Shadows Fall is quite spectacular in concept, the execution, on the other hand, is imperfect, but not so much that it distracted me from the book itself.
For people not familiar with him, Green specializes in a glorious subgenre of commercial fiction that I don’t really have a name for yet. It’s not quite Pratchett-esque crack, but it’s not your usual kind of urban fantasy. The thing I suppose it reminds me the most of is, really well done crossover fanfiction between two or more other properties. The books aren’t overly complicated but they are always delightful and addicting. It’s like your favorite television shows or comic book series, only in novel/novella form. The characters are all memorable and brilliant. The dialogue is snappy and awesome. The settings can blow your minds. Parts of them are ridiculous but ridiculous in the same way that Doctor Who is, that comics are. He also has several series inhabiting the same shared universe and so you get cameos and references across several series that tie everything together in fascinating ways.
Shadows Fall takes place in this shared universe. It’s referenced in several Nightside books, so I had already known the name before I picked up this book. Shadows Fall is a town, a town you can’t find on any map. A small town in the way back of beyond where legends–human and otherwise–go to live out their days as belief in them dies. Comic superheroes who never achieved true fame comingle with rock ‘n’ roll stars who died young; dinosaurs roam the park at night. This is where legends go to die and lost souls find peace.
I am fairly convinced that somewhere there exists a place like this somewhere in this world or the one to come. Green sets up the novel with a classic horror genre beginning to it. Everything is happy and fine and it’s one of the town holidays. Everyone is out and about.
And then a murder happens. And the ball starts slowly rolling.
But this isn’t a horror novel, rather more a mystery quest with a heavy dash of modern apocalyptic fantasy. Or rather urban fantasy with elements of a mystery quest during a bloody invasion.
There are many different characters that walk in and out of the pages of the book and various plots and subplots that eventually are resolved in the last couple of pages. There are prophecies, priests, demons, Faerie, musicians, teddy bears, snipers, angels, fanatics, lovers, and undead. My favorite part of the story is where a Golden Age era elderly superhero takes on a T-Rex in the courts of Faerie.
I got chills down my spine when the Faerie went to war. It had the same feeling that the Entmarch did – that kind of wide eyed this-is-really-happening sort of feeling. The kind of feeling where you know the world will never be the same after this – that if you live through it things will never be the same and you’ll tell your grandkids that you saw this and that and words can’t describe the feelings really.
It’s a fascinating read. Especially as you get to the end and you wonder how it all ties together. The ending…is something I’m still working though honestly. It has shades of Lewis’ Last Battle but hmm it’s interesting to parse and too complicated to give anything but general impressions without reproducing the book here. It’s also by far the weakest part of the entire book.
Overall? It’s not a perfect book, the concept is brilliant, but the execution is flawed – it is by no means a perfect book. It’s not the first Simon Green I’d recommend reading but it is quite something. Definitely worth the admission price for the first two-thirds of the book.
This summer has been more active and there has been more travel this year than in previous years. Some of it good and some of it less so, but specifically the last two months have been one whirlwind after another.
We’ve had some awesome family visits – both Roomie’s extended family and my siblings from the other side of the Equator which was fantastic! We got to have the Fourth of July with my siblings and parents which hasn’t happened in a while and it was truly very awesome. We also introduced my brother in law to the wonders of 1776 and got to spend some time with some really amazing old photos which really only proved that yeah, we’ve pretty much always had this level of sass.
Then there was Hypericon, which if you were at, you probably saw me or my Roomie running around all over everywhere, as the Programming department of the concom. I am thrilled to say that, with a few small exceptions, the con went off exceedingly well and the programming was well-recieved and the quality of guests and panelists were amazing.
It was such an incredible relief to see a year’s work of hard work be executed well. I am incredibly grateful to all the people who I badgered or in one case, shanghaied into coming as panelists and featured guests. It brought a level of class and awesome to panels and workshops that was just superfantastic.
Roomie also went off to her residency for the MFA program she’s enrolled in and that was a lot of running and doing all the things before sending her off to the airline gate ( this was during Hypericon too, so if you saw me on Sunday and I was sort of a space cadet at you, apologies! I’d gotten around 4 hours of sleep total) and off to grown-up summer camp.
Then the AC in the house decided to break that evening, running around looking for contractors and repair people that could work around my work schedule was interesting to say the least. It is still not totally fixed, but we know what the problem is and it should be fixed by tomorrow.
In between doing all of that, the day job has been super crazy as well since it’s summer and vacations among other things are happening. So there’s been a lot going on. So much that my poor ASD brain hasn’t been able to cope as well as I’d like it to, which is why the radio silence from here.
I am trying to be a little better about the home/work/other work/con work balance than I have been, especially with the limited amount of spoons I already have. Compromise is one of my least favorite words, but slowly I am working to destigmatize it in my own head. It’s a great word when dealing with outside life and other people, it’s only in my own head and body that it’s a not great word. A lot of it has to do with forever needing to compromise with my brain and body due to the chronic pain issues…and I know that, but still sometimes knowing that intellectually doesn’t make it hit my less rational and more emotive self.
I have been reading though and writing some. More reading than writing and there’ll be a post about everything that I’ve been reading or re-reading as the case may be. I’ve delighted in some new stuff and picked up old favorites again. There’s something decidedly comforting about picking up a book you’ve read over and over, It’s akin to a warm blanket on a cold night or seeing an old friend.
Tell me about your summers, good or bad, if you like in the comments.
Today is Father’s Day, today is also the first Brasilian World Cup Game. So we’re up at Serenity Valley (my parents’ place) decked out in our gold and green and blue, making a truly Brasilian meal (picanha com alho e oleo, arroz e feijao) and anxiously awaiting the start of the game.
We’re a little sad we can’t get the Brasilian game on a Brasilian channel, but we’ll make do. The important thing is that we’re all together and we’re cheering madly for Brasil. So have a picture of me and my daddy in our Brasilian garb.
Arthur Krim, “Appalachian Songcatcher: Olive Dame Campbell and the Scotch-Irish ballad.” Journal of Cultural Geography. 2006. HighBeam Research. (October 25, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-159390035.html
Dick Weissman, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution: Music and Social Change in America.” New York: Backbeat Books, 2010.
“Twas in the mer-ry month of May, The green buds were swel-ling, Poor
Wil-liam Green on his death-bed lay For the love of Bar-b’ra El-len.” These words come from the first verse of the English ballad, Barbara Allen, which was one of many English, Scottish, Irish, and Ulster-Scots’ ballads to have been found perfectly preserved in the Appalachian mountains. The discovery of these ballads at the turn of the twentieth century have been the subject of fascination by geographers, historians, and folklorists alike. In addition to this, the work of such people as Olive Dame Campbell, Cecil Sharp, and Charles Seeger in preserving these ballads for posterity had a direct impact on the folk and Celtic music revivals of the sixties. These ballads are not native to America, they were brought over with the waves of immigrants from Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. How and when they came to be preserved in small enclaves in the Appalachians has also been a subject of much discussion and scholarship.
Arthur Krim, in his article for the Journal of Cultural Geography, traces the scholarship surrounding these ballads, their preservation, and theorizes how they came to be in the Southern Appalachians. His thesis is how the original discoveries helped to touch off a folk/roots revival that has never quite disappeared, and how this archaic vocal music has maintained a vital part of the cultural practices and geography of the mountain core of Appalachia. It references both immigration and migration in the explanation of how the ballads came to Appalachia. Krim refers to this theory as a “sequence” of events that are tentatively described in the article, beginning with the Highland Scotch and Border British migrations to the Ulster Plantations in Ireland (mid-seventeenth century), bringing the Scottish ballads and their fiddle music, to the immigration of these Ulster-Scots-Irish to America (mid-eighteenth century) through Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the Piedmont, to finally settling down in the Appalachians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, having also acquired such instruments as the German dulcimer and the African-American banjo. While the instruments changed or were added to, the vocals did not, and out of this process of Immigration and migration is how a Scottish ballad from 1666 wound up being almost perfectly preserved in a remote Kentucky county settled in 1810 and first heard by Olive Dame Campbell in 1907.
Krim’s sources come primarily from the same people he discusses, Olive Dame Campbell and her husband, John, Cecil Sharp, and Eileen Semple’s work, as well as sources from a number of other people in the field. They are used to illustrate his points, giving background information and providing useful examples for further analysis. The article is more interdisciplinary, geographical with a social history flavor.
Dick Weissman’s book, “Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution: Music and Social Change in America” is a fairly comprehensive guidebook for the relationship between music and social change. He opens the book talking about the beginnings of American history and their music and then proceeds to work both chronologically and thematically up to the present day. The scope of the book is broad and diverse, covering a multitude of subjects from Native American music to union and protest songs to what he calls “music of hate” (racist and neo-Nazi music). Weissman spends an entire chapter to protest, union, and folk songs. He goes into the folk music revival and how it slowly went from songs sung back the backwards hillbillies to becoming a major influence on American music and culture. His sources and examples illustrate not only how social events impact music, but also how music impacts social events in turn. One of the examples he uses is Pete Seeger, famed folksinger and songwriter. Pete Seeger, who was introduced to folk music through his father, Charles, who collected folk songs for the Farm Resettlement Administration, and discovered a love for it himself. Pete Seeger, who among others was one of the founding fathers of the American folk music scene as it is known today. Weissman covers other huge names in the folk and celtic music revival, Joan Baez, Leadbelly, the Weavers, and Bob Dylan.
Weissman’s book is more an overview of the American music scene, specifically the complicated relationship it has with social change and events. It was published this year, so it is more current than the Krim article (published in 2006) and covers things on up to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does not reference immigration much past the first chapter of the book or emigration, but there is much talk of migration inside of the United States. Where the music was, where people would travel to in order to be a part of this group or this festival and how that too had an effect on the music scene and the participants in it. Like the Krim article, it is more interdisciplinary with a social history flavor to it.
Weissman’s focus is strictly on American artists and songwriters, and he states that there are several aspects of the American music scene that he did not cover (Gay and lesbian music for one and Christian music for another). Therefore while the book is deep and comprehensive, it is not an exhaustive text. His sources are legion and all of them point to the same conclusion that Weissman drives toward. That the links between music and social change start off as tenuous and grow steadily stronger as time goes by, until the period of the fifties and sixties where they become almost symbiotic with one another. Weissman also provides the connections that link the work of Olive Dame Campbell and the others to the folk/celtic music revival and the movements that sprang up in and around that period. The Krim article in a sense sets up the stage for the performance that the Weissman book portrays.
I would normally have something else to put here. Something about the research I’ve been doing or the books I’ve read or the podcasts or films I’ve been consuming.
You might get a funny anecdote about some of the projects I’ve been doing over the weekend. If you follow me on Instagram you’ve seen some of the pictures already.
So yeah normally you’d see something like that. Under the cut is mention of depression and suicide.
Everyone read this book. Everyone read this book and then come talk to me about it. Because this is a slim but majestic book that will leave you breathless with the delight of the prose.
Oh this was a delight and I cannot wait for the next one. The worldbuilding is great and the characterization is delightful and I super love the way that she builds her stories
The first novel length story from this author and I looove this one. I love her worldbuilding and her shifters and just the amount of sleep I lost over this book cause I couldn’t stop reading it. I really hope there are like 20 sequels to this.
The City Born Great – N.K. Jemisin
A short story but an AMAZING one. Definitely pick this one up. It’s hard to describe, but definitely worth the time.
A whole lot of Ursula K. LeGuin essays and books and stories- but that’s going to have to be a separate post.
And a whole bunch of fanfic and news articles. Poke me if you want some of those links!
What I’ve Been Listening To (podcasts that make me scream in delight, send shivers down my spine, tickle me because of the sheer meta levels of NERD, and generally give me A Strong Emotion):
Steal The Stars – a wholly interesting audio drama full of twists and turns and some excellent character moments. Protagonist is female and completely kick ass. This is the inaugural podcast of Tor Labs and it’s weird and quirky and I sort of want to know more and I sort of am happy with where they left it.
Ars Paradoxica – This continues to delight and thrill me and I’m going to be sad when it ends. Featuring an ace female protagonist!!! Also time travel, so much weird, small government towns, and a Partridge in a pair tree.
The Bright Sessions – OH this one is so good. SO GOOD and I am sad to see it ending too even if there are more spinoffs planned. Just SO much emotional connection to these characters and their stories and just OMG. I remain forever emotionally compromised by this show and I welcome it because it’s brilliant and just so amazing.
Tanis/The Last Movie/The Black Tapes/Rabbits – how much do I love these? Let me count the ways. I love the plotting and the craft and the everything. I love that I am incredibly terrified that one of these days I will actually have to listen to Nic Silver die over the radio because his reporter dumb can’t stop touching the thing. MK is amazing. I have serious qualms about Alex’s ethical boundaries and I super love the messiness of it all. I feel for Strand. I adore Carly Parker so hardcore. I love how they captured the weird spooky feeling you get when you visit some places in the Pacific Northwest.
I’m pretty sure all four are connected and it’s gonna end with them accidentally raising an Elder God ( I could go on, but then we verge into spoiler territory).
Casefile True Crime – this is sincerely the best true crime podcast out there. I love the host, the music, the research they put into everything. It’s amazing. ESPECIALLY the series about the Night Stalker/East Area Rapist/Golden State Killer.
The FBI Basement – recaps of the X-Files from the beginning with a whole host of hysterical characters. I love the nerdery involved and all the details they mention and just everything.
Why Is This Happening – Chris Hayes’ new podcast and it’s awesome. It’s SO worth it. He covers some amazing topics and it’s great to hear him and the experts he talks to break down the subject matter into easily understandable chunks.
I will stop there for the evening. But hey, if you’ve read any of these books or listened to any of these podcasts, come chat with me! I’d love to hear what other people think of any of the above.
So this weekend, I like many other people watched the latest Royal Wedding. It was glorious. The ceremony was gorgeous, the bride and groom looked like they were truly in love. I still cannot get over how lovely the bride’s mother was. It was pure class all the way through.
It also was astoundingly progressive for the royal family and a good marker of how the British monarchy has changed and evolved.
For those of you who might not be aware of it, the last time a member of the Windsor family fell in love with an American divorcee, it ended up with a constitutional crisis only resolved by an abdication and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it broke the royal family for several generations.
The abdication of Edward for Wallis Simpson was seen by many people as one of the highest forms of betrayal/treason. He passed up on his sworn God-given duty for the love of a woman who at the time was in no way politically or socially suited or suitable to be Queen consort, according to the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions. It also conflicted with Edward’s position as the titular head of the Church of England, which at the time, frowned deeply upon remarrying after divorce if the ex-spouse was still alive. That’ll be important later.
With his abdication, the throne passed to his brother, King George and it made his niece, Elizabeth, the new Heir Presumptive, later Queen.
The effects of the abdication were still felt years later on, as her sister, Princess Margaret wanted to marry Group- Captain Peter Townsend, a divorce, with two sons from the previous marriage. Likewise with her uncle, Parliment did not approve, and Elizabeth as Queen and Head of the Church, could not approve. The romance was eventually fizzled out (with significant help from the government) and both parties married others, however it did open a breach between the sisters.
Still later on, in 1992, her annus horribilis (horrible year), both Princes Andrew and Charles separated from their wives and Princess Anne separated from her husband. All three separations ended in divorce. Out of the three, only two of them ever remarried. The Princess Anne and Prince Charles.
Any controversy over Charles, who would inherit the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England, marrying a divorcee were laid to rest when the Queen, the government, AND the Church of England all gave their consent to the marriage. That was 2005.
Now, in 2018, Prince Harry has been able to marry a gorgeous mixed-race American divorcee in Meghan Markle with the full blessing of his grandmother and the government. So instead of breaking the family further instead it seems like this marriage will heal a lot of the previous damage done. Several commentators remarked on how this wedding moreso than some of the previous royal weddings will be the one to change the world. It has already changed England.
I was at a convention this past weekend and while that writeup is coming (short version: it was the nerd version of being wrapped up in a soft warm blanket fresh out of the drier), I am actually writing today about something that happened while I was there. It came up during one of the panels I was on, in response to the question of “why have I not finished this nerd show?”
Short answer: I was getting around to it, it was on the list, but I wasn’t going to be able to watch it live and I knew that going in. So I did what I do for several of my shows and I plotted out time for it in a couple of months. The moment stuck with me though on how true that is. Or rather specifically about how when you become a professional creative person and you start making appearances at one of these things, you come to the realization very very quickly that scheduling is not only a necessity but also a blessing.
Not just for your actual creative works, but also for the ways in which you creatively recharge. I am a writer and while I deeply love to write and I love the act of writing stories and creating new worlds and cultures…I can’t make that the thing I do for ALL of my spare time not used for sleeping/eating/the day job.
Burnout, my friends, is A Thing that comes for us all. So it is good to take the time for watching movies or shows or reading books. It’s feeding your brain and your imagination while also giving yourself a bit of a break from the heavy lifting of the creative work you’re pursuing. Even though it’s fun and it doesn’t always seem like work, it really is.
However, there’s the flip side where feeding your brain and imagination is all you do and you never really get around to the writing or painting or recording and that’s no good if you’re serious about trying to make this a career.
Balance and scheduling are the keys that have worked for me the best. So I have my day planner and my online calendar for the house and I just start plotting out blocks of time here and there. For example, the last couple of months, the house has been going through the five seasons of Fringe during the weekdays when we’re not feeling like watching the news. We’re almost done with season 5 and after that, we’ll pick up another thing we’ve been meaning to watch and start that.
I’ve got on my list to finish Black Sails seasons 2-4, the first season of Star Trek Discovery, The Clone Wars, and Star Wars Rebels. Westworld Season Two is currently airing and I also have the last season of Orphan Black waiting for me and two seasons of the Librarians. And those are just the shows that I would like to have finished by the time Dragon*Con rolls around.
That is also not counting the movies that are coming out in the next six months or the book releases. My to be read pile is actually taller than me at this point. But since I don’t have a Time Turner or an Amulet or infinite time, I have to schedule things out in such a way to where I’m making progress on the writing front and yet also balancing that with watching and reading here and there.
Some days it works better than other. Sometimes not. That’s life.
So for all of you fellow creatives out there, what do you do? How do you keep the balance between work and recreational stuff?
This was supposed to go up last week, but I was laid low by a stomach bug and my body has reminded me that I am no longer in my twenties and pushing through is not really a reliable thing I can do anymore.
So with that being said, here are the cons that I am confirmed for this season:
Wholanta – Atlanta, May 4-6 Where I will be mostly hanging out on the Otherworlds track or learning at the feet of one of my writing mentors, Lee Martindale. Her work is here and you should definitely check it out.
Hypericon – Nashville, July 6-8 : doing panels, having fun, and definitely not spending too much time in the gaming room. Our Guest of Honor is Sherrilyn Kenyon and you should definitely check us out.
Dragon*Con: Atlanta, August 30 – Sept 3: Teaching workshops, doing panels, and hanging out with the other authors by the bar. Surest way to find me is the Sci-Fi Classics panel room or Hanover A-B. There are SO many awesome people coming this year- I cannot wait.
Imaginarium: Louisville, Oct 5-7: Teaching workshops, doing panels, and hanging out with all the other authors. Literally if you are a writer who wants to learn and socialize and network, this is the con for you.
Anything else will be added when I learn about it! But that’s where I will be this convention season. Please come up and introduce yourself! I love meeting new people.
[NB: Originally this was going to be posted months ago, but I’ve only just gotten the files restored to me from a sudden laptop crash, so I’m posting this now. There’ll be three parts, each looking at a movie in the Maze Runner trilogy, based off the books by James Dashner. Also spoilers!!]
Everyone has things they do for the people they love. Between me and my best friend/roommate, this often translates to “you’re coming to this movie with me, I have already bought the tickets.” My best friend dragged me to see this movie when it hit theaters and she’d already made her way through the books. I’d decided not to read the books until after all the movies were out, because that way she gets to see my reactions to things as they come and without the foreknowledge of what happens in the books. It’s not something that happens often, I’m generally the one who’s read all the books beforehand.
Official Movie Poster (taken from the Maze Runner Wikia)
So we go to see this movie (I’m on my fourth or fifth rewatch and we’re watching it and Scorch Trials before we see Death Cure opening day. She has the tickets and I’m nowhere near emotionally prepared for this, but hey, that’s why we carry tissues and sit in the back of the theater) and I was then and am now continually blown away by parts of this movie.
My first impression was that this was someone for whom Lord of the Flies made a deep impression on. And on the surface, there are a lot of similiarities between Golding’s book and this movie. Group of boys in a secluded place, no actual adults, having to figure out how to survive. The themes of nature vs nurture and order vs chaos are heavily seeded through both works and both of them deal with the concept of the loss of innocence and refuting the idea that ignorance is bliss.
That’s about where the similarities end, because Maze Runner goes places that Lord of the Flies doesn’t. Lord of the Flies gives us a very small isolated view of a single set of incidents with a single group. Maze Runner starts there and like an umbrella expanding outward when you release it, takes that single group and those single set of circumstances and unfurls them outward into a universe that gives us both context and depth for why this even came to be.
There’s a lot to unpack in the movie.
We’re introduced to the world through the eyes of Thomas, who we first meet in a box ratcheting up somewhere, with no way to know how he got in there, where it even was, or why. We get the partial answers to these questions slowly throughout the first ten-fifteen minutes of the movie. There’s a maze, it’s all boys, there are two rules for the society there (do your share and never hurt another Glader), etc. You get your name back after the first day or so. Oh yes, in case you forgot that you were in a science-fiction film, the memories of the kids in the Glade have been taken away. None of them remember life before the Box and the Glade. They are a blank slate, allowed only to keep one thing from their previous lives.
Their name.
Names are essential to personhood. They’re allowed to keep the one small cornerstone of themselves that keeps them viable subjects. Because no matter how much they look like people, the movie also slides in hints here and there that they aren’t. People have rights. Subjects in experiments only have what they are allowed to have. The Gladers are lab rats, subjects to be studied and poked and prodded however the experiment requires them to be.
Some of the clues about this being one giant science experiment are subtly placed, some very much aren’t. The Maze itself, for example is a huge glaring indicator-it looks exactly like the mazes used in science films and clips about all kinds of scientific testing, using rats as the subjects.
The Glade itself looks a little idyllic. They’ve made the most out of a strange and confusing situation. They’ve got crops and shelters and everybody does their share. They get supplies from the Box, but clearly the supplies are there to supplement what they’ve got going on now. Also, there’s no mention of seasons either, of actual weather. We know it rains on occasion but there’s not a single mention of winter or putting stores away for the cold weather. So there’s another hint about the overall setting of the movie – clearly something has happened to where the climate has changed so drastically that the normal weather patterns are a thing of the past.
We come back to shades of Lord of the Flies when Alby mentions that there were dark days in the beginning and they had to work hard to get where they are now. There’s the loss of innocence theme again, Alby was the first one there and then once more kids started coming up in the Box, things changed. Dynamics changed, had to be revisited and revised. We don’t know how these kids got there or why, though from the memory loss, we can speculate at this point that these kids weren’t consulted about their participation in this experiment at all.
Thomas, like the audience, isn’t satisfied with just Alby and Newt’s explanation, he’s curious and needs to know more. His continual drive to get the answers and know more and understand is the chief catalyst for literally everything to do with this franchise. So we hit one of the central themes of the movie, that knowledge/understanding isn’t free and there’s a cost to pay for it. You can’t go back to who you were before your eyes were opened to the knowledge and understanding you’ve acquired, even if you want to. Knowing things comes with benefits and consequences and sometimes those consequences don’t always hit you, sometimes they hit the people you love. Sometimes that means losing people you love, sometimes that means you lose the safety and security of the life you were beginning to have. So the question comes down to “is it worth it?” For Thomas, the answer is yes. For some of the other Gladers, the answer is no.
Going back to the idea that this is one huge science experiment: Thomas’ appearance in the Glade is the beginning of the end for the peaceful existence of the Glade. He’s a variable placed into the Glade to see what happens. His appearance is a sign that the experiment is wrapping up. The daytime appearances of the Grievers, Thomas’ rash decision to go after Alby and Minho, the killing of one of the Grievers and then the attacks on the Glade itself are all signs of the endgame here, none of which might have happened if Thomas hadn’t shown up. Another variable is in what Minho and Thomas learn from the Griever corpse – the opening of a doorway that will get them out if they don’t all die first.
Teresa’s appearance in the Glade, which gives us another divergence from Golding’s book. Lord of the Flies had no women or girls on the island. Here, we see an additional set of variables in Teresa’s arrival, she’s the last one coming up in the box. There will be no more supplies or additional Gladers after her. She has two vials of the antidote to the Griever poison in her pocket. She also has Thomas’ name. So we know straight off the bat, that she’s different, there’s something else about her. The experiment is ratcheting up the number of things thrown at the Gladers. Clearly, the whole stay and wait it out in the Glade idea is no longer an acceptable course of action for the people behind the screens. One way or the other, things will change for the Gladers.
Thomas’ main antagonist in this movie is a fellow Glader, Gally, who while he is definitely an antagonist and you are supposed to dislike him on that front alone. I can’t. Gally, for all that he comes off as a jerk, is someone who actively cares for the Glade and his fellow Gladers. Almost as much as Newt and Alby care (and they are the Dad and Mom figures for the rest of the Gladers). Thomas is a threat to him and to the Glade and he reacts appropriately to that assumption. Gally’s criticisms of Thomas aren’t really off-base either, there is some merit to them, which is why I can’t hate him. He’s doing exactly what he feels he needs to, in order to protect what he sees as important.
So they have to fight to get out. And it’s in this fight that we really get a small glimpse at what’s behind the curtain, what on earth could have possibly led to these harsh conditions being necessary. Because as harsh as the Glade was, the outside world is worse by several orders of magnitude.
The performance put on by Ava Paige and WCKD (the World Catastrophe Killzone Department) is masterful. The idea that these kids who have just fought their way out of the maze, only to find that they were being surveilled and treated like rats in a maze are being told that it was all for a purpose. That this all happened for the greater good. We also find out a little more about the world outside of the Maze. She flat out acknowledges that they tampered with their memories here as she’s telling them about the sun scorching the world and then the Flare virus taking over. The Maze Trials were only the first step in trying to find out what makes the Immunes different from the regular uninfected humans (what’s left of them). She warns them against the potential enemies that WCKD has and reminds them that WCKD is “good.” A speech designed to inspire them with the idea that this was for a purpose, that they were trying to save the world and that they (the Gladers) are very important. It’s amazing use of propaganda.
Then right after that, we have the whole thing with Gally showing up, injured and out of his mind with the poison from the Grievers as a clear sign that there’s no going back to the Glade now. They can only go forward. The well has been poisoned, it’s time to move on.
Chuck dies and Gally is breathing his last when the “rescue” ‘copter shows up and the strange men with black gear and weapons come to shove all the remaining members of the group that came with Thomas out of the maze base and into the ‘copter.
“You’re all safe, kid. You’ll be alright now.” As the camera pans out and we see just how staggeringly large the maze is and then our first actual glance of the wreckage the world has become, your breath catches. A cold sort of dread starts to seep in as we see Ava Paige, hale and hearty, at the board meeting, talking about Phase Two. That dread that steals in as you realize the movie is over, but the danger isn’t done yet for these kids. That this thing, this project, is so much bigger than you might have originally considered.
It’s the perfect tee up to the next installment, The Scorch Trials. Stay tuned for that review post coming up soon.
