Review: The Death Cure

Title: The Death Cure
Author: James Dashner
Publication Date: 2011
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction

Synopsis from Goodreads:

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.

My Thoughts

I'm not sure how to feel about The Death Cure. For the most part, I enjoyed the first two installments of this trilogy, so I was expecting that this would be some sort of grand finale to the whole thing, that after reading this, everything would just fall into place... but that didn't happen.

The story basically revolves around Thomas and his friends escaping and finally taking action to bring down WICKED. The group goes to Denver to find answers and make a plan, which they manage to do with the help of an anti-WICKED organization called the Right Arm. Now all this is intriguing enough to read about; the thing is that by the end of the book, there are still so many things left unresolved! I would think that with this being the last installment, there would finally be explanations for all the questions posed by the previous novels, but no. The ideas just keep on piling up, and they don't even really tie all that well together. The characters get their version of a happily ever after (if it can even be called that) while us readers are left hanging. I don't see how that's fair.

Speaking of the characters, there is once again almost no character development here. Being with these people for three books should have made me so much more attached to them. I guess I have some fondness for Minho and Newt, and I gained some appreciation for Teresa, but the other characters? Not so much. None of them ever really got the chance to make an impact on me, and I just find that sad, because I think I would've liked them had I been given more insight into what they’re really like.

Considering that there was so much potential behind the idea for this series, it’s a bit of a downer that it was ended this way. Nevertheless, it’s a decent read with its own strong points as well (there’s a lot of action and a few sad moments here and there), and I don’t regret trying it out.