesting questions about right and wrong that are especially pertinent to today’s world. To those of you who have not read the previous two books, however, I would suggest skipping the series altogether and waiting for the movies. To me, reading the books was pretty much just like watching a movie. There’s not much to the stories beyond the plot and action, so you could save a lot of time—but still have a similar experience—by just watching the movies that are almost certainly going to be released within the next half decade.