Post 7: Book four review

                There are 2 villains in The Death Cure: WICKED or more specifically Janson, a worker for wicked. He’s an older man and Thomas and his friends call him “Rat Man” due to his rat-like features. The second villain in this book is the Flare which is a disease created from the sun flares on earth. The sickness messes with your brain and makes you go crazy. It’s very easy to catch and deadly if you have it. There is a temporary cure called The Bliss which slows down the process of it taking over your brain.   

                Janson started acted like a villain when he catches the Flare (you don’t find this out until almost the end of the book). He feels like he is wronged and shouldn’t have caught the Flare because he’d been careful to avoid it. Janson then becomes obsessed with finding a cure for the disease so others don’t catch it. Once his mind has gone crazy and he’s considered a Crank, he really goes crazy and is willing to kill people, especially people who are immune to the Flare. He’d kill them by taking out their brain so they could do more experiments on it. In reality WICKED hasn’t been able to find a cure since they started, but Janson is too focused on finding a cure that he’s oblivious to his co-workers who are giving up hope on ever finding a cure. Due to everyone else’s hopelessness, Janson is pretty much on his own if he wants to keep killing people to find a cure. While reading you get the feeling that everyone at WICKED is scared of Janson and aren’t used to seeing him interacting with other people. Because he’s used to being isolated all the time he becomes detached and doesn’t really value anyone’s life. Even when he’s telling Thomas that he has to die the way he says it is so nonchalant. All he says is: “Thomas, we need your brain”. I think this also shows his cruelty and how awful he can be. Janson’s very manipulative as he tries to tell Thomas that the world will thank him if he dies and how he’ll help others with the disease. In reality Janson just wants the cure so he can cure himself. They don’t directly state everything he does, you have to infer based on past actions. I really like that they do this because I think mysterious is a perfect way to describe a villain.

                Janson in a way reminds me of Hitler because they both thought they had good intentions but then they got greedy and wanted the most power they could get which made them seem evil.

                To me I think the Flare is a villain because it has such a big impact on Thomas, the hero, and it made people who seemed liked heroes into villains. The Flare kind of opposed to everything Thomas did. For example: Thomas wanted to keep his friends safe, but Newt had the Flare and went crazy, which kind of made him a villain. Thomas told him “If you’re cool with slowly going crazy and wanting to eat small children, then I guess I won’t cry for you”. The sad thing is that Newt did start acting like this.   In the end Thomas beat the Flare, like in most books, by killing Newt and ending his suffering. Cranks aka people who’ve had the Flare for a while also proved to be a ton of problems for Thomas, Brenda, Minho, and George. One time they were driving in a car trying to get to the edge of Denver. Their goal was to escape out of Denver and board George’s burg and fly away. Unfortunately that never happened because a bunch of Cranks came and attacked the car. Luckily the Right Hand, a group out against WICKED saved them.

                The Flare is almost comparable to cancer because they’re both deadly illnesses and there sort of cures: chemotherapy and The Bliss. While cancer doesn’t make people go crazy, it can still depress people and make them seem like a different person.

Both the characters in The Death Cure are unique compared to other villains but I think the intents are similar to almost all villains.

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Post 10: Reading Wishlist

Books I plan to read in the future are:
The Kill order by James Dashner
Let it Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Cinder by Marissa Meyer

My book 5 book would probably be Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer because I’ve heard so many great things about it.

Post 9: Book two trailer

the maze runner trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLX-MC9DU5E

Post 8: Book talk presentation

Post 6: Book 3 Listicle

   The Scorch Trials by James Dashner, the second book in The Maze Runner series is becoming very popular: with the first book being turned into a movie in September and The Scorch Trials being released as a movie next year, this book is destined for fame. This book isn’t exactly a new book with new ideas though. Here’s 5 ways The Scorch Trials is similar to other books trending now.

 

1: Protagonist who saves the day

Thomas is very similar to other heroes such as Tris in the Divergent series. He is in charge of leading Gladers through the Scorch. Of course he doesn’t realize it at first and Minho is leading them, but after he sees a sign that says “Thomas, You’re The Real Leader” he figures he should start deciding what needs to get done.  Thomas then helps the Gladers reach the cure by fighting off Cranks and directing them away from danger.

 

2: Going through the impossible

Comparable to Katniss fighting in the arena, Thomas and the Gladers have to cross the Scorch, “the most burned-out section of the world”. While they are there, they’re faced with many challenges like Cranks (people who’ve caught the deadly disease the Flare). Their goal? Get to the cure because the creators gave them the disease. They need to get the cure within 2 weeks otherwise they won’t get it period. If they don’t get it they’ll all turn to Cranks.  

 

 

3: Love triangle

Brenda

Teresa

Resembling Twilight which has a love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jake, during this book there is a love triangle between Thomas, Teresa, and Brenda. Thomas doesn’t know where Teresa is in the Scorch, but he meets a Crank named Brenda. Brenda flirts with Thomas and gives him little hints that she likes him. Throughout all of Thomas can’t help but think of Teresa.

Thomas

4: People die

The Fault in Our Stars is very comparable to this book. Similarly both books have people that die in them. In The Scorch Trials it isn’t a major character that dies, but some Gladers do die. One way to die in the Scorch is getting struck by lightning. For a Glader named Jack, when he got struck it did a lot of permeant damage, “shin, ankle, and foot obliterated by the burst of pure electricity from the sky”. There are other obstacles such as liquid metal balls attaching to your face and Cranks who want you dead so they can have your nose.

 

5: Dystopian society

Many books are now taking place in a dystopian setting. There’s Panem, a dystopian Chicago, and many others. This book’s setting takes place in the future after the flare has killed almost everyone. The people from WICKED are pretty much the only people that survived, and “exist for one purpose and one purpose only: to save the world from catastrophe”. They are doing trials such as the maze trial and the scorch trial to see what’s different about the groups of kids they’re testing the trials on. They want to figure out how each one of their brains work so they can save the world, but to Thomas and his friends the trials seem more like a punishment.

 

            While The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials were both very good books, they’re also very cliché at the same time. To compare it to other young adult books is like comparing The Hunger Games and Twilight, different books with different ideas but some similar elements. Most people enjoy these dystopian books or series which is probably why a majority of books on the best sellers list seem to have similar topics or details.

Post #5: How True Should Books Be?

          I think that if you are writing fantasy or magic realism the book definitely doesn't need any truth behind it. Realistic fiction should be something people could imagine but didn't necessarily have to happen. Historical fiction should keep the main ideas but if you add/change little details to add impact or make things seem more important I think that’s totally okay. Going off of that, I think if you’re going to categorize something as non-fiction it should be real, not something you make up. Especially memoirs. I just read the book Black Like Me and I’d be pretty mad to find out that some of it was made up like Frey’s was. A memoir is a story about what really happened in your life and you shouldn’t make it up otherwise it would be categorized as realistic fiction.

            I personally think that Shields is wrong about not needing lines to separate non-fiction from other types of fiction. If you’re doing research for a class or something your first move would probably be to go to the library and check books out about the topic. You’d probably choose non-fiction books because they’re the most reliable, but what if they just had all types of fiction in one area? You wouldn’t be able to tell at a glance what books were non-fiction, realistic fiction, or fantasy. It’d be a confusing mess of books. I honestly don’t like non-fiction books so I think it’s nice to categorize things as non-fiction or fiction. This way there would be no confusion about if something really happened or not. We don't need younger generation thinking things like Hunger Games happened, or that the Holocaust was just a story someone made up.

Blog Post 4: Adapting My Book

•  I would want to adapted The Maze Runner into a movie because there is a lot of action in my book and it wouldn't make sense to make it into a live musical. There is also too much action in the book for it to be separated into 30-60 minute shows one day a week.  I also feel like a TV show would just draw out the book and make it seem less suspenseful than it actually is. The movie isn't too long either so a season would be really short. They could do a series based on all of the books in the series but I think people would just get bored. A movie will give you all the action of the book while still being relatively short and it wouldn't stop in the middle of a crucial moment like a episode would.

• The most important part of the story is Thomas realizing he remembers stuff about the Glade. Most people think it's about the Maze and I think that it plays a very big part, but if you leave out Thomas remembering stuff then it won't make sense. People wouldn't realize why Teresa is so important and why the Gladers are so distrusting when it comes to Thomas. I feel like if that was left out of the movie people who haven't read the book would be confused. The audience would see why it's so important Alby remembers stuff about Thomas after he goes through the Changing. The thing that's so interesting about the book is that Thomas does remember things  which adds a little mystery to the book and I don't think I would like the book as much if it didn't have that and the same thing goes for the movie.

• I think if you cut out some of Thomas' thoughts about being a runner it won't impacted the movie too much. I would cut out the long scene where Thomas sees the Maze. If you have a movie you don't need to describe the Maze in as much detail because they can just see it for themselves. There are many characters that I think don't impact the book that much so you could take them out of a movie. Some examples are: Ben and Frypan. The part where Thomas is just sitting in the Maze listening to the Grievers could also be taken out. I personally would take that out and just skip to the part where Thomas is pushing Alby up the wall while climbing it.

• If I was making this movie I would change it a little. Instead of making Teresa in a coma I would just have her wake up a few hours after she gets pulled from the box. So far in my book Teresa hasn't played a big part and I think if you had her wake up sooner you could get to know her better like you did with all the other characters. It would be beneficial to me if the characters were a little older. I like how in the movie in the actors are a little older so the characters are portrayed older. It would make them seem a little more mature and more capable of handling the Maze and figuring it out.

• In my soundtrack for the movie I would definitely want Maroon 5 to be on it because I feel like they could create some fast pace beat and lyrics that would add suspense during the movie. I think Ellie Goulding would also be good on the soundtrack because she is always coming up with some haunting melody that also isn't too slow so that would be good to place in the movie when Newt and Thomas go to visit Alby after he's been bit by the Grievers and gone through the changing. I think Skrillex would sound good on a soundtrack because they make really intense music which would be good for an acute scene in the movie for example, like when Teresa arrives in the Box.