Review of The Death Cure by James Dashner

It’s the end of the line.

WICKED has taken everything from Thomas: his life, his memories, and now his only friends—the Gladers. But it’s finally over. The trials are complete, after one final test.

Will anyone survive?

What WICKED doesn’t know is that Thomas remembers far more than they think. And it’s enough to prove that he can’t believe a word of what they say.

The truth will be terrifying.

Thomas beat the Maze. He survived the Scorch. He’ll risk anything to save his friends. But the truth might be what ends it all.

The time for lies is over.

Let's have a ranty spoilery angry collection of text about this stupid book and I'll throw it under a spoiler warning so no-one has a temper tantrum. Also if you're of a sensitive disposition and don't like people dissing authors or swearing, not scrolling is self care.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

This series is so shit it makes Wither (aka The Chemical Garden) series look like high quality writing. What a load of crap that was - by the way if you've ever seen Lauren Destefano go OFF about someone who called one of her book covers "that green thing", that was me. I don't care. It looked crap. I only asked because I was trying to work out if the green was a green screen and they were adding the real background later. I need to make a shelf of authors that should be banned from writing equipment.

I have PMS and a fever and I am in a mood. This series was supposed to be my escape from the swollen throat, bloody mucus and constant nose blowing I'm experiencing. Much like Wither, the first book held Huge Promise for the rest of the series and then after that the author was like, oh wait I have to write sequels after the first book? Whoops I forgot how to write.

My biggest issue with The Scorch Trials was that it suffered heavily from Second Book Syndrome but had Very Easily Fixable problems. For example, Dashner decided to just basically wipe out pretty much all of the Gladers save like... idk 5 with names and a good 6 others. So it would be obvious to basically everyone to bring these characters, and the characters from Group B, to the forefront and flesh them out to increase tension in the story? But nah. They were literally only mentioned as "other Gladers" and didn't even had cardboard substance they were just... there. In comparison Hunger Games did this very well, introducing new characters each book that were well fleshed out and memorable.

Group B in this book don't really exist. While a few of them got names and no personality in the last book, this book they disappear fairly quickly with Teresa, again, mimicking the plot of the second book because Dasher wants his characters to run away from having personalities. But honestly I find Teresa Annoying As Hell so I can't complain too much.

The biggest issue I had was a huge moment at the beginning where the Gladers were told they would get their memories back. Thomas and I presume Minho get theirs later but this is never mentioned. They got the chip out and nothing. I wanted that moment of them sharing stories of their childhood and we never got that. We didn't even get to find out their real names, even though it was mentioned earlier on that they're all named after important historical figures by WICKED. Hopefully that's fixed later but fixing it in a prequel is a "whoops I forgot" moment for sure.

I felt absolutely nothing when major characters died that I originally cared about in TMR. Literally, nothing. It was more of a "there goes another one" and move on. The story lacked all compassion or great moment for them, unlike Chuck. Again, the first book.

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW WOAH

Also that ending? Well humanity is fucked lol but we put all these immune people on a nice field - which is never really explained because isn't the world supposed to be suffering from extreme weather patterns? But WICKED just saved this nice patch of grass with a river just in case? Lol wut? Also we never really saw any real reaction from Thomas when Teresa died Cersei style cos he'd already replaced her with Brenda...?, because for some reason Thomas needed a woman to stroke his ego for three books. Honestly that whole scene was saccharine.

It gets 2 stars because going back to the Maze was actually A Good Idea.