Review: The Rule Of Thoughts

The Rule Of Thoughts by James Dashner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When everyone was crazy about young adult dystopian novels, I decided to jump into James Dashner’s The Maze Runner series. If the truth is to be known, it’s my least favourite of the popular young adult dystopian trilogies. I like to think I’m a pretty nice reader, in that I give authors multiple chances before I decide they are not for me. Sometimes I’m surprised and realise it’s just a single series by the author that is not for me, other times I am shown it is the author who is not for me.

James Dashner seems to fall into the latter category. As my second chance to James Dashner, I decided to grab The Mortality Doctrine trilogy – it seemed interesting enough, offering something different to The Maze Runner series – yet the first book did little to win me over. The second book I enjoyed even less.

Like The Eye of Minds, The Rules of Thoughts was interesting enough on the surface based upon all that could have occurred. Unfortunately, I found I wasn’t sucked into any of the events that took place. I’m stubborn, so I kept turning the pages, I kept hoping something entertaining would come about, but it never reached that point where I was sucked into the story. The first book, at least, caught me off-guard with the ending, yet The Rules of Thought left me feeling nothing at the end.

There was no real twist to this one, all I got out of it is that Dashner likes to tell stories where all the adults lie to the teens, with the teens being forced into far too many out of control situations. I wouldn’t mind this – it’s what the young adult genre does often – yet when things were happening I couldn’t connect. Everything feels too chunky, yet we’re never given the specifics that will really make the world come to life.

As I mentioned, I’m stubborn, meaning the last book will be read, but it’s not something I’m excited about,

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