The Scorch Trials
James Dashner's The Scorch Trials, published in 2010, is the second book in the Maze Runner series and ratchets up everything that worked in the first. Thomas and the surviving Gladers have escaped the Maze, but the rescue they were promised is not what it appeared. WICKED, the shadowy organization running the trials, has another phase planned, and this one drops the teenagers into the Scorch, a sun-blasted wasteland where the world above ground was cooked to ruin by solar flares. To survive, Thomas, Minho, Newt, Teresa, and the rest must cross a hundred miles of desert in two weeks. Standing between them and safety are Cranks, humans driven feral by a virus called the Flare, scattered crews of armed survivors, and the unsettling possibility that some of the Gladers themselves may have been infected without knowing it. Dashner writes with a relentless forward gear, mixing post-apocalyptic worldbuilding, betrayal between friends, and set pieces that keep escalating. The Scorch Trials is darker and more conspiratorial than The Maze Runner, deepening the mystery of WICKED and pushing Thomas toward harder questions about what he is willing to do, and what he was made for, in order to save the people he loves.
Themes & atmosphere
Also by James Dashner
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What you might want to know about The Scorch Trials
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
After the Glade, Thomas and the other Maze survivors are flown to a dorm and told the WICKED organization has infected them with the Flare. To earn a cure, they have to cross a sunburned stretch of former Central America called the Scorch in two weeks, with infected Cranks waiting in the cities.
Yes. The Scorch Trials is the second book in James Dashner's Maze Runner series and assumes you have read The Maze Runner. The series is heavily serialized.
Yes. A 2015 film adaptation directed by Wes Ball and starring Dylan O'Brien was released. The film follows the novel's premise but takes significant liberties.
The Scorch Trials was written by James Dashner, published in 2010 by Ember.
The Scorch Trials is 384 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Scorch Trials takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
The Scorch Trials is a standalone novel by James Dashner, not part of a series.
The Scorch Trials is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.