In my last post, I talked about my recent love for fantasy. Another genre that I’ve picked up on is Dystopian Fiction. It’s interesting–when I was growing up, the future still looked bright. We had The Jetsons, we had Back to the Future. Even Jurassic Park had some cool technology…even if it was horrifying.
What does the future look like in today’s Young Adult fiction? Let’s see…we’ve got The Hunger Games and Divergent. The Giver is making a comeback. And now, The Maze Runner by James Dashner.
Holy Cow is this book scary! Think Lord of the Flies, only where the boys have absolutely no memory of the life before they came to the Maze. The world they live in is not a friendly one, but the society they’ve built is day-to-day functional. They are basically hamsters in a box, and they know it. Enter Thomas, whose very existence seems to shake everything up, but no one has any idea why. The Ending is coming.
While HG and Divergent were mostly feminine based, this is YA written for a male audience. I think it’s very successfully done, and I’m interested to see what the target audience does with it. The movie is coming out soon–which I’ll be honest, is why I picked it up–so we’ll be hearing about this a lot very soon. It’s following on the shirttails of the Divergent release too, so there are going to be some big comparisons.
It’s worth the quick read, at the very least to stay culturally relevant. It’s an exciting book, and definitely not a boring read. I’ll read the next two in line once my turn is up on the library holds list, but I won’t rush out and buy them.
Thoughts?
As I Lay Reading 