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Ignifer’s Rise – chapter 1

Mike Grist January 1, 2015Books, Excerpt, Writing

ARADABAR LOST

Avia fled through the ash-smothered streets of Aradabar, and the Rot’s fiery black tongue swept close behind.

Moths and Butterflies thudded to ground around her, bursting on cobbled stone, their broad wings seared away by the Rot’s ashen touch. Through breaks in the city’s skyline of library towers she glimpsed the column of flame rising from the horizon, like a brilliant orange flower painted on the sky. The mountain was erupting; one last defense against the Rot, and soon the great city of Aradabar would be gone. Screams rang out from behind her, but there was nothing she could do.

They were all going to die.

She sped down the narrow alleys of the outer bookyards, striding over bodies already half-buried in volcanic dust, holding her newborn son close. The wounds in his face were scabbing now, lines she had carved with her own hand, that would save or damn them all.

“Help us, please!” voices called from a burning hut.

She glimpsed children trapped inside, hay-stuffed pillows tamped over their heads against falling rock. She ran on.

At a canal she came upon a thronging exodus of carriages and barges, filled with frantic denizens shouting to one another through the scalding ash. She slipped between their carriage wheels and ran across their jumbled barge decks.

“Lady Avia!” a Man of Quartz called out, but she only pulled her hood tight about her head and continued, leaving them behind.

“Where is King Seem?” he called after her. “Where is our King?”

Moments later, his cries joined the eruption’s cacophony, as the Rot found him.

In fevered glances she saw it above, a yawning black mouth in the sky, spreading across the city like a second heaven. Fat black tongues spat out of it like dark lightning, pummeling the grand city King Seem had built from the dust. This was the Rot, and it was coming for her son.

The boy was paling in her arms now, barely breathing in the dust-thick air, but she could not stop. She held his wounded face close and sped on, into the Hallows. A fiery boulder arced above her, exploding a bookyard at the quarter’s edge. She fell into shelter behind an upturned brunifer hut, amongst the ragged few possessions of some scholar come to Aradabar, seeking knowledge.

That era was over now.

The rubble fall pattered off the hut, and she started away again, picking through the splintered wreckage, over out-flung books like stepping stones in the ash drifts, along blackened streets littered with bodies. Through the winding Hallows she ran until at last the Saint’s cathedral rose before her, tall and ghostly through the fog of falling ash.

She raced in, and up porticoes lined with figures carved from her dreams. The earth bucked and a column cracked, crashing a lintel to the flagstones before her. She darted round it and barged through the heavy double door to the cathedral.

Inside the air was cool and dry, but spidering cracks were spreading up the high walls and over the vaulted arch-ceiling, dropping a fine rain of plaster dust. The stained-glass window high in the end wall cast a bloody orange light over the disheveled lines of pews, an image straight out of the nightmare growing around her.

She ran down the aisle, her footsteps clacking like panicked knocks on a far-off door. At the end wall she pushed through a small postern, and out again into the hot air.

The revenant arch stood in blood-red shadow behind the cathedral, and she ran to it. This was the first revenant arch she’d ordered carved, where so may lines of strength converged. Its inner side was wholly carved with all the stories of Saint Ignifer drawn from her mad dreams. As she drew near, it began to glow with the Saint’s faint blue light and, signaling the start of a fire she’d spent so many years nurturing to life. She held up her son and felt the Saint’s fledgling power move within him too, lighting a blue fire across the story carved in his face.

So the Saint would rise.

The Rot felt the movement too; a deep change in the fabric of the world. Its roar shook the ground, swaying Avia where she stood. She staggered closer to the arch, even as the Rot’s fat black tongues shot down from the sky, smashing through the cathedral roof like wet vellum, crushing the walls in a plume of swirling mortar-smoke and fire. Slabs of cut stone shot outward like cannonfire, plowing furrows in the grave beds.

Avia kissed her son’s forehead, as the Rot’s tongues slathered near. She could feel its aching need like a sick pulse in her belly, could see within its massive black jaws a thousand worlds churned to nothing, and a thousand more to come. So would Aradabar fall, so would her world be consumed, continuing an endless pattern until someone rose to stop it.

She kissed her son’s forehead. His pale skin was hot as though fevered, the patterned wounds in his forehead rough with scabs coagulating with ash. So he would grow strong, born out of blood and fire and the end of an empire.

“Soon,” she whispered to him, as his wounds began to pulse in time with the heartbeat of the Saint, running through the revenant arch. “Everything will come, in time.”

In the far-off distance, above the King’s palace, her lover King Seem rose into the air and attacked the Rot. So he would die, and they all would die, but the world would survive.

The Rot bellowed a tremendous roar, sensing what was coming. It long for her son, but it would not have him. It lashed out at Avia and her son, spitting one vast tongue down like a hammer from the sky, but seconds before it struck Avia stepped backward through the glowing revenant archway, into darkness.

For long moments there was nothing. Then a new world unfurled.

Avia roused on a stone floor, swaying. Around her were the faint outlines of structures, lapped by tides of frothy white mist that soothed her ash-stung skin.

Rising, she made out the remnants of the cathedral wall she had passed through only moments ago, though it was different now, and lumpish in the thick fog. Its stained glass window was still resplendent, though the colors had faded with time. The jagged edges where the Rot’s tongue had torn away walls and roof had been leveled smooth by rain, the mounds of rubble were gone, leaving only brown vines creeping over mottled gray flags.

Three thousand years had passed.

Through gaps in the drifting fog she glimpsed the night sky, and the rippling black hole that was the mouth of the Rot. It was growing again already, hunting her and her son across time. It would never stop, and there was so little time before it came again. This time it would take everything. She’d seen her world churned to nothing a thousand times in dreams.

Her son was breathing in faint little pants now as the blue light faded from his scars. She tried not to think of the path that lay ahead of him, that she’d seen play out so many times. There was so much worse to come.

She breathed warmth on his face, kissed his tiny cheek, then hurried over the uneven cathedral flags, holding him close. Round the open cathedral wall where the postern had been, she went, entering the long-gone cathedral through a space where a buttressing wall had stood only moments ago. In the center of that barren, roofless space, she saw the Butterfly. She was knelt in prayer before the glowing stained glass, where the altar had stood, beatific in the window’s colored light. Her long Sectile body swayed hypnotically in the fog, her brilliant Butterfly wings twitching with whispered prayer.

Avia knew her, had seen her in dreams so many times, the lone abbess of that sad, lost cathedral, a waypoint on her son’s path. It was here that he would begin to see, and she could not help him. It was here that he wold return and everything would change. So much would be lost, and so much would be found. The thought stung her, yet the future was built of single steps, and she could only take the step that lay before her, in a plan she had designed three thosands years ago.

She?strode out into the glowing colored light, feeling it play down her face and across the lines in her son’s skin. She strode before the Butterfly, breaking the light from the window behind, and spoke clearly in the orator’s tones King Seem had taught her.

“I have returned.”

The Butterfly twitched at the sound. Her compound eyes widened and refocused, falling on the dark ash coating Avia’s clothes, on the bloody face of her child. For long moments she looked from Avia to the figure picked out in the window and back. Then she rose on long Sectile legs, beating her wings gently at the fog as though for purchase.

“Avia?” she whispered.

“Of Aradabar,” Avia answered, her voice ringing sharply through the chill white air, “and you must help my son.”

Get Ignifer’s Rise for free: Amazon US – Amazon UK – Amazon CA – Kobo – Google Play

Here’s to a Great 2015

Mike Grist December 31, 2014News

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Alterum significari idem, ut si diceretur, officia media omnia aut pleraque servantem vivere. Qui-vere falsone, quaerere mittimus-dicitur oculis se privasse; Non est enim vitium in oratione solum, sed etiam in moribus. Nummus in Croesi divitiis obscuratur, pars est tamen divitiarum. Si quicquam extra virtutem habeatur in bonis. Istam voluptatem perpetuam quis potest praestare sapienti? Nam ante Aristippus, et ille melius. Laboro autem non sine causa; Mihi, inquam, qui te id ipsum rogavi.

MJG’s 2014 writing roundup and lessons learned

Mike Grist December 21, 2014Life

2014 has been a huge year for me, on many levels. A lot has changed with my writing, life, travel, qualifications, job, and overall existence. There’ve been lots of transitions and new developments. This post is all about my writing developments, and all the lessons learned:

The story so far (up to 2014)

At the end of 2013 I put out two trial balloon short story collections on amazon, self-published. The last time I dallied with such self-publishing was probably 2011, when I put up a single short story, which was also available for free on the internet in various places- Killin Jack.

Back then I knew nothing about book promotion, made no effort to push the book beyond listing it in this site’s sidebar, and as we might expect I don’t think I ever sold or gave away a single copy:

On the left is the first cover I made for it, in MS Paint. Woohoo! I thought it could be cool as this child-like kind of style, but then quickly opted to go with something a little more polished, from my pal Canadian Mike on the right.

It’s neat, but I look at it now with my more-experienced-at-making-covers eyes and see it gives very little hint as to content or genre, and the lack of color and texture makes it look pretty dull. It is of course what I asked for, so none of that is the artist’s fault. Anyway, that was 2011.

At the end of 2013 I put out these two books of short stories, Bone Diamond and Bells of Subsidence:

That was a big learning curve, getting into ebook layout, hiring a cover artist off the Internet, editing short stories into their best format, coming up with back and front matter, starting a mailing list, working out the typesetting for a print book, learning the websites for both amazon ebook and createspace print book system, paying for various promotions and watching the free copies fly out the door, hanging on tenterhooks watching for reviews to slowly trickle in. I even made a little money- though not enough to pay for the promotional ads I’d run.

Still, it was an exciting and successful weather balloon, and boded of much bigger things in 2014. I’d gotten over the automatic dismissal of self-publishing as a vanity thing to do- and now (after being rejected by agents and traditional publishers for my fantasy novel Ignifer’s Rise multiple times) was in a position to just want to get my stuff out there, where it could be read.

Sure, there was the risk the tsunami of self-pubbed crap would over-flood it and very few people would ever even SEE my books. But, whatever, at least it was POSSIBLE for them to be seen. In my hard drive nobody was going to see them. On amazon, maybe.

Ruins book

So, I got to work editing, and in January 2014 I put out the first iteration of my long-awaited ruins/haikyo book- Ruins of the Rising Sun – Adventures in Abandoned Japan. I say long-awaited, really that was more me than any ‘fan’ response. A few people had suggested I put out a print book. I’d been approaching publishers with the idea for years- getting a meeting with an editor in 2011 in Tokyo, and even getting as far as signing a contract with a French publisher in 2013.

Both of these fell apart. I decided to do it myself. I looked into typesetting a print book, but the complications of that far outweighed my ability to do them. Hiring a pro would have cost thousands- and how many copies of a $40+ coffee table book could I expect to sell, with only my limited distribution? A few, I expect- far from enough to pay for the cost of getting it done.

So I went ebook. I debated the book’s structure plenty- was it a guide book, a travel book, a photo book, what? I settled on a travel/memoir/photo book, and got down to it. My story of being miserable and finding fulfillment through going to ruins became the narrative backbone. I gathered in my best explores and photos and put them all together, drawing from this site but adding and changing lots of stuff. I made a cover myself, fixed the price at $9.99, and put it out there with minimal promo (I spent nothing on ads- it was a bit too niche to work well with scattershot ads I felt).

The first cover at left was what I started with. Imperial flag of the rising sun seemed fitting considering how many ruins I’d been to that dated to WW2. But I got feedback from some Japanese folks that they found the flag offensive. To Japanese who are sensitive to such matters, it reminds them of the past in a similar way to the Nazi swastika. OK, so I didn’t want to be offensive. Added to that, many people might not even know that this flag signified Japan. So there was a chance my cover and title meant nothing at all to many people.

I flipped to the one at right, adding Japan into the title and making the flag the more widely known risen sun. But now this looked a little bland. I’d thought since the start that- since this was a photobook- it should really have one of my photos on the cover. But which one? Which place summed up what ruined Japan was?

In the end I decided to take the focus off Japan, which is niche, and focus on adventure/ruins, with a Japan flavor. I changed the title and cover to reflect this, bringing us to the latest iteration:

I like it best. It reflects the book’s focus on adventure well, hints at Japan, and shows some of the grunge readers are in for. I also upped the photo count, from 200 photos up to 300, because why not? I’d tried to trim it down to manage the megabyte count, since amazon charges a delivery fee per megabyte, and the book was already 20mb. But yeah, let it be a premium product. I bumped the photo count up to 300, 30mb, and set the price back at $9.99 (after experimenting with various lower prices).

I barely changed the inner content at all. I streamlined it a little, in line with a bit of feedback, but it remained basically the same throughout. So far it’s been my most profitable seller- especially since I never spent promo, cover, or editing money on it. I did it all myself. I think I paid $5 to use the background flag image, that’s it. It’s sold a few hundred copies and is nicely in the black. Maybe I’ll do a little promo on it in the future.

Ignifer’s Rise

After putting out this massive collection of my blog’s back catalog, I decided it was time to put out the big dog, my epic fantasy novel, Ignifer’s Rise. I’d sent it to big rounds of agents twice, perhaps 100 in total, over the last 3 years since writing it. I was still not confident it was the best it could be, so I acceded to general advice and went looking for an editor. I hired one for $1000 dollars, but they ended up being incredibly negative, critical, and unhelpful. I could take criticism, it was the whole point- but it really felt like their heart was not in making the book better. They pointed out flaws but made no suggestions as to how to fix those flaws. They essentially proof-read the book and gave it a poor review.

I canceled that editing job 20% of the way through, getting back most of the money. I went for another one, ultimately paying $400 to an editor who did a very minor bit of proofreading and basically sung the book’s praises, saying she couldn’t cut a thing.

Garbage. Wasted money. I suppose you get what you pay for. They say a decent editor will run you thousands. I’m not prepared to spend that kind of money though, so I rolled up my sleeves and tackled the book myself.

It was 150,000 words. I cut it down to 130,000, and more recently down to 120,000. I proofread and spell-checked, and roped in a friend or two to assist me. I then hired a new cover artist, a chap I’d gone to university with, and he produced a cover I was really smitten by. All in, I spent almost $1000 on the editing and cover.

On the left was the original cover and title, launched in March. We have Sen the main character and his patterned scars, wearing the hood he has to wear to go out in public. In the background is the volcano erupting.

I liked this a lot. I still do, but I also see flaws. The title was a real mouthful, so I decided to elide it to Ignifer’s Rise. Nothing really is lost, and the title fits on the book cover better and more visibly. I thought his cape was taking up a lot of space though, and we couldn’t see the city much. In fact with his face and scars, city on fire, eye and volcano, it was a bit too busy. I’m not sure now, but whatever.

I’ve decided to split the cover into the two original images. Book 1, Ignifer’s Rise, gets the full-on face. I think this is striking. It probably broadly suggests fantasy. Now, Book 2, Ignifer’s War, due out at the start of 2015, will get the background image, with the volcano amped up.

This is great for numerous reasons, but chiefly because I avoid the time, effort, and expense of getting new covers done. I love the original images still, so aim to get better mileage out of them.

Next came promotion. I spent the most on this book, with two rounds of promotion totalling maybe $400. I gave away maybe ten thousand free copies, sold hundreds of copies at a discounted price, and got some nice reviews. I have not made my money back though- and am still a fair ways from doing so. That’s a shame, and maybe a lesson of 2014 for me. This business can be expensive, if you let it be.

Ruins Sonata

I’d had the idea of a semi-vampire story set in future ruins, potentially even in Tokyo, interweaving with an action-packed mind-dive like Inception for over a year. It would be called Mr. Ruins. After putting out Ignifer’s Rise, I decided to just go for it. In March and April I wrote the whole thing. This was a massive uptick in speed for me. Ignifer’s Rise had taken 4 years to perfect (though in honesty I probably wrote the first draft in about 3 months), but this one came out in very clean form in less than 2 months. I outlined it pretty clearly, which I’d never done with Ignifer- so there was no need to go back over it again and again, adding and removing bits. It was what it was. I proofread, hired a friend to proofread for a very reasonable $100, then sent it out to agents.

I had intended to self-publish immediately. My dad read it though and suggested I give traditional publishing one more shot, so I did. I sent it out, and while I waited, I had a cover made up, and started writing the second in the series, King Ruin. No agents came back to me, so I published it in August.

I’d never had any intention of a sequel. Mr. Ruins stood alone, but at the end there was a naturally evolving hint of a wider world. I wanted to explore it. I dashed off King Ruin in May, paid for proof-reading, and hired the same cover artist. I went straight ahead and started writing the trilogy closer, God of Ruin. Here real life got in the way though, and I got only halfway before I had to go off to the UK (more later).

I had most of a trilogy. Each book required a cover. I came up with a cover design I thought was really clever and intriguing, with half a brain, and half a molten core world. I repeated the basic design for each book, in love with the idea. Here are the covers:

What do you think? I paid for serious promotional ads of book 1, Mr. Ruins, but it shifted really poorly. I spent $230 dollars, and I think sold maybe 80 copies for 99 cents, at all of the best ad sites. Others who promo-ed at the same time from the same standing start had much more massive results. To rub salt in the wound, expecting interesting results I live-blogged the whole thing on kboards writer’s cafe.

It was a shock, really. People theorized it had to be my covers and my blurbs. I solicited feedback, and got it instantly: the covers were not what I thought they were. Maybe for someone who had already read the book, they were cool little puzzles. For someone who hadn’t? The first book looked like an eyeball covered in maggots.

Ugh. Gross, and far from my intent. Many people said this. No one said they liked it. At the same time, people said the blurb was impenetrable. After reading it they had no idea what the story was about. Too many made-up words, not enough clear concrete stuff.

So I labored. I altered. I shifted and twisted. At the same time I did the same for the opening chapters of book 1, simplifying so they could be read and understood more easily. I did this three of four times, with me each time surprised that it was STILL not clear to follow. Major ouch. But, at the same time also, good reviews were coming in. People who liked the puzzle style, the slight challenge inherent in the writing, enjoyed it.

I enjoyed that too. I continued, and continue, to try to strike the balance. A little bit puzzling/intriguing, but also eminently readable. I’m definitely getting closer.

I also commissioned new covers, adapting ruins images from the concrete side of the story- hoping they would give a post-apocalyptic feel. I think they certainly do that. To get across an idea of thriller as well I should probably incorporate a figure somewhere, maybe holding a weapon of some kind, but I’ll think about that more going forward. Here they are:

I’m sure they’re better than before. Maybe they could be better still- but that’s something for me to figure out later. With two rounds of covers, and two rounds of proofreading, and two rounds of promotional ads, I spent around $1000 on this trilogy. Again, I haven’t made it back yet. I finished God of Ruin in October and put it out in November.

My first trilogy!

I learnt a huge amount from this experience- about my own writing speed, ability to self-edit (pretty good), the power of an outline, the importance of following general genre structures when making a book cover, the importance of a clear, accessible blurb, and clear accessible opening chapters. I also juggled the structure of all the books, and altered the chapter headings.

At the start they were all alternating, so one chapter in the real world, one in the dive world. This led to mentions in reviews of the story being disjointed, taking a long time to get going, and being unclear. I totally get that. I agree it’s better to fully set the hook on one character/setting before jumping to another. So I altered each book to have 3/4 chapters in the real world contiguously, followed by 3/4 in the dive world, before I get into alternating.

I’ve heard nothing back on this yet, but I think it’s a move for the best. It gets the story moving faster, reduces uncertainty, and helps an already complex narrative structure a bit simpler.

And sales? Well, I’m still a good ways off paying down the $1000+ I spent on getting these books out there. But really, they’ve only been out for a few months, so things are just getting started.

Stats and Book bloggers

I decided to get on top of things financially, and with my wife SY’s help, put together a spreadsheet of all my book finance data, along with reviews, sales figures, costs, and subscriber counts. SY’s job is in managing data so she’s a whizz at doing this. Together we made all kinds of graphical representations, of monthly totals, book totals, cumulative graphs, and etc..

The result was shocking. I’d known I was in the red on this book business, but hadn’t realized how much. In total I’d spent about $2000 so far. I’d earned back around $700. That is a long way from paying for itself. The peaks of sales came unsurprisingly at the same time I did paid promotions, but not one of those paid off, and afterward sales tailed off, so there was no chance of them paying off later via residual effects. They were money sunk and gone.

This was painful, but good to see in hard real data. It was undeniable. The way I was doing it seemed unsustainable. I didn’t want this to be my hobby, I wanted to make money. Maybe that doesn’t sound clear, though- I wanted it to be clean. The more money I spent without getting money back, the more it felt like self-indulgence, vanity publishing, and a descent into distasteful unreality.

I never wanted vanity publishing. I don’t want to pay people to read my books, and that’s what it felt like to see those numbers. I want people to want to read my books, and value having done so. Of course you can’t force that, you have to grow it slowly, and hope the books are good enough.

So I’m taking another approach now. I’m sending free copies of my books to book bloggers, in the hope that they’ll read and review them on their blogs and on amazon. On their blogs could theoretically lead to sales of interested parties. On amazon leads on social proof and more guidance to potential buyers.

This has already started paying off. I got 4 reviews on Mr. Ruins in the last month, taking it up to a milestone 20 reviews. Hopefully more will come in. I’ve also had a very amazing discussions with readers who offered me their thoughts on how to improve my books. These have been more valuable than anything any editor has offered me.

Bard Bloom, a writer himself, gave really great and detailed feedback on how I could trim Ignifer’s Rise for pace. Randie Creamer offered great tips on how to make Mr. Ruins more readable without losing the sense of itself. Bethany Graycat has been so supportive, offering huge props, pitching my books to friends, and always getting back to me with opinions realy quickly. Katy Page has been a huge help, sharing her thoughts and fiction with me in turn, inspiring me forward when I might be feeling down myself. Rob Nugen has tirelessly read everything and offered detailed notes whether I paid him or not.

Thank you to these folks, and to everyone else who has offered their thoughts and reviews in 2014. The help has been really valued. I’ve mentioned all the above folks proudly in the achknowledgements sections of my books. I hope I can show my gratitude for your help in other ways too- principally by writing great books that you want to read, that will keep you interested in sharing your opinions with me.

Summary

What a writing year. I got serious about self-publishing, and I put out 5 books. I’ve got two more in my pocket, that I’ve been working on for the last 2 months, which will come out Jan 2015. I’ve got a zombie novel, potentially series, in the works. I’ve hired for and made 10 book covers, had editors, proofreaders, and beta readers go over my stuff, spent money and made money, refined my writing and my promotional style, and am super excited about the opportunities going forward.

2015

I aim to out at least 6 books next year. I’ve got 2 mostly done already, so maybe I’ll make that goal 8 books, with 6 all-new novels.

I’ll try to get into the black across my writing business. If I can do that, then I’ll have no qualms reinvesting whatever profits I have back into select promotional ads. If I can get on an in-the-black roll, who knows where things could go? That is of course the dream.

More content. More contact with readers, other writers, and if I can count myself so luck, fans.

I also want to get into reading and reviewing other indie books too. It’s a community, and I want to give back too. Not in the sense that I’d ever ‘trade’ reviews, but in the sense that I dedicate more of my reading time to other people trying to up and come like I am. Readers have a lot of power, and it’s only the decent thing to do, to try and wield my power as a reader for good :). Besides, reading indie books and discovering relatively unknown gems has got to be a bit like going to ruined places and taking photos, then sharing those impressions with others.

It’s all exploration. Bring on 2015!

And I didn’t even mention here that I moved country, got a job, got an MA, was best man at a wedding, went to 4 Michelin-star restaurants, and traveled in 4 new countries. I’ll get to that soon though 🙂

Great Ruins Sonata reviews!

Mike Grist December 17, 2014Uncategorized

The Ruins Sonata, my trilogy of science fiction dystopian post-tsunami apocalypse thrillers- Mr. Ruins, King Ruin, and God of Ruin -just got some stellar reviews from a review site called Bartleby’s reviews. They give away a good chunk of the plot, but not in a way that’ll ruin the books I think. Hopefully it’ll just tempt you to check them out :).

To help with that decision, Mr. Ruins is free on amazon.com for the foreseeable future.

Mr. Ruins review at Bartleby

King Ruin review at Bartleby

God of Ruin review at Bartleby

Why ‘The Girl With All the Gifts’ gives almost all I wanted – book review

Mike Grist December 7, 2014Book / Movie Reviews

★★★★ The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey is a perspective-flipping zombie road novel with a very great deal to recommend it. It starts off extremely tight-focused, homed in on one little girl and her experience of her bizarre, locked-box (Pandoran?) school, then explodes outward in a way most zombie stories don’t- digging into the science of the zombie infection, zooming into the epidemic hypocenter, and giving us a haunting sense of closure.

All the gifts indeed. Yet- I can’t say I loved it. I’ll get into why after I say everything that was so good. There’ll be spoiler tags when necessary.

So, Melanie. Melanie is a little girl in a weird little school with soldiers and guns and desk-straps for necks and wrists. “Don’t worry, I won’t bite,” Melanie teases one of the soldiers when he goes, part of a three-man morning team, to strap her in to her transit wheelchair for school.

He shudders away. We get it. And that’s about all you’re given from the blurb, but it’s hardly a spoiler to say Melanie is some kind of zombie. At the least, she’s infectious. To just what level, and what that means for everyone, is what the book goes on to explain- and that’s one of the greatest joys of the book.

Maybe I’m a bit weird in this, that I really like this kind of expository development/explanation of a world. Some of my favorite bits of The Maze Runner (my Maze Runner review here) were the expository explanations of how the maze worked, how the Grievers worked, etc.. Same for LOST, where I loved the world, and WOOL (my WOOL review here), where I loved getting the back story. So know that when I say this- these world-building bits, scattered throughout a novel that turns into a road movie fairly early on, with a good range of fairly normal zombie/post-apocalypse tropes thrown in (Junkers), are absolutely the best bits of the book.

They are original, and to my eye, highly so. Of course we need the plot, escalating tension, near escapes and all that, but they only window-dress the substantial ideas lying underneath them. I may even have issues with the potential realism of these underlying ideas (more later), but who cares- they’re so deeply cool. If the book is made into a movie they will make such great, foreign visuals, that I couldn’t care less about their realism.

So that’s very good. What else is good? Of course I want to say the characters, but the trick here is that the characters changed in a way that didn’t seem natural to me. The book hits a clear tonal change about one quarter in, when it becomes a road movie from multiple points of view (i.e. not only Melanie), and after that point everybody’s personality kind of shifted in a way I didn’t believe. This was jarring and weird for me, and is probably related to the fact that this book started as a short story, confined to the school, which then got expanded.

It didn’t get ironed out, though. Characters changed in the new story, but that didn’t echo backward to the origin. The beginning was extremely locked-in to Melanie’s limited point of view. It’s great. Then, and I don’t think is a spoiler, but rather fair warning, we abruptly start seeing things from more perspectives. We end up getting points of view from 4 other characters.

This ends up inflating the book, in a way I don’t think was strictly necessary. It rounds out the world, for sure, but getting the back story of these folks was largely a distraction to me, and weird after being locked-into (and enjoying) Melanie’s limited view.

On the whole though, it’s a great book, for the beginning and the ending. I could miss out the middle I suppose. You could cut most of it, to be honest, and lose very little but the grind to get to the end. Naturally you need some grind though. 4 stars. Onward for spoilers.

*** SPOILERS ***

I talked about their being a tonal disconnect between the short story origins and the road novel, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the character of Sergeant Parks.

Sergeant Parks

He starts off as an ass, frankly. He is petty, small-minded, sadistic, unable to adapt his thinking, and hateful of a small child.

I can perhaps see an otherwise good guy acting like that, under certain extreme conditions of stress and duress, but much is made later on of what a solid, decent, adaptable, good guy Sergeant Parks is. What? Are we talking about the same guy who left Melanie locked in her chair overnight, because she said his first name? Is it also the guy who said to her, “I will f*cking dismantle you?” because she did something else equally innocuous.

These are the actions of a psycho Nurse-Rached type bastard, who he later proves to absolutely not be. He later on is understanding, adapts fast, and never shows signs of sadism or petty cruelty again. It doesn’t sync up. He made a great villain for the beginning- but unfortunately I think someone like that is just irredeemable. So M. R. Carey had to flat-out change him authorially, for him to become a hero. No other way, so it’s hand of god. That stuck in my craw. My theory is- Carey liked the villain so much from the short story, he couldn’t get past that for the novel. As the first quarter goes, he’s the main conflict, so we need him to be evil.

Then we get another conflict, and so Parks transitions abruptly to the hero. And that other conflict is the Junkers.

The Junkers

I don’t like this, and didn’t like it from the moment they popped into the plot. They are coincidence and deus ex machina, and their appearance seconds before Melanie is about to have her brain dissected is unbelievable. The chances of it are just impossible. Again, here I see the transition from short story to novel. In short story, Melanie probably is just going to get dissected. The author had to flip that. How? Through random chance.

OK, so we’re allowed one random chance in a book, as our inciting incident, maybe you’re saying? Perhaps. It is disappointing though, and kind of unnecessary. In fact, completely unnecessary. Justineau, Melanie’s teacher who she becomes protective of, was on her way to save Melanie. Why not have her save her? That would be organic.

Instead we Justineau striving to save Melanie, at the exact moment the Junkers attack. It’s a double-whammy, and we need both at once for Melanie to escape.

Yet, as I think about it, it may have been the only way to get that specific group, including Caldwell, the scientist who wanted to dissect Melanie, into the same escape group as Justineau. In another theoretical version, in which Justineau saves the girl but there are no Junkers, there’s no way Caldwell could come with them. They’d be in opposition. Which means we’d never get all the scientific exposition I loved so much. In that case, the pressure driving from behind would not be Junkers, but the base itself. So also, there’s no way Perks would be on board, and no way Melanie and Justineau could survive for more than a day before getting killed/recaptured.

So yeah, that would be a different book. Hmm. I dunno. Maybe something like the Junkers are necessary, but they are so fundamentally unbelievable. Here are survivors who are able to herd vast numbers of zombies into an attack, using bulldozers and other such, because they wear tar on their skin to bock any signals that they are humans. They do this successfully.

I just don’t buy this. They are attacking, moving, shouting, driving, making heat and light, but they don’t get killed by the zombies. Our guys, out wearing the bestest chemical blockers on their skin, still have to walk softly and carefully through fields of sleeping zombies, in case they wake them up. What about the Junkers avoids this fact? It may be possible to drive zombies, but why wouldn’t at least some of the zombies just turn and eat them? Is tar really a more effective sweat-blocker than high-tech stuff from the base? Are they sitting in their bulldozer driving seats perfectly still and silent?

But, later on we see grenades are an effective distraction. So zombies would be swarming those bulldozers like they were a bowl of tasty grubs. So all that makes it a triple unbelievable whammy. But, sigh, it gets the story on the road. And it needs to be on the road to get to the fruiting fungal tree.

Fruiting fungal tree

I love the corpses fruiting. I love the tree. I love that it takes fire to unleash the zombie seeds. I may not buy it, but who cares? I don’t see how a fungus that works in ants- which probably evolved to hunt ants so effectively over millennia – could abruptly come up with the human global killer through one massive genetic evolution. It’s like going from apes to humans in one generation. So complex, and also wholly original. Having all the bodies conjoin like that, where does that happen with ants?

It doesn’t. But, I don’t care. It’s awesome. Which brings us to the ending, and how it treated Caldwell.

Caldwell

Caldwell the scientist is the one pitched as evil. She is dissecting these kids, ohmigod, she’s so cruel and awful. What a cow. She has to be stopped.

Uh, excuse me, what? Shall we not try to save THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE then? For this reason throughout the book I came to really dislike Justineau. She became the petty and sadistic one. Maybe that was the point? I feel a bit queasy though because it seemed like I was being steered to like her, and dislike Caldwell. But dammit, I’m on Caldwell’s side. Sorry kid, we need your brain. It sucks, I know.

That the infection turns out to be irreversible and incurable is irrelevant until after we find that out. Really, everyone should have been supporting her. Melanie’s a nice kid, and she’s useful, but if she held the secret to saving the race, I think we’d better go with that.

By way of justification, Justineau (similar words, no?) is given a very brief motivation for loving Melanie so to the exclusion of all else- she killed a kid once while drunk driving- but I find that a bit pat. Can she not see there are larger things at stake?

So I sympathized with Caldwell. She was doing what needed to be done, with maximum economy. She was the only realist in the group. And she got a poor end. But, overall, it led to an ending that was very strong.

The End

Justineau gets what she wanted. It’s her own kind of prison, and I can roll with that. She helped betray her own race, so she’s doomed to a lifetime with this new one. It’s a great ending, having this human 2.0 deal go forwards like this. I think these new peoples are gonna have a helluva time getting over their hunger, though. Just because humans 1.0 won’t be around anymore, they’ll still be voraciously? hungry- it seems to be inbuilt.

They say any society is 3 meals away from revolution. For them it’ll be 1 meal, and therefore pretty unlikely to result in any kind of civilization success. I guess no vegetarians either, so they’re all eating grub-cereal and live meat. It’ll mean lots of rats and pigeons (dinner for one), or big communal feasts where they all take down like a cow together. A death to most cooking tv shows.

Summary

So again, by way of summary, I liked the book a lot. More because I loved the clinging fungal strands of zombie exposition, like an infection themselves within the implausible plot-flesh of the road novel, trying to take over. So- really great ideas, modestly couched. Now go forth and read it.

Get ‘The Girl With All the Gifts’ here on amazon.

Ruined Cartmel Farmhouse and Priory

Mike Grist November 20, 2014Churches / Shrines, UK

Cartmel is a tiny village located at the bottom of the Lake District in the NorthWest of the UK, famous for two things- a racecourse that brings in punters nationally perhaps once a year, and L’Enclume, a Michelin-stared restaurant now dubbed the best restaurant in the uk. Also there are plenty of ruins…

This past weekend I went up to Cartmel with my wife SY, firstly to attend my brother’s wedding (congratulations Joe and Vicky!) as best man, which was an excellent experience, and secondly to take a mini-holiday in the middle of nature. Cartmel stood out to us because we’d been hearing about L’Enclume for years, from various media sources (Steve Coogan in The Trip) and now seemed the time to do it. .

After the hectic pace of the wedding, for which I did some help setting things up, helped steer things somewhat while they were underway, and of course gave a speech, on top of driving up from London and all around Bolton when I haven’t driven for years and was never a very confident driver anyway- it was awesome to head into the country and go stay at a B & B surrounded by green, hills, and stars in the night sky.

We arrived at the B & B, Broughton Hotel on Sunday afternoon, which featured a wooden-frame Yurt in the grounds as well as 36 solar panels, and one of the most comfy beds ever, and I just vegged out. Eating the owner’s brownies and sugar cookies knocked me even further for 6. Here I am, out of it completely in the lounge-

Fallen down. Roaring fire only sped my descent into Land of Nod.

Tea, brownies, sugar cookies. I couldn’t eat dinner til after 9 I was that filled up and sleepy.

That night we went out for a pub dinner. Driving on night country roads is tricky, and I dreaded coming up against an oncoming car. The roads in most spots were far too narrow to go past each other, which would necessitated one of us backing up a good long stretch to find a passing place. Happily, in all our night jaunts, it never happened.

The next day dawned bright and cheery, not even that cold, and after a gently staggered start, with a stunning fresh full English breakfast hand-prepared by the B & B owner, we headed out on our day’s hike. We had a goal to circle the area for 3 or 4 hours, see some sights, and work up our appetite.

First though, we started with Cartmel priory, which is an 800 year old church in the center of the tiny village. It is a living ruin, in excellent condition still, that apparently takes 500 pounds a day to maintain, heat, and light (about $800). We bought a few postcards and left a moderate donation toward that end. It’s hard to imagine how amazing a structure like the priory would have appeared when it was first built 800 years ago. Enough to make you believe in god, probably.

Gorgeous day, beautiful building.

Exterior stained glass windows. The building is probably sandstone.

By the by, this church is probably a lot like what the church in my book Ignifer’s Rise looks like. That one’s a bit bigger, and of a whiter stone but basically the same deal.

Gravestones built into the wall. Some of those remembered here were surprisingly old for their era- we saw several 80+ year olds, who died in the 1800s.

Poppies like these commemorate Remembrance Day (Nov 11) in the UK- symbolizing all the lives lost since WW1.

After musing around the exterior for some time, we went inside. To our surprise, our co-guests at the Broughton Hotel were in the priory as well, and we had a little chat about how impressive the building was. And it is very beautiful. Take a look.

Biblical scenes in ancient stained glass.

The Nave.

More long-lived souls, with their gravestones laid to rest tiling the church’s inner floor.

In a corner, more stained glass alongside the livery of various local houses.

With a memorial for the Duke or Earl of something, I forget where.

It’s me. People were a lot shorter back then. I’m only 5’10”.

View across the Nave from the Transept.

Stained glass and pennants fly.

Inside the chancel choir, looking out.

I had rather be a doore keeper in the house of my god, then to dwell in the tabernacles of wickednese.

Chancel looking in.

Popping out and onwards.

The King’s Arms, a pub where we ate Sunday night, right on the square in the village center. At left you can see the priory.

After the priory was done, we headed out across the racecourse, seeking our hike from a book that followed largely unmarked public bridleways (public rights of way, often across fields and climbing over stiles and gates). Early on, we stumbled upon this abandoned farmhouse, which I of course had to go take a look at.

It wasn’t in too bad shape from outside, but choked with overgrown brambles in the central yard, and the roof fallen through on the buildings on the right.

Couldn’t get into this building it had all been shuttered up, but I did dip into the barn on the left.

Clambering over brambles, I ducked in through a half-open split-level door, and peered left and right.

Right. In the middle there is a cool-looking wood-saw thing. I wish I’d got a closer look at it, but I was in a rush to get back to the hike.

Shuttered window.

Glass still in this one.

The central corridor in the barn, actually very dark. Would pigs have lived in here? Or are these divisions used for storing hay or some such?

The half-open split door I ducked in through.

Some light shone in through a hole in the ceiling, so I climbed up on this big tractor tyre scattered with hay, took a final shot down the middle way, then climbed up through the ceiling.

There’s my tyre down below. I was very cautious to not step on a rotten bit- sticking to edges and central underlying beams.

The upper level of the barn.

That was that for the explore. If I’d had more time, I might have tried to get into the farmhouse. It would have required climbing myself up through some kind of coal-scuttle into the second floor, which I didn’t fancy doing- it looked very tight and time-consuming.

I’m sure there’ll be more ruined farmhouses in the future though.

So, after that we got o with our walk. Early on we came up against this sign-

Adders are of course snakes. We don’t have many in the UK, but this is one. We saw none though.

A view from the top, looking back on the hike we made. This was part of the Cambrian Coastal Way.

We worked our way through boggy fields back to Cartmel in time for dark fall, had a cream tea (tea and cream and jam scones, utterly delicious), then waited until our reservation at L’Enclume. Though this is far from a food blog, I think I’ll give it its own post, it was that impressive. Until then (in a few days maybe).

In the meantime, if you know any great or weird ruins in the uk, please let me know in the comments below or via email (michaeljohngrist@hotmail.com). I’m keen to visit more.

More Cartmel info.

Women’s Prayer Breakfast

Mike Grist November 8, 2014Events

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed quod proximum fuit non vidit. Videmus igitur ut conquiescere ne infantes quidem possint. Prave, nequiter, turpiter cenabat; Sic enim censent, oportunitatis esse beate vivere. Qui est in parvis malis. Quid enim me prohiberet Epicureum esse, si probarem, quae ille diceret? Hic nihil fuit, quod quaereremus. Duo Reges: constructio interrete.

God of Ruin – The Ruin War 3

Mike Grist October 30, 2014Books, Overview, The Ruin War

God of Ruin is a Hard SF thriller, Book 3 in the Ruin War trilogy.

Your heart is the door into hell.

In the destructive struggle for the Aetheric Bridge, elite Graysmith Ritry broke his soul into seven constituent parts. Now those parts roam the world blinded by loss and new addictions, mopping up holdouts from the war with King Ruin.

But the real war has only just begun. From the ashes of King Ruin’s defeat a god-like power rises, with a solitary decree- an unstoppable flood is coming, to wash everything clean.

And Ritry is a soul divided. How can he possibly stand?

An all-powerful god crushes the shattered soul of Ritry in the blazing heart of a star.

It is book #3 in the Ruin War trilogy, available in e-book and print formats through Amazon:

– Amazon US

– Amazon UK

– Amazon CA

Book #1 Mr. Ruin

Book #2 King Ruin

story craft #19 Weight in a Name

Mike Grist October 22, 2014Life, Story Craft

You’ve probably heard of the callback, a technique comedians use to get fresh mileage out of an old joke, often with exponentially uproarious results. Here’s a callback in Seinfeld:

Seinfeld did these a lot, in this case it was a callback and a kind of catch phrase linking back to a previous episode, that when repeated multiple times, only gets more power. Master of my domain. I use these sometimes just hanging out with people- something gets mentioned early on, you see a chance to mention it again later, tangentially related to what they’re saying, boom, everybody laughs. Everybody uses them. They’re on comedy quiz shows constantly.

AND- we can use them in our writing too. I’m sure we can use it for comedy, if we want, but now I’m talking about power, as in emotional power. It could be fear, awe, happiness, sadness, fulfillment, just about anything. In fiction, as in Seinfeld’s comedy, repetition across multiple contexts can build a kind of emotional power.

Look at political speeches. Obama’s refrain of YES WE CAN throughout the 2008 election probably won him the presidency. He always built up to it carefully and low, rising to a crescendo at the end so clear and expected that crowds would shout out his catchphrase with him. Like a rock star, he could have sat back and held the mic out to them and they would have just brought chills and awe and release onto themselves, just by saying the words.

YES WE CAN!

MASTER OF MY DOMAIN!

I WON A CONTEST. (refers back to same master of my domain reference, stacking callbacks for ultimate laughs)

How

I’ve noticed I do this technique all the time. In my short story Bells of Subsidence, we meet Aliqa and Temetry. Aliqa is leaving the planet to fly around the universe in a giant Bell ship, which will use her memories as fuel. She will end up remembering nothing at all.

But despite that, and forgetting everything else, she remembers Temetry. Through most of the story, she no longer even knows what his name means, it’s just a word she somehow clings on to. I’m giving myself shivers just writing about it. But it gives her hope, and that’s what his name comes to mean to her. It drives her on. It plays a huge role in the ending, which I believe provides the same kind of crescendo that Obama’s final Yes We Can would elicit- though of course of a very different sort.

But it’s not only me. Look at Ayn Rand, and ATLAS SHRUGGED. Don’t judge the politics, look at the way she builds up the character John Galt. His name is everywhere, on billboards, in newspapers, on people’s lips, influencing everything, but nobody knows a thing about him. They don’t even know if he is a person, or an idea, or what. So his name builds up this huge, almost mythical stature. He’s a mystery, a cipher for everything that could be good, or that might be bad. I think it’s brilliant. So when, at the end, we finally meet John Galt, well. Well, it’s actually a bit dull, as he lays out a philosophical screed for maybe 50 pages. But the build up was killer.

LOST did it with Jacob. For maybe 4 seasons they mentioned Jacob’s name with awe and reverence before we finally met him. It built him way, way up.

I also do it in my novels, constantly. I did it in my very first, and I’m still doing it now, often via lists. There’ll have been lots of characters in the story, many important, and I often call many of them back at the end, in a punch punch punch list, like YES WE CAN after YES WE CAN, or I Won a Contest after Master of my Domain. They stack, and hopefully each name brings a slightly different flavor with it. Like Temetry, one can be love and hope. Another can be loss, another friendship, faith, anything.

You stack all those ingredients and hope together they punch the reader in the emotional nuts. You try to get to them, by piling up all the goods you’ve got in one snappy paragraph or line. They weep, they punch the air, they laugh out loud, it’s all good. It’s the weight of a name.

Like I say, I may overuse it, but it’s an incredibly powerful technique. Give it a try ;).

Why The Maze Runner outruns all logic – movie review

Mike Grist October 13, 2014Book / Movie Reviews

★★★ The Maze Runner by James Dashner (Dash is a good name for a book about running) is an infuriatingly good example of taking great liberal splashes of all the great stuff that went before (LOST, Truman Show, Hunger Games), and not learning the key lesson from any of them. It is fun, it is rollicking, but by the end (and after reading the synopses of its sequels on wikipedia) I just feel like it’s empty, like a jester’s sad bauble-bladder deflated of all air.

Disappointing.

But, if you’re not burned out still on the let-down cop-out ending of a show like LOST, or even the let-down cop-out ending of The Hunger Games series in the books, yeah, whatever. It’s awesome.

The story is about an amnesiac mid-teen boy, Thomas, who gets plunged up in a lift-shaft much like Katniss’ lift shaft, into an, um, arena. But it’s called the Glade, and there’s not too much fighting here. In the Glade there’s a bunch of other amnesiac mid-teen boys who’ve been cooling their heels, chopping down trees, farming, and such-like, for years. They’re surrounded by a massive concrete wall which can’t be climbed (uh, ladders? earthworks?), and “what would be the point of climbing it anyway?” as one character says.

What would be the point of climbing it? Are you kidding me?

OK get over this. Some of the boys run the maze and map it, looking for a way out. Sometimes they get killed by monsters called Grievers, which ‘sting’ people, and they go crazy. Thomas is going to have to figure out a way out of the maze, or something like that, perhaps by leveraging the weird flashback dreams he has about clinical labs and stuff.

So that’s the premise. Yup, love it. It’s like Hunger Games, like labyrinth, like LOST, like the Truman Show, replete with a checklist of features from those stories:

– weird old tech and structures scattered around, branded mysteriously, that seem to have a reason but none is clear (LOST)

– terrifying monster howling out in the distance, that nobody has ever seen (LOST)

– arena, teens, fighting, battles, great pressure and symbolism (Hunger Games)

– young teen/older teen sibling relationship (like Pru and Katniss, Hunger Games)

– thank god no romance! (buh bye Twilight)

– contained world in which (you know it, right?) the people inside are being watched closely (Truman Show, Hunger Games)

etc…

So these are all good things. It takes the first 40 minutes of the story to explain these, and how this Glade works, and I liked all that. Dystopias like this are fascinating for how they work. Look at Hugh Howey’s Wool. Massive amounts of that were a clue-hunt in a grand puzzle, with Howey doling out fascinating exposition of how people could live, and searching for the meaning/purpose behind it.

Huge Howey didn’t disappoint, but The Maze Runner does. I’ll go into the ending after SPOILER tags in a bit, but for now the obvious stuff:

– Climb over the wall!

Why don’t the boys do this? Once you climb over the wall you can see the whole maze. You can see what’s outside, and how to get there. It would be the absolute focus of my day if I was there. The boys do build stuff out of wood, there are plenty of trees, so why not build a massive tower/ladder? Totally it is possible. Failing that, build a massive earthworks. Take all the earth in the Glade and pile it up against the wall, so the whole thing is a slope. If that’s not enough, add ladders on the top. Done.

– Go out and hunt!

They know there are monsters in the maze, but they never take it to the monsters. They send runners out in pairs, basically unarmed. Absolutely, a warrior class could develop in any group of boys, and you send them out to fight. Find out what you’re up against.

– Build more defenses in the Glade.

I can’t fathom why they rely upon the maze opening and closing nicely for their defense. Build up some ramparts around the entrances. Patrol them, leave guards on duty. Come on, guys.

But OK, all that aside, it’s still great fun. The visuals of the maze and the glade are stunning and cool. We easily imagine ourselves there. The teen-angst and in-fighting is awesome, Lord of the Flies obviously, but still great. Acting is great too.

I’m just disappointed by the resolution of the puzzle. If you can get over that though, it’s a cool, surprising, action-packed romp with lead actors that draw you in and make it more real. But it is pretty much empty, like eating only beautiful spun-sugar decorations without any vittles.

** SPOILERS **

So much is wrong with the ending. Basically, it’s a bluff to keep the kids running a maze of some kind, and keep them super-stressed. But, what? Are they immune to the disease or not?

If they are immune, and this whole program is designed to somehow extract that immunity, how in hell does running a maze and being stressed by that help at all? The plague is called the Flare, in what sense are you testing/immunizing the Flare by running in a maze, and prior to that, living for three years in a glade?

I just absolutely do not buy it. Are they trying to tap and bottle the human spirit? Is that what makes immunity to the Flare? So these kids are not actually immune, they’re potentially immune, and we think that immunity will come out if we run their bodies down and force them to be super-stressed?

Wtf? Who thought that up, and pitched it to financial backers as the best idea? And after reading the synopses of the next two books, it seems this just remains the deal. The kids get stressed and put through the grinder, and somehow magically this makes their bodies produce the new penicillin, or something? What kind of mad theory is that? How is this massive maze, and exceedingly complex and long-lasting plot (3 years and running), involving memory-wiping (why?) in any way the most efficient way to isolate a gene for immunity?

It makes no sense. I can’t roll with it. It will spoil my enjoyment of the next two movies, if I see them, because it makes no sense.

It’s partly why LOST was a failure by the end. They got all the character stuff basically right, and I’m even willing to forgive them ruining John Locke’s redemption, but they never gave a reason for why the island was important, what it could do, why we were all fighting for it. Maybe there was none they could give that would satisfy? But they didn’t even try.

Hugh Howey did it in Wool. There was a reason people got put into silo tubes for millennia, and it was a good one. It made everything else worth it.

Maze Runner doesn’t have that. And shy of that, it’s just a bunch of stuff. Re:

– Why have these kids has their memories wiped?

– Why send up only one girl?

– Why send up a boy who think she was somehow responsible for this?

– Why was he their favorite? What does that even mean?

– Are they immune? Are the adults immune? They seem to be alive also. If they’re all immune (because none of them are dead) what is any of this even for?

– Why progress the maze the way they do? Why send up the blue antidotes, that restore memory? What was that for, at all? If they’re trying to encourage the kids to try and run through the maze, why didn’t they encourage them in this way earlier? Give them a bit better weapons? Why suddenly give them a push now?

– Why send the girl? What is the point of her in the plot? She just exists?

– Why pretend to all be dead at the end? What benefit is there in the boys thinking they’re ‘free’?

Ah sigh. All of these questions may have answers. Perhaps we can even consider them hooks for the next movie/book. But like LOST, I get the unerring feeling the answers will be unsatisfactory. And that’s just not good enough.

Also:

– If the boys think the helicopters were sent to rescue them, then won’t they question why the helicopters didn’t just descend into the glade to save them? Won’t they wonder, uh, guys, you shot up the control room, why didn’t you just turn off the monsters and open the doors? And if they wonder that, which I did immediately, won’t they realize at once that the whole ‘rescue’ is a ruse? And won’t that ruin all the effort WCKD (uh, alcopop) made to make them think it was real?

So, yeah. Awesome visuals. Great fun movements of the story. But deeply unplanned dystopia that underlies it, rendering everything else fancy tissue paper over a turd.

Additional-

I found this article on Vulture that explains some of what is happening in the Maze Runner. The guy read the prequel book, and has some answers. So, essentially it seems to be there were solar flares, which destroyed cities, but then there were too many people for the resources (? doesn’t make sense. Destroy cities would kill the people and leave the Mid-West croplands alive, but whatever), so the new government decided to kill these extra people (? wtf? why not just let them die of starvation?) with a disease shot in high-tech darts from helicopter gunships (wtfffff? makes zero sense. Use bullets or bombs if you must).

So they made the disease, and as total imbeciles, released it. As if it wasn’t bad enough dealing with the actual flares, they made up this new problem, also unimaginatively and confusingly called the Flare (why?), which then went viral and spread. Duh.

Now they spread their disease, everyone is going nuts, so they decide to cure it. Why they didn’t just use a disease we already have a cure for, but people with no resources wouldn’t have a cure for, I don’t know. Drop the black plague on them, if you absolutely can’t use bullets and bombs. If it comes back to us, we can cure it. Duh.

Then, next massive leap, Thomas in the Maze Runner is immune, so we get him to run around in a maze, because cure. WHAT? There is no connection between these two states. If you want his immunity, you had better run tests on him or something. How does risking his life in a maze help anyone? At all? What is that kind of ‘test’ going to do to help make a cure?

I’m done with Maze Runner. Can’t think about its nonsense any more.

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