The Scorch Trials, book two of the Maze Runner series by James Dashner, picks up immediately after the events of the first book. Thomas, Teresa, Minho, Newt and the rest of the gladers are staying at the shelter where they have just been taken when weird things start happening. Teresa disappears in the middle of the night only to be replaced by a boy named Aris who claims to have been Teresa’s counterpart to a second group of gladers who were all girls. This is followed by a few other unusual things before the gladers are introduced to someone Thomas calls the Ratman, due to how he looks. This man informs the gladers that the maze was just the beginning and that they are now faced with something even worse. They are purposely infected with a deadly disease called the flare and in order to receive a cure for it they must cross an area known as the Scorch within a certain time frame. The problem is that the Scorch is a hundred miles of the most excruciatingly hot and dry desert ever imagined and is filled with people who have literally lost their minds due to being infected with the Flare.
This one was a bit of an odd one for me as it came closer to the typical dystopian feel that you tend to see in literature. The characters were scrounging for supplies and constantly pushing back against those who had lost all sense of moral boundaries so there was a different feel to the level of desperation than what we saw in the first book. At the same time it continued the obvious underlying themes of this being nothing more than a giant experiment of some sort which is honestly rather creepy and depressing to think about. That being said the story itself actually focuses on the characters ability to overcome whatever obstacles are placed in their way even if those obstacles are manufactured instead of natural. While certain elements of the story are fairly stereotypical they are combined in some rather unusual ways and it makes for an overall fairly original feeling story. I like the combination of survival elements and mystery elements as they work on figuring out what is actually going on. The pacing is fast though and it feels like it never really lets up for the kids and just keeps piling stuff on. It ended up being an extremely fast but interesting and entertaining read though it also makes me really hope our planet never actually ends up being fried by solar flares. This book gets four out of five stars from me.
As you probably have gathered this is a teen science fiction or dystopian novel so it would appeal the most to teen readers who prefer that type of work though it might also appeal to some adults who enjoy that genre. It is the second book in the series and you will be lost if you try to read it without having read the previous work, just saying. There is way too much that is dependent on the events of the previous one to be properly understood. Considering it is dystopian there are considerable levels of violence and other potentially disturbing content though it is kept to a level relatively suitable for older teens. I would recommend the age range for this series being no younger than about thirteen. A good series though and one that would probably appeal to most teenagers so feel free to suggest it to any that you know. As always feel free to share your thoughts in the comments if you decide to try it.