Read: The Maze Runner, by James Dashner
This was trashy, pulpy nonsense with an appalling attitude towards its (single) female character and a strong familiarity with Battle Royale and The Hunger Games (of the latter, both were written more or less concurrently). That said, I finished it in a couple of days, and it’s utterly gripping.
The novel (the first of a trilogy) follows Thomas, a boy with amnesia stuck in a giant maze with a group of other boys with amnesia. During the day they run through the maze, trying to find an exit or an answer to their suffering; at night, they hide from terrifying half-organic creatures called the Grievers. Those stung by the Grievers sometimes get some of their memories back, and its this conceit that builds the suspense - as terrible things happen to the children in the novel, you learn incremental amounts about the world outside.
There are a couple of things that impeded my enjoyment of this book. The first is that the novel’s author, James Dashner, attempts to create a system of slang that never truly convinces, and often feels like Battlestar Galactica’s use of “frakking” to get around the FCC (this is a young adult novel) - instead of fuck-face, we get “shuck-face”, which honestly just makes me think of this:
If you can get past the weird non-swearing, though, and the fact that the one female character spends half the novel in a coma, this is a really enjoyable piece of trash. Funnily enough, I read this just after the trailer for the film adaptation came out, and it translates well - this is the sort of book that matches the beats of a film, keeping at a breakneck pace throughout. Turn off your brain for this, and it’s ridiculously fun. Leave it on, and you might end up regretting it.