Scorched and dead

Imagine a world destroyed by solar flares hitting the earth. In order to control the population, the remaining functional governments release a deadly biological weapon - a disease called the Flare. In obedience to the law of unintended consequences, the world is still in ruins, but now is also overrun by murderous, insane people, or "cranks," infected with the Flare.

This is where Thomas and his friends find themselves in the second and third books in the Maze Runner trilogy, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure. Thomas and his surviving friends think they've escaped the Maze and WICKED, only to find themselves given another trial, this time in the Scorch. The Scorch is a burned-out wasteland of searing heat, dust and deadly electrical storms. The boys have two weeks to get to the safe haven while trying not to die from the elements or get murdered by cranks or a rival team of girls. In the third book, finally out of the clutches of WICKED, Thomas and his very few remaining friends must defeat their former captors and save the world. But is that even possible?

I do enjoy post-apocalyptic novels. While, The Maze Runner was my favorite of the three books, the last two were very good also. The characters are easy to care about. It's interesting to think about what decisions I'd make in those situations. Thomas has to do some horrible things to survive, and it's written well enough that I felt his pain. As he gradually regains some of his stolen memories, Thomas learns that he is somehow responsible for the trials and experiments and deaths of his friends. Now that he knows what he's done, he must decide what kind of person he'd like to be. He realizes WICKED is not good. How can a group of people decide that's its all right to put a bunch of teenagers through hell? How do these teenagers rise to the occasion and make the difficult decisions necessary to survive. What if they can't survive the Scorch or the Flare?

In the end,whatever the disease, death is always an effective cure. Even after the cure, there is always a way to begin again.

More Mysteries, Sucker Punch and The Hunger Games

I haven't seen a ton of movies since my last post. In fact, I'm worried that I won't make it to 50 movies this year, which would really surprise me because I thought it would be so easy to watch that many. Anyway, here's my recent new-to-me movies:

Watched:

The Hunger Games – I read the books a couple of years ago, and I tried to put them down when I got to the point where it starts to be clear what’s going on and the extent of the disturbing-ness. But I just had to finish and to find out what happens. I also thought, when I heard they would make a movie, that there was no way I would watch it, too disturbing, but something about it just sucked me in. And I have to say, I really liked the books, and the movie was very satisfying and true to the feel of the book. I would not tell anyone to read the books or watch the movie, but I did enjoy them, which makes me feel a little guilty. After all, at the same time that The Hunger Games is in the news, so is Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, with his child soldiers kidnapped from their homes and forced to commit atrocities. Yeah, I don’t blame you if you don’t want to have anything to do with the books or movie.

Sucker Punch – visually interesting, I like the idea of the layers of imagination that the character retreats into in order to deal with her environment, but a lot of the themes were pretty weird and disturbing.

Gosford Park – I was expecting a lot more from this movie. Maybe I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped because we were playing Scrabble at the same time, and I find it hard to do both of those things at once, but we can’t just play Scrabble, because that is too boring for Lovemuffin, but Lovemuffin knew whodunit right away, and I had no idea what was going on most of the time. So what I'm trying to say, is that I'm not sure what to say about this movie. 

As for the books read since last my post, I’ve been on a mystery novel kick, and tried out two new-to-me authors.

Read:

Confess, Fletch (Gregory McDonald) – fluffy, short, interesting protagonist... but I didn’t love it and probably won’t read more of his stuff.

E is for Evidence (Sue Grafton) – Interesting that this mystery novel doesn’t start out with a murder as the mystery, there is a murder or a few later on, but it’s not the initial mystery to solve. This is the first Kinsey Malone book I’ve read, and it was okay, I might pick up more of these alphabet mystery books for road trips, easy to read, and pretty satisfying.

Nemesis (Agatha Christy) - Not my favorite Agatha Christy book so far. It’s okay, but just didn’t do it for me.

WICKED is good

I just finished reading The Maze Runner by James Dashner. By the end of the book, I wasn't sure that WICKED was good at all, but fortunately, there are two more books in the trilogy and this year there will also be a prequel, so I'll have multiple opportunities to find out.

The book begins when a teenager named Thomas, that's all he knows about himself, wakes to find himself trapped in a maze with dozens of other boys. The boys have been trying to escape the maze for two years with no luck when Thomas and a comatose girl arrive and they all learn this is the beginning of the end. They need to escape the maze or die.

This is a young adult novel, and I found it very enjoyable. The pacing and tension were good and the characters well developed, especially for a bunch of characters who had no memories of their lives before the maze.

The author is a fan of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, and this book is similar in that a group of adults have decided to test a group of children to see if they are suitable for some unknown, but very dangerous, purpose. A theme I think will be explored in the remaining books is whether the end justifies the means. The Creators, who sent the boys to the maze and have done horrible things to them, seem to think (or at least say) that they are doing this for the good of the world. I don't generally think that the end justifies the means, so I'll be interested to see where this goes.

It's well worth the read. You can learn more about James Dashner and his books at: http://www.jamesdashner.com/.