The Scorch Trials

[sawyl]

Onward to James Dashner's The Scorch Trials where things finally start to make a little more sense for the reader, if not the group of kids who escaped to freedom at the end of The Maze Runner.

After making it out and apparently being wrested away from WICKED, the group in charge of the maze experiment, the boys find themselves put in a safehouse and fed with pizza. Theresa, the only girl in the group, is split out and put in her own room. During the night she vanishes, as do all the adults, and a new boy called Aris appears in her room. Aris drops the bombshell that he too was in a maze, but his group was reversed: all girls, he was the only boy, and his arrival triggered the end of the experiment. As Aris explains, someone notices a tattoo on his neck, identifying him as a member of the B-group. Then, much to their surprise, the rest of the boys discover they too have been marked as members of the A-group. Some of the boys also find they've been tagged with a role: Minho is the leader; Newt is the glue; and Thomas, well he's the boy who is going to be killed by the B-group.

At this point a stranger appears sitting at desk behind a forcefield. He tells the Gladers that they have contracted the Flare, a deadly disease that sends people mad, and that they have two weeks to make it through a scorched wasteland to a safe location in the mountains where they will be cured. Not seeing any alternative, the group follow the man's instructions only to find that their route takes them through a city infested with Cranks — people infected with the Flare — some of whom are so Gone they've been reduced to crazed monsters.

Along the way Thomas spends a great deal of time struggling with his relationship with Teresa. Unable to communicate with her for most of the time, she occasionally gets through with the odd ludic telepathic message, usually telling him that something horrible is about to happen and he needs to trust her. All of this leaves the poor boy more than a little mixed up, as do his uncertain feelings for Brenda, a newly-infected girl who helps him escape the Cranks' city.

As the action unfolds, it becomes clear that the boys' notion that the Trials are intended as some sort of Darwinian selection are increasingly wide of the mark, given the random nature of some attacks. Rather, all the overheard talk of Variables from the WICKED administrators suggests that they are trying to induce specific experiences in the minds of the subjects, presumable as part of their on-going attempts to cure the Flare.

The Scorch Trials is an easy read — and a good deal shorter than Justin Cronin's The Passage! — and does a good job of setting up a post-epidemic apocalypse world, albeit one where those involved can never be sure what is real and what is a test.