lisaluvsliterature's Reviews (4.19k)

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.

First I have to say thanks to Netgalley and Random House Children's Books for letting me read the e-galley of this. Thinking back to the book, I had to go back and upgrade my rating from 3 to 4 stars. I have to say for some reason I liked this one a lot better than the first one. Not sure why. I did like the first one, but this one had me more on the edge of my seat and wanting to pick it back up when I had to put it down. While it is the "sequel" to Blood Magic, it doesn't really include the main characters from that book, Silla and Nick. They do factor in, and are part of the background story. And actually Silla's brother Reese who turned into crows in the last book, is a big part of the book. He has become Mab Prowd's familiar. He stays with her instead of staying with Silla, and helps her with her magic. The book starts off with Nick dropping off a young boy named Lukas who has a black candle rune carved into his back by his father, who we find out has cursed him and pulls on his magic. We also start with Mab trying to find out why the roses around the house were so hard to get rid of, yet her grandmother really wanted them gone. To find out more about them, Mab's spell creates a humunculus so that she can hopefully get it to talk about what is going on. This creature is able to escape from the protective circle and takes off running. It runs into Nick, and attacks him, so Nick has to destroy it with the help of his dogs. But it turns out Nick is now connected to Mab and will need Mab to help him figure out what is going on. Nick's life is not great to start with. One of his older brothers died about a year ago, and his family has been changed ever since. Again the diary entries/letters are mixed into the story. At first you don't quite understand what they really have to do with the story, other than they talk about Arthur, who was the Deacon of magic before he was ready to go join his wife and pass on the title of Deacon to Mab. We do learn about Mab's mother also. Soon as the story goes on, I began to try to figure out on my own the roses and the relationships between all these people in the past. It all gets a lot worse, right after it seems things are getting better, and has a lot of suspense at the end.
I really liked the characters in this one. There was still a lot of blood, but it seemed less for shock, and more as a part of the story. There were sometimes at the beginning that it drug a little bit, but mostly the story kept me really involved and as I said, wanting to pick it back up when I had to put it down. Definitely a good, and pretty original story in my opinion.