The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

360 pages (sequel to The Maze Runner)

I truly loved the Maze Runner so much, I took a break from the award nominee lists to read the sequel. Started out just as great, but to be honest, by the time I was done, it was very disappointing. There is all these mind games being played on the characters of the book that really twists the storyline around to the point your not sure what you are reading. There is a book three, so you already know it will end in a cliff hanger, but I felt like it ended a few yards short of the edge of the cliff.

(from jacket cover)

Solving the maze was supposed to be the end. No more puzzles. No more variables. And no more running. Thomas was sure that escape meant he and the Gladers would get their lives back. But no one really knew what sort of life they were going back to .
In the Maze, life was easy. They had food, and shelter, and safety...until Teresa triggered the end. In the world outside the Maze, howe4ver, the end was triggered long ago.
Burned by sun flares and baked by a new, brutal climate, the earth is a wasteland. Government has disintegrated-and with it, order-and now Cranks, people covered in festering wound and driven to murderous insanity by the infectious disease known as the Flare, roam the crumbling cities hunting for their next victim...and meal.
The Gladers are far from done running. Instead of freedom, they find themselves faced with another trial. They must cross the Scorch, the most burned-out section of the world, and arrive at a safe haven in two weeks. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them.
Thomas can only wonder-does he hold the secret of freedom somewhere in his mind? Or will he forever be at the mercy of WICKED?