Tuesday, July 24, 2012

The Kill Order (The Maze Runner prequel) by James Dashner

The Kill OrderThe Kill Order by James Dashner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was excited to read this prequel to The Maze Runner. I wanted to find out how all of this began. And for the most part I enjoyed this book. We start out with Thomas and Teresa getting ready to send Thomas down into the Glade with the other boys, basically right before The Maze Runner began. But we don't dwell there, it's only a couple pages on that. And then we go to 13 years before that. And we get to follow Mark, Trina, Alec, and Lana in one of the mountain settlements after the sun flares hit the Earth. The story begins when one of the Bergs, the big ships they use later on in the series as well, flies by and begins shooting the people in their settlement with darts. Darts that either kill right away, or make them sick. Alec and Lana are former military. Alec and Mark chase after this Berg, and finally are able to get on it, and find out as much as they can. They first find vials of the virus in boxes, and realize what was being shot. Then they find a tablet of some sort that they can see where the headquarters, or at least where this Berg came from. The Berg is crashed by the pilots, and then Alec and Mark head back to find out what has happened to their town. As the story goes by, we get to flashback to when the sun flares actually hit through Mark's nightmares. And actually, this is some of the story that is my favorite. The fact that New York, Manhattan especially, is going to be underwater, or at least a lot of it. I wish maybe we'd heard a bit more of that, but we are filled in on the big details through Mark's dreams. We then follow Mark and Trina, and Lana and Alec, as they try to reach this headquarters. They run into other settlements that have gone through the same thing with the Bergs on the way there, and find out just what this virus can do. Once at the headquarters, after a lot of conflict with those other people, they find out what the people in charge, the PFC - Post Flare Committee, is trying to do. And then they pick up another person, a little girl, named Dee-Dee. And so they must fight to be as safe as they can, and try to reach what they've heard is a safe place, Asheville. And this is about where we leave off. So, there will be another prequel, I'm hoping, because I still need to know more!! We barely touch on Thomas at the end, and I want to know about Teresa, and all that led up to WICKED, as there isn't much about it in this book.
Another good story, there were some edge of your seat moments, but sometimes it did get bogged down a bit. I loved the characters, Alec, and Mark and Trina. Lana too, although she's not as big a character really. As I said I hope there is another prequel so that I can find out more answers to the questions I still have.

View all my reviews