Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Le Labyrinthe

I hoped and thought that I was gonna like this book, but I was unfortunately wrong. Here are the things that I didn’t like about this book.

This review is full of spoilers so beware!

The plot. The idea could probably have been really cool, if the the plot had made sense and had been explained better. I feel like the author hadn’t really thought about all the details and when the main character asked questions he was just shot down or ignored by the others. It was like the author had tried to put way too much in the book but at the same time way too little stuff. It felt confusing most of the time and like way too much didn’t get explained.
The characters. First of all I really really hated Thomas the main character. I did not like his anger and mood swings. He was so annoying and it felt like he thought he was different or special, and that he had the right to break every rule in the whole community. He acted like owned the place but at the same time he didn’t like the attention he got when he did something dumb. He was also unnecessarily rude to the others, mostly Chuck who he kept describing as annoying, but the second that danger was near he wanted to protect Chuck and even said that Chuck felt like his brother. Also how can you feel that way when you’ve literally known someone for like 3 weeks at most. Sometimes Thomas makes a way too quick decision that he doesn’t even want to do. Then he tells people about it and gets extremely relieved when they insist that he doesn’t do that. For example when he says that it should be him who offers himself to the Grievers and someone immediately tells him no. It was so annoying. Second of all I did not like most of the other characters. All of the characters who are kinda important has anger issues except for Chuck and Teresa. I got so mad at them when their first instinct was to yell at someone or get suspicious of someone else. You would think that, as Newt says multiple times in the book, when you live in a place like the Glade and you are dependent on trusting each other, that distrust wouldn’t be as big a problem as it is for multiple of these characters. I guess that I’m not supposed to like Gally, so there’s not a lot to say about him. He was just a bully who didn’t like the main character. Teresa felt really fucking irrelevant and plain. I don’t know how else to describe her. I have mixed feelings about Alby. Like he was so annoying a lot of the time but then there were other times where he was one of the only characters I didn’t want to punch. The same goes for Minho. Sometimes it felt like he was one of the only people to do anything valuable but other times he was just as annoying as Alby. I don’t know how to feel about Newt. Other than Chuck he was the only person that didn’t annoy the fuck out of me. He was only annoying about 40 % of the book. He was good at leading people however so that was nice I guess. Chuck was the only character who I didn’t dislike at any point in the book. Over all the characters just felt one dimensional and boring.
The Grievers.I don’t know if I’m just bad at imagining things or something, but the Grievers just felt boring. I did not feel any fear for the characters when they were fighting them, and I think it’s because I just could not imagine what the supposed monsters looked like and because I didn’t really care what happened to most of the characters.
The writing. This book might have been better if the writing hadn’t been as bad as it was. The descriptions of things were repetitive and boring. I normally barely think about the writing in a book, but this was just not good.
Plot holes and other confusing things. I do not like it when a book leaves me confused and this book did a great job at doing precisely that. Maybe there are answers to some of these questions in the next books, I don’t know yet. What happened to the Gladers who didn’t chose to escape? Where did Gally go when he ran away and how did he get back to the Glade without dying? Did the Grievers just choose random people to take when they attacked? Why did they take the people they did? Why is Teresa the only girl? Had the Gladers ever tried to attack and kill the Grievers? Because Thomas literally kills one near the end of the book. The Gladers are supposed to be very smart, why haven’t they, in the two years they’ve been in the Glade, figured out how to escape when it literally took Thomas and Teresa like 3 weeks? Why was Newt the only person who had an accent? Who created the slang words? Where do they shower and use the toilet? I think it was briefly mentioned that Chuck and some others worked as “Sloppers” and that their job was to clean stuff, but like clean what stuff and where? This book really needed a map. Why was Teresa in a coma when none of the others had been? Why were some of the characters named after very famous smart people and inventors, when others weren’t? Why was Thomas able to remember more than the others when? Why would no one tell Thomas anything in the start? They all said that he had to wait for something or just learn by being there. They acted like something was gonna kill them if they told Thomas anything. Why could Thomas and Teresa talk to each other in their heads? Why did they call the newest Glader “Greenie”, and why did they call Thomas Greenie but not Teresa? Thomas literally got there before Teresa. Why is the Glade called the Glade? Why did Alby try to strangle himself when he tried to tell Thomas what he saw in the Changing, but Thomas didn’t try to strangle himself when he told all the others?
The “romance”. To me it did not make any sense to add romance to this book, especially because the little romance there was didn’t make sense and was very badly written. In my opinion the book could probably have been better if the author had focused on making interesting characters instead of trying to put a romance in there. Like, am I supposed to believe that Thomas and Teresa were together before coming to the Glade or something?
The slang words. To me it seemed like the slang was added to make it seem like the book was more detailed than it actually was. Why not just use regular curse words?
The code and the Griever Hole. What did the code mean? Were they just random words? How did the Grievers fit so easily in the hole when the people kinda had trouble getting in there?

Content Warnings

hutaoghost's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional inspiring lighthearted mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

Content Warnings

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