** spoiler alert ** I enjoyed most of this book. Seriously, I did. The concept is smart, the writing style is pleasant to read and the characters are fairly detailed. But, there were quite a few issues that were sometimes hard to look past.

Firstly, the beginning was TERRIBLE. I was SO close to giving up on it, because at first it seemed like a clone of Lord of the Flies, and I hated all the characters. But, it managed to pick itself up around 18% through and started to become enjoyable.

I think what made the beginning so painful was the slang. Since authors aren't allowed to publish swear words, (that is another rant which would probably make this review too long to post), the author had to use slang, like klunk, greenie, shuck, and all sorts of other words which made the begging as hard to read as trying to chop down a tree with a spoon. Once you get used to the slang, it’s fine, but the author used it WAY more in the first few chapters then the rest of the book, which seems backwards. Seriously, some of the sentences were, “You’re the klunk, shuck-face.” and, “He's a klunk, so he’ll be a Slopper,”. From what I can tell, klunk is used interchangeably as sh*t , fu*k, and cr*p, while shuck seems to mean idiot. While slang is understandable, especially in a closed community such as the glade, it would be nice if the author didn’t seem to lean on them so heavily in the first few chapters. Also, how is “greenie” related to being the newest person? And what is a shuck? If you’re going to invent slang, it should be justified, like klunk was (Which, in case you’re wondering, is the sound poop makes when it hits the pot).

Now, on to the middle. The middle section of the book was intriguing. Out of everything this book has, the plot is the best thing it has going for it. It manages to keep you interested. Once I was around half way, I finished the book in half the time it took me to read the first half.

However, there were quite a few things that drove me CRAZY. The characters are all very, very stereotypical. Thomas, the main character, is your stock nice guy. Newt is your basic “reluctant guy who’s in charge”. Gally is your classic evil villain who is completely despicable in every way and is trying to fire up a mutiny. Alby never really does much. And Chuck, oh, Chuck. Chuck is Piggy from Lord of the Flies, except not universally hated. There is nothing remotely original about the character of Chuck, chances are you’ve read (or watched) about him many, many times in your life. He’s the classic irritating but likeable fat kid that is desperate and clingy to be “cool”. For this reason, I never remotely liked Chuck, I saw him as something you had to read through to get to the good parts of the book. Another thing that really irritated me is that all the characters have perfect bodies. All the guys (except Chuck) are tall, muscular (we are always told exactly which muscles are bulging [This author really has a thing for the word bulge]), have amazing stamina, and everything else wonderful. For some reason, this author also likes to mention veins quite frequently (13 times to be exact), and always seems to describe when veins are bulging or when arms are veiny, or basically anything else. I was half expecting him to throw in, “As Minho lifted the bread to his mouth, the veins pulsed in his hands.” We are also constantly reminded of how oh so breathtakingly beautiful the girl, Teresa, is, with her amazing blue eyes and her amazing perfect lips and her absolutely amazing complexion and how everything is just so so amazing about every little inch of her body.

It seems that for every fantastic plot twist this book offered, it had to throw in one, completely cliché piece. Seriously, it’s like the author went on TV Tropes and decided to cram in as many tropes as possible. After all the intrigue of the maze and the code words, was the best he could come up with is A FREAKING COMPUTER TO TYPE THEM INTO? Seriously, there were so many places you could go with that, but no, let’s just stick with the oh, so magical computer. But that was ok; I managed to make it past that failure with minimal pain, to the final scene where they were standing in the room by the wall of the creators. Ok, cool, a little nonsensical, but cool. (Why would the creators all stand behind a glass wall just watching them? Why not just have cameras?) But then, Gally (who we just had to hate a little more, because he just wasn’t quite evil enough) was hypnotized into throwing a knife at Thomas. To make this scene worse, the author described it in SLOW MOTION. I’m not joking. It was actually written in slow motion. Chuck, diving through the air, knife spinning, hitting Chuck who then fell to the floor. It was so cliché I actually let out a small yell of rage. You knew Chuck was going to die, it’s part of his character, so it wasn’t really a surprise. But, to make an already cliché death worse, he had to save Thomas from a slow motion knife. That completely ruined the ending for me, leaving what can only be described as a sour after taste for the rest of the book. Then, a bunch of random rebels popped in, shot the place up, hauled the Gladers into a bus and took them to dorms where they ate pizza and then slept. Then, in the ending that tried desperately hard to be shocking (it was even written in evil internal memo style), the rebels turned out to all part of the experiment. This ending wasn’t shocking for many reasons. You knew the rebels weren’t what they seemed from the start, for a few very obvious reasons.

1. These WICKED people seem pretty loaded with cash. Wouldn’t they have some sort of security system? Or at least bullet proof glass.
2. As the rebels were driving away, the drove over and killed an old woman. No nice people would do that.
3. They didn’t really get much of an explanation, other then, “Oh, we just want to get to the Alps (or some mountain range, at that point in the book I didn’t really care) because we want to save children.” When really, what the WICKED people were doing is trying to solve the uber plague, which I’m pretty sure benefits everyone.

There are plenty of other reasons, but I’ll leave it up to you to think about it.

I know, that review seems scathing, but I found the book very enjoyable if you manage to look past it’s occasional painful clichés and tough beginning. I’ll probably read the second book, and hope that it doesn’t mention veins quite so often.