2025 Reading Challenge discussion

This thread is to discuss The Death Cure by James Dashner, the third book of the Maze Runner series.


Pages: 325 pages


Length: 1 Month (June)


Participants: Sunshine, Frezita, D.L., Bobbi, Eirelyn, Pervinca, Shantanu.


Everyone reads at their own pace during a Buddy Read. Because participants can be at different parts of the book at different times, it is extremely important to mark spoilers so that the book is not ruined for someone who is not as far along as others!!!

Mark spoilers by placing {spoiler} before the text and {/spoiler} after the text but use the < and > instead of the { and }.

Hello everyone ,
Its been more than a year since i read the previous book in the series , The Scorch Trials , so the story and the details have become a little fuzzy , but while reading the death cure i am starting to remember a lot , i have finished chapter 1 and it seems great.

Hi everyone! I must confess i read this book in may, after finishing the second book in the series, since i really wanted to know what happened.
I liked this book better than the previous one, there is more action and we finally get why certain things have happened (in the past, regarding the illness and the labyrinth). The characters are far more likeable (specially Brenda, who i despised in the previous book but liked in this one).

That being said, this series has disappointed me a bit. Even though we get some explanations of why things are happening other things that really should have been explained remain unexplained (view spoiler)[ (like why the trials are important, how are they obtaining info from them, Thomas's role in all of this, etc) which makes everything feel a bit worthless. Plus, there are some deaths just for shock value. (hide spoiler)] And Theresa and Tomas never have a conversation about what's going on and about their past, which is something i've been wanting since book one

I decided to read this series because it was very popular back in the day, and i throughly enjoyed the first two movies, so i wanted to read the books before watching the last ones. I think now that the movies are a bit better, the books had a good premise but were not as well executed as they could have been. And i'm not sure i like the author's writing.

That being said, i may read The Fever Code, just to see if it gives me some of the answers I'm looking for, but i don't think i'll read any other precuel or sequel in this series (if anyone is interested in reading it with me, let me know)

I am finishing up another book now, but I plan to start this one next week. I'm going on a trip and will be spending several hours in the car. Unfortunately, I can't read in the car without feeling sick, so I fully intend to experience this one via audiobook. It'll be my first audiobook ever! :D

I started this one on my trip. I was able to procure some anti-nausea wristbands ahead of time which actually allowed me to read the book in the car without feeling sick! :D I'm still not finished, though, but now that I'm back home...hopefully I'll get through the rest of this soon.

I just finished!

I have to say, this book was way better than The Scorch Trials. This one had a real plot & the characters actually made decisions that affected them (rather than in the previous book where things just happened to them & they had no real effect on the plot themselves).

With that being said, this is one of the very few series I've read where I actually enjoyed the movies way more. I felt like this book series was all over the place, that things were thrown into the mix just for the sake of adding action or intrigue, and that a lot of things were left up in the air. The whole thing felt disjointed and chaotic.

(view spoiler)[Also, Newt's death felt rushed. I mean, we knew it was coming for a while (since it was mentioned right at the start of this book that he was infected), but then he was suddenly taken away & we barely saw him until he came back to Denver where Thomas had to kill him. It felt abrupt, and I didn't feel connected to that scene at all. I felt like Newt's character wasn't focused on enough throughout the series for me to feel as much for him & his death as I wanted to (especially considering I really did feel for him in the movie).

Theresa's death also felt rushed. They were escaping, she was crushed, and then Thomas got pulled away before he could even fully react to it.

The ending also had me a bit underwhelmed. They basically averted disaster by going through a portal into paradise? What? It had this feeling of "oh no we're about to die, fight fight fight, aaahhh, Theresa's been killed, okay we're fine now, & everything is hunky dory." It was a very strange, abrupt way to end things. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, this book was better than the previous one, but it still felt rather chaotic. Personally, I feel like the movies capture the essence of this world much better -- the characters are developed way more, & the plot is tighter & better put together. But the movies wouldn't exist without this book series, so I'm glad Dashner created it.