Book Five; Prequel, The Fever Code: Maze Runner

This book was beautifully wrapped... I'm am the type of person who loves the book to look perfect. They made sure it was secure with duck tape and a bubble wrapped envelop. As for the book itself I loved it!!!!

It seems virtually nobody felt this was a disappointment on here...I don't know, I was just hoping for a lot more. Shouldn't be any major spoilers to follow.

My biggest issue with this book is that a lot of the information does not line up with what's revealed in the original trilogy. Remember all of those memories that come back to Thomas in the original trilogy? Yeah, most of them either don't line up with what's "revealed" in this book or blatantly contradict it (one small example is how Thomas learns telepathy). There is indeed a very interesting twist, but upon carefully rereading, it also contradicts a lot of parts of the book. For the twist and several other aspects of this book to logically fit into the series, you'd have to assume all of Thomas's recovered memories were planted by Wicked and are false. Any reference to Thomas's life prior to being inserted to the Maze, including interpersonal dialogue and scenes like the prologue to the Kill Order have to be thrown away as well. I expect a prequel to fill in the gaps of the series, not to completely overwrite it.

My other issue is more just disappointment that Dashner didn't deliver nearly as interesting of a novel as I was hoping for. Wouldn't it have been fascinating to examine how the same individual can hold very different beliefs depending on their environment and their past experiences? We had a chance for just that, but when it came time to actually write the chapter of Thomas's story where he was the "bad guy," Dashner backed off. Instead, we get a Thomas who is the exact same as he was in the original trilogy. He literally makes the EXACT same friends while everybody who was irrelevant in the original trilogy stays that way (if you were hoping to actually get to know ANY new names, you'll be disappointed). That's honestly my biggest problem with the book. We had a chance to see characters behave and interact completely differently (imagine Thomas and Gally being buddies....that would have been at least one interesting change) due to different sets of memories, yet instead we get the exact same people, which is a big letdown after hearing how Thomas had a completely different attitude throughout the trilogy. In fact, Thomas is kind of pointless in this book, he literally just serves as Teresa's assistant, so don't expect to see him do anything interesting (not if given a choice anyways). I understand that most people may only care to hear about those who were in the trilogy and don't want to think of Thomas as a bad person, but I strongly stand by my belief that we missed out on a very interesting perspective.

That's really my ultimate thoughts of the book, this coming from a huge fan of the series. I'm guessing most people must not remember the original series well enough to realize the contradictions...or somehow they're just not bothered by it (if I am missing something and all of the contradictions are explained, PLEASE tell me!). The story is all right in itself, I just wish it felt more like a natural addition to the series and not Dashner just making stuff up as he went.