Mith's Bookshelf

Imagine that -

1. It is sometime in the future.
2. A deadly disease called the "Flare" has been spreading rapidly through the human population; a disease the attacks your brain and eats away at it, slowing turning you into a cannibalistic monster - called a Crank by the others - until you are no longer the person you had once been.
3. You are a sixteen-year old who is one of the very few people immune to the Flare.
4. You, along with a group of sixteen-year olds like yourself (who may or may not be immune to the disease as you), have been recruited by a mysterious Company who erase all your memories and subject you to a twisted experiment, watching you and noting down your reactions to the different "variables" they throw into the "experiment", and looking for some pattern, any pattern, that explains away the mystery as to how the disease doesn't affect some people. ALL done in the name of finding a cure for the Flare.
5. You can't trust anyone - not even your best friend.
6. You escape, and are on the run with your friends, fighting for your survival every step of the way.
7. One of your friends isn't immune to the disease and you have to watch him spiral rapidly into madness, and, in his moments of clarity, hear him beg you to kill him before the disease completely takes over.
8. The Immunes are being kidnapped by the mysterious forces and the world is slowly being taken over by the Cranks, who are attacking everything that moves, and then possibly eating it.
9. It's up to you to find the cure, the Death Cure.


This book scared the crap out of me. If I had a refrigerator in my room, I would've have gotten up and put this one in the freezer every few minutes! I stayed up all night to finish it and I'm sure I'll be having recurring nightmares for the rest of the week. Dashner doesn't mince words when it comes to describing Thomas's dystopic world. His words paint a vivid picture of the hopelessness and utter horror of the entire situation. Every time the Cranks come onto the page, you feel like you've been punched in the gut - the brutality, the violence, the nausea-inducing gore of it all, drains you emotionally.

Extremely well written, Dashner draws you into his world with his words. Throughout the book you're with Thomas - you see everything through his eyes and feel everything along with him. You share his confusion, his fears, his helplessness, his despair and his losses. Dashner doesn't hold back, quite a few people die near the end - and in the most brutal way possible. The ending is a bit LOST-like. Half of the questions you might have had from the previous books go unanswered, but I didn't mind it so much (It's not the "why" that's important, it's the "how").

I might need to re-watch all ten seasons of FRIENDS or re-read the HP series just to get over this book. Absolutely gripping! A fitting end to the trilogy.