AuburnChick's Adventures

In Sunday’s wee hours of the morning, I finally finished reading The Kill Order by James Dashner.

It is billed as the prequel to the series; it was published after the other three books.  Thus, I read it last.

If you read my blog regularly, you’ll know that I have not enjoyed Dashner’s other books in this Maze Runner series.  The concept was actually quite good; however, it was not executed well, in my opinion.

Sure, there were characters that I actually liked, but they were far and few between.

In this final installment, readers learn what led to the maze being created in the first place.

I actually enjoyed this book most out of all four.  The dialogue was not as juvenile.  This could be due to one of the main characters being an older teen.

I liked the characters in this book as well and rooted for them to survive.

However, I still had trouble getting through this book simply because I had nothing pulling me back to it, unlike the scores of other Young Adult fiction books I’ve read over the last two years.

The fighting scenes in this book dragged on forever.  Perhaps young men reading these scenes will appreciate them, given the virtual reality games they like to play.

I am a female, which sounds stereotypical, but I just didn’t enjoy them.

The positives that I can say about this series is that I think it does appeal to young men who crave action when they read.  The text is not high complexity, and the chapters are short, which makes the books perfect for struggling readers who cannot seem to get past two or three pages in one sitting.

With all of that said, I am glad to have finally closed the back cover of this series.

I’m already nearly finished with a book a began immediately afterward.  I’ll be back with another review shortly!

Filed under: Books, Teaching | Tagged: books, James Dashner, reading, The Kill Order, The Maze Runner, Young Adult Fiction |