Triangle

 

Okay I just watched this movie. I hate the tagline on this image, but I couldn't find a better image, so whatever. I shall split my discussion into two parts. The loops within the cruise and the ending discussion. I will try my very best, not to confuse myself at the very least. To figure this out, I had to draw the timeline multiple times to explain it to myself. Unfortunately, its too ugly for me to post it here. I hope you understand a timeline explanation in words. Good luck!

So, at any one time, there are actually three versions of Jess. I shall categorize them as - Newcomer, Remainder, and Fail-safe (the one with the mask). So here it goes. Every time a newcomer comes, the newcomer kills the failsafe. Then, shift all roles. There is a new newcomer, and previous newcomer becomes a remainder, and the previous remainder becomes the new failsafe. 

The remainder is always the one who is watching the battle between the newcomer and the failsafe and the remainder has a choice to intervene. If the remainder intervenes in the ballroom, the murders turns out to be the one in the room (where Jess stabs them vigorously). If the remainder does not, the murders are the one in the theater (the one where shotguns are used). Whatever the choice the remainder makes, the failsafe realizes that the only choice there is, is to kill the others and die by the new Jess' hands, in order to escape the ship. So the remainder's choice is irrelevant. That's why I named it failsafe, coz the murders will still take place. Two possibilities, with the same end. 

Now when the failsafe dies, she comes off the island, and runs back home (wow, cool). She then sees the violent version of herself, abusing the son verbally and physically. I shall label them as Dress and Cardigan (Because the violent-self was wearing a dress and the escapee was wearing a cardigan). Cardigan kills Dress, then she wraps Dress in a bag, and takes the son along in the car, to the Triangle (after looking at the note on the fridge, like in the beginning of the movie). Along the way, Cardigan hits a bird (its possible to kill a bird while driving, I've done it). The son starts freaking out and Cardigan promises to bury the bird. When she takes the bird off the road to dump it at the side, she sees plenty of other dead birds there - which means even this has happened many times. After that, the son is still freaking out due to the blood on the windscreen, and due to the distraction from the son, they collide with an oncoming bus. 

This is where is gets really confusing. The crowd attends to the Dress, and her son, but Cardigan is only seen talking to a cab driver that asks whether she needs a ride. She then says she needs to go to the harbour. The big question now is, is Cardigan alive or dead after the accident? Is she really there? 

My take on the ending is, Cardigan is real once she makes it off the Triangle. This is proven by physical proof such as she is able to ring the doorbell and interact with her son. Also, there are many dead birds at the side of the road, indicating its real and it has happened many times. Unfortunately, Dress or Cardigan you can't cheat death, as suggested by the quick philosophy discussion they were having about the ship's name, Aeolus. You can go look up the Greek mythology behind it, because I'm not going to. Cardigan is only real within the time span of after escaping Triangle and before the car-bus collision. That's why nobody attended to her except the afterlife-like cab-driver. She then tries to cheat death and save her son by going on Triangle, to return back in time. Unfortunately, she and her son is dead, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, just like the cab-driver told her. 

For the limbo to start, there is a version where there is only Dress and her son in the car, and they meet with an accident for the first time. If you want, you could go back to the side of the road and calculate how many birds where there at the side - that would give you the number of times her soul has looped back in time, killed her violent self, tries to run off with her son - only to meet with the same accident again. Life sucks.

The only bit of a problem - If she got onto Triangle with her memory intact, at which point did she forget it in order to experience a déjà vu instead of a real memory? Because if she is going on Triangle for the sole purpose of traveling back in time, she shouldn't be so shocked when she saw the storm coming. To let my mind at peace, I'm just going to assume she lost her memory while sleeping in Triangle (the part where Heather comes to offer her champagne), because after that she wakes up all blur. All time travel movies have problems, because they aren't suppose to exist. Reality stand on logic, if time travel exists, reality will disintegrate. Leaving the physics aside, this is just a sad story of a mother trying her best to take care of her son (maybe autistic). She is obviously frustrated with her life. She then meets with an accident, and spends her eternity coming back to save his life, to no avail. I enjoyed this movie! Especially in trying to figure out the loops. See ya!

Sweet

So I just finished reading this book, Sweet by Emmy Laybourne. Saw the recommendation from GoodReads. Some of the reviews there said that the story is very creepy, however it did not pass the threshold of creepy for me. Its a really simple story. Theres a villain who wants to destroy the world and to balance the equation, there's a someone to save the day. In this case, there's more than someone. Actually, the entire time I was reading this book, I was thinking of a Totally Spies episode I watched as a kid. In that episode, celebrities get kidnapped in a plane that flies so fast around the world, it turns the world backwards and subsequently reverses time. Also, the plane has no plans to land. However, in this story, the villain basically wanted to localize all fat and lazy people and kill them all before proceeding to a wider scale of killing all fat people on planet earth.

In the picture is Clover, being exited about Blinkjet - the cruise plane. Well, since I remember this episode so clearly, I could only picture everyone excited to be on the cruise (in the novel), to be as excited as Clover here in Totally Spies.

Anyway, back to the novel. The villain's dad created a drink called Pipop. Its kinda like a soft-drink containing a lot of sugar. People started drinking it, and the drink became famous. However, people who got fat started blaming him for creating that drink in the first place, and causing them to be fat. Hence the son (the Villain, Almstead) creates a diet sweetener. This sweetener allows you to lose weight. So, you can basically eat anything, and while on this sweetener, you will only lose weight. This sweetener is called Solu. Unfortunately, Solu turns out to be an addictive drug, that causes people to lose weight too fast and get addicted to it. Their addiction is so great that when they were deprived of Solu, they started to kill and drink the blood of others who have ingested the drug. 

Who saves the day? The girl who was seasick (caused her not to eat anything), and also a guy who had a personal trainer for his body image. His trainer controlled his food and he laid off desserts, long enough to find out the problem with it. Also, the crew of the ship weren't allowed to have Solu. The story was fast moving, so the love story cultured between them didn't evoke much feelings in me, but it was still acceptable. Yeah, I'm totally okay with suddenly finding yourself kissing a guy in your closet, just a couple of days after meeting him, although you have seen him on television before. 

Almstead planned to kill all these fat celebrities on the ship. This cruise was set to sail for 6 days, and on the sixth day, Solu was to be sold to the country and the rest of the world. Almstead planned to fake his death by exploding the ship, and then watch the cannibalism/vampirism situation in the world from the private island he bought. However, Laurel (the girl), came up with the plan of attracting the bunch of hungry zombies in withdrawal, by pouring a drink diluted with Solu on Almstead's head. Apparently, these addicts can smell Solu from a mile away. They barge into his office and tear him apart - because everyone wants their own share. Tom breaks his ankle in the mess. 

Fast forward a little, the crew escapes on life rafts, and Tom & Laurel volunteered to blow up the ship to attract attention (Helicopters maybe), and hoping they will be able to tell the world from their video recording that Solu is bad for them. However, in a last struggle, Tom loses consciousness leaving Laurel alone. Laurel finds one last raft and puts him on it while she goes to blow up the bom Almstead planned to detonate. However, when she does it, she realizes it has a 60 seconds countdown. She jumps off the cruise ship and swims hard towards Tom, now approx 100m from the ship. 

The ship explodes and both of them get sucked in the explosion vortex and they lose consciousness. They survive the blast and they were brought to a hospital of unknown location. The nurses were speaking in Spanish. Tom and Laurel wake up and they watch the news. The news reader mentions that Solu is bad, but the reader also exclaims that she is already on her third dose of Solu, and she was feeling fantastic! Tom & Laurel were too late. The villain wins this time. Thank god for that. For once, the villain did it right, although no entirely, because he died. Well, I guess in that world, all the fat people are going to die. The description in this story wasn't very good, or perhaps you could say my imagination is not that good. Either way, images weren't painted on my mind that well. The story was fast moving, and that's another thing I liked about this novel. Otherwise, its just a typical villain-hero story with not much of a twist. See ya!

Leaving Time

 

Recently, I can actually finish an entire novel within a day. Well, I finished this book in two, but it took me roughly about 10 hours plus, which can be done in a day hahaha. Once again, just a reminder, all my posts contain spoilers. So the story starts with Jenna, a thirteen year old girl who is looking for her mother. To her knowledge, her mother left her when she was three years old, and she has been looking for her ever since. She has tried every logical method (or at least most of it), to search for her mother, until recently when she decides to seek out a psychic who can contact the dead. She eventually finds Serenity.

Serenity, has a big background history. She became famous for her ability in contacting the dead, and also getting information from the dead about the living. Until one day, when she lied about a high profiled case involving a senators son. When things got ugly, she just went down slope then on. Ever since then, she has never been able to contact the dead. She has been basically doing cold reading on customers and bullshitting her way through life - until Jenna appears. 

Jenna's mother Alice, is an elephant enthusiast, a researcher on elephants and so is her dad. Her dad is currently being treated in a psychiatric hospital. After Jenna's visit, Serenity had a dream about elephants and a blue scarf belonging to Alice and there were elephants, she took that as a sign of nature to help Jenna look for her mother. At the same time, Jenna also looks up for a private investigator. This private investigator was actually the detective in charge of Alice's case 10 years ago. Together, all three of them restart the investigation in search of Alice. 

So, rewind 10 years ago. There is Alice and her husband Thomas; then there is Gideon and his wife, Grace and his mother-in-law, Nevvie. Alice moves from South Africa (studying elephant grief) to where Thomas is because she became pregnant with his child when Thomas came to visit South Africa. A few months later, Jenna is born. Thomas has a history of anxiety and depression, and he is on medications for it. His minds starts to slowly disintegrate as he starts writing formulas on walls, just the way John Nash (Russell Crowe) did in the movie A Beautiful Mind. Alice starts to get worried and asks help from Gideon to paint the walls white, every time Thomas fills the wall up with formulas. 

Eventually, due to Thomas' recent personality changes and slight violence, and Gideon always being there for Alice - both of them (Gideon and Alice) start to develop a thing for each other, and before you know it, they are at secret spots in the elephant sanctuary making love to each other. Grace has PCOS and therefore can't have kids (medically inaccurate actually, but then again I'm very forgiving). Grace eventually finds out about the affair, and kills herself. She loads her pockets with stones and walks into a river. Gideon doesn't feel bad about it, but Alice does. A few months later, Alice is pregnant with Gideon's child. Gideon tells his mother-in-law (Nevvie) about it, however, she doesn't freak out that much. Seeing that, Alice builds up courage to tell Thomas. Thomas indicates that he is not blind, but starts getting violent instead. A few nights later, Jenna goes missing. Alice goes in search for her only to see Nevvie with her child, but her child (Jenna) is bleeding all over. Nevvie killed Jenna and tells Alice, "Now you know what it's like to lose a daughter". What happens after this is a blur because there was a struggle between Alice and Nevvie, and Alice looses consciousness, but its expected that the elephants trample on Nevvie causing serious injuries - broken skulls, bones and lots of bleeding. 

Turns out, Jenna was the one dead all along. The private investigator Jenna hired was also dead, He committed suicide on the day of his detective promotion because he couldn't live with himself, closing Alice's case while knowing that there were evidences that lacked explanation. He drove himself off a cliff. The two people Serenity was with, were actually dead people. Jenna was the soul looking for help, and her mother Alice has been alive all along. Alice miscarries her child with Gideon, Gideon joins the army and dies at war. Thomas was admitted into a psychiatric hospital. Alice is left all alone, and I guess that's where cheating gets you.

I kind of saw that coming, but it almost feels like that's exactly what Picoult wants. Anyway, I really really enjoyed this story throughout and I learnt a lot about elephants of which the details I left out of this post. Elephants are capable of grief and emotion, and they are able to compartmentalize grief, although there are some exceptional cases. The elephant matriarch and the relationship with her calf was used as the metaphor of how the bond of a mother and child is inseparable. Get between an elephant mom and her calf, and you can be sure to pronounce yourself dead. Humans tick the same way. See ya! :)

Papanasam

 

Watched this tamil movie yesterday, Papanasam. It's a name of a town, if you are wondering. Was it good? Yes. Was it perfect? No. Did I enjoy it? Definitely. Set in a rural area, with thick local dialects, is a story about a family trying to live their lives to the very best they can. The story starts of with all smiles and laughter, but it all goes down slope since the eldest daughter went for a school camp. There was another guy in the camp - notorious, son of an Inspector General - who captured nude clips of Kamal's eldest daughter while she was showering. Of course she didn't know she was being filmed while showering. Well, nudes in Tamil movies aren't really nudes, but I'll let that go for now. 

He then looks for her in this small town (Papanasam), and tries to blackmail her. What he demanded was her consent for sex, otherwise he will broadcast the video clip he recorded. Apparently some places in the world, when a video like that gets broadcasted, its the person in the video that gets blamed, not the horny dude. Anyways, he repeatedly told her not to let anyone know about their rendezvous. However, when he arrived, he was shocked to find the girl's mother there trying to protect her  daughter. He was pissed off, and wanted to leave, to go broadcast the video perhaps. After the mom begging him several times to not do so, he offers to delete the video if the girl's mom is willing to have sex with him instead. Amazing huh? hahaha! Anyway, possessed by ihavenoideawhat spirit, the daughter picks up a metal bar, swings it to hit the head of the guy (his name suddenly popped in my head, Varun). Varun apparently dies. I am definitely not going to correlate any of this to my medical knowledge. Otherwise, I can't enjoy this movie anymore.

Almost instinctively, they take his body and bury it in the land outside. When Kamal comes home the next day, he is brought up to speed with what happened. Now comes the decision making. To confess or not to confess? However, loaded with knowledge from movies - crime thrillers, murder mysteries, suicides - Kamal thoroughly plans their alibi. First off, he disposes the car Varun came with. At this very point, he is seen driving a yellow Maruti (a car brand) by a policeman that doesn't particularly like him very much. He drowns the car, and along the way to the quaryy he buys lunch, bus tickets, movie tickets (all for four people) - so that when the police comes to interogate later, he will have an alibi saying that he and his family (total of 4) were out of town during the disappearance of Varun. 

Eventually, Varun's family finds out about his car drowned in a quarry and his disappearance. Everything was working according to Kamal's plans, until the police force realized that everything is too perfect, and they have an inclination that it is all somehow planned. Kamal actually goes to all those places that he went on that day of car disposal, with his family, but only a couple of days later. He then creates a lasting impression on as many people as possible - the person in the Briyani shop, cinema, bus driver and so forth. He implanted in their minds that he and his family was there just a couple of days ago. Therefore, everybody was testifying for him that they entire family was there on August 2nd - the day Varun went missing. However, the truth is - none of them actually saw the family on that very day. They are just repeating the fact that Kamal told them they were there on the Aug 2nd. 

Itching to find out the truth, Kamal's family is brutally tortured. Varun's mother being the Inspector General does not help the situation. At the nick of time, Varun's friend Alex, confesses about the video recording incident. Also, Kamal's youngest daughter blabbered out the location of the burial of the body. The police force then rushed to Kamal's house, digging deep into the location the girl had told them, only to find a dead corpse of an animal - a four legged animal. Immediately, Kamal runs to the press, pouring out his frustration that he and his family have been tortured and that no real body (of Varun) was found at their house. The illegal torturous investigation, coupled by the media trumpeting the fact that the police is abusing the general public although no true evidence was found, worked towards the benefit of Kamal and his family. Eventually, some officers were sacked, and the Inspector General left the town. 

Then came the most disappointing scene of the movie. The part where Varun's parents had a talk with Kamal alone. The fact that Kamal indicated that Varun did in fact, come into their lives and try to ruin in - just dropped the standard of the movie right down by 50% for me. If he stuck with it till the end, it would have been worth it. Anyway, the parents now understood that their son was irredeemable and was most probably dead, they just walked away, not using his half-confession against him. Although he was never caught, the some sort of a half-confession come apology, just made it a typical Tamil movie, just crowd pleasing and I felt it was almost Kamal just showing off his acting skills that he was able to pull off a really good crying face. He was tough throughout, the last confession was pointless. It's so typical of Tamil movies trying to justify the hero's actions, making him look good. However, thank god he wasn't caught by the police until the end. At least they could give me that. The location of Varun's body, I shall leave it out this post - for you to go watch the movie and find out. 

I guess what they were trying to say in this movie is, sometimes, it only takes a small stone to create big ripples. Some people are preys, some people predators. Although preys never have asked to be preyed on. Its just how the animal kingdom works. Some people manipulate others to their maximum benefit, and these people won't stop, until they actually stop breathing. I'm not saying that you should swing a metal bar on every head that tries to make your life miserable. This movie also portrays the difficulty of building a family. Repeatedly in the script, Kamal was saying that it took sweat and blood building this family, almost like building a kingdom of your own. Telling the truth doesn't always benefit you in the case of the policeman who did, but eventually got sacked. Telling lies, provided you are highly intelligent can set you free. Judging by recent happenings of cam recorded thieves being set free, I'd say that tactical lying can in fact get you off the hook. Anyway, I really enjoyed this movie. The plot was interesting and fast moving although it was a long movie. I didn't feel the time passing at all. Would I recommend this movie? Yes, definitely. Till next time! :)

Dark Places

So after the disappointment from Maze Runner Trilogy, I needed a treat and that's exactly what I got from Gillian Flynn, yet again. So far I've read Gone Girl. This is my second book by Gillian Flynn. I'm not going to reiterate the entire story, because it's too complex for me to do so. I will just discuss how I feel about the plot, which parts I loved and which parts I didn't. Lets get straight to it.

I'll start with what I didn't like, or to be more precise, what I didn't find to be quite logical. It was the Kill Club. I mean, is there such a thing? Well, the way she put it, it sounded like it was legit. However, it just seems weird to exist in real life. It may not exist in my country, but maybe Kill Clubs exist over there, I don't know - but the whole idea of random people becoming obsessed about murders not relating to them didn't quite fit. It's not like they were ex-cops or lawyers that wanted to make use of their skills after being thrown out from their jobs. They were just really random people. However, this story needed a premise to start the plot - to get the ball rolling for Libby Day (the youngest daughter that survived). 

Basically, Patty, Michelle and Debby were murdered (Libby's Family), and Libby testified that her brother Ben did it, although she did not see him do it - at a very young age (7 years old). Besides the Kill Club, I loved everything else about this novel. Gillian Flynn is very true to herself. She digs deep into the human psyche and tells the truth that hurts. Sometimes, we are all capable of scary things. Flynn portrayed each role in the novel very well, each of the characters exposing the raw nature of human beings at a certain age. 

Patty Day, a mother trying her best to feed four children while having a husband that really isn't there, full on loans, and an alcoholic. Not forgetting that he isn't paying for child support. She has good support from her sister Diane though. However, her decision to kill herself to allow her family to get the money from her life insurance - I must say is a terrible decision as a mother. It's almost as if she wanted to escape the entire tragedy happening to her family, while looking at the brightest side of her decision. It was downright stupid. That decision was good for the plot, as it carved a smile on my face - a smile of utter shock and excitement at the same time, but analyzing it from a maternal angle, even if it did work out the way she wanted it to work out, it wasn't the best thing she could come up with. 

Ben Day, the son - the one accused of all the murders. Well, this is the saddest part of the story. I think all teenagers or youths try so hard to blend in the crowd, they'd do anything for it. Come to thing of it, I doubt "trying to blend in" stops at the teen age. I think it goes on as adults, its just that we portray it differently. Ben Day tried so hard to get the approval of Diondra, his girlfriend. He made her pregnant. Diondra is the ultimate manipulator of the entire plot. Along the book, I thought the child was going to be Trey Teepanos' in the end, and Diondra was just manipulating Ben for money. Turns out the child was really Ben's. Trey was just collateral damage of the tragedy. They were so high on DevilRush (a recreational drug) when they were killing bulls. They started mumbling Satanic worships and called that devil worshiping. I guess, Ben was still very high from the drug, allowing him to remain calm when Diondra was choking his sister Michelle to death (Michelle found out about the prenancy and wanted to tell her mother about it). 

Even after he found out Michelle was dead, he was so calm. When he saw his mother and the other sister, Debby dead, he wanted to vomit, but he was able to pull himself together and leave the scene only thinking of how he and Diondra would start a new life together. This part, I don't know whether to call him a coward just like how Diondra does, or to call him tough for being able to carry on his life. Diondra always made him feel less of a man, always laughing at him with Trey, manipulating him into doing things for her, and finally making him feel guilty that he made her pregnant. All these things work on a person's mind, and eventually - people like this snap, and they change into an entirely different person. Until Libby unfolded the story, he stayed true to Diondra, not saying a word about her participation in the murders of his family. He stayed in jail for her and also his daugter for twenty five long years. I guess true love makes you a loser.

Flynn also shows that some people are able to live with guilt, even if it is for a very very long time. Diondra represents this. People of no sense of responsibility would be the father - Runner Day. Crystal, Ben's daughter was instinctively able to pick up an iron to smack Libby with it. I guess the kill gene is inheritable. Also, on the other side of the spectrum, Flynn shows how one can get trapped in oblivion and their soul paralyzed by tragedy within family. That would be represented best by Libby herself. She spent years and years trying to get back up, only to spiral all the way back down, digging into the dark recesses of her mind, all for the sake of money. She does not have the courage to live, neither does she have the courage to die, although mentally planning to kill herself is somewhat of a hobby. In fact I do that sometimes. It really does help you get through a tough day. 

Lastly, the focus goes to Krissi. I guess what Flynn is trying to say here is, what big damage a small lie can cause. The ripple effect. Also, the focus is on how psychologists/psychiatrists do their job. Its almost like they want the children to say what they want to hear. Leading questions or statements. As a medical student, we are trained over and over to not lead patients with directional questions or statements. When you feed children with leading statements, they are just probably going to agree with you, even if the lie grows out of proportion. When they realize things are getting out of hand, it's already too late. None of the murders would have happened if it wasn't for that one lie from Krissi - that Ben had molested her. Well, it was just a school girl trying to cover her tracks. She got caught doing funny stuff with Ben (actually with her consent), but when her mother questioned her differently, the answer came out differently too. "Did Ben touch you wrong", coupled with "it's okay you can trust me" making the child overly secure to the level of telling a lie because her mother seemed disappointed that she did not hear what she wanted her daughter to blurt out. In trying to please her mother, Krissi blurted out that Ben touched her weirdly. Everyone who did not die, suffered tragically from the lies in this novel.

1. Kirssi - Her Mom never forgave her and left the family. Krissi became a stripper.
2. Runner Day - Spent his last days in a grasshopper bait site loaded with arsenic and having liver cirrhosis from his alcoholism.
3. Ben Day - In prison for 25 years.
4. Diane - Lost a sister, and her nieces. Spent part of her life taking care of Libby and getting only hurt in return by Libby's rebellious behavior.
5. Libby - basically lost all hope in life, being the lone survivor.
6. Diondra - was good for 25 years, but now in prison and separated from her daughter, Crystal.
7. Trey - Had to move away and work in some Feed and Farm supply.

Moral of the story - don't lie, don't do drugs, don't get together with girls elder than you, don't get them pregnant on top of that, don't worship Satan, don't kill cows, don't get loans, don't kill yourself hoping your family will benefit from your life insurance. Hahahaha! I really enjoyed this book. It was really really fun. I will read her other book as well, Sharp Objects, but not just yet - because all Flynn's books are very dark, and I don't want too much of it at one go haha! Till next time! :)

All The World's A Maze.

 

Hello again! After a long journey, I've successfully finished this trilogy. The first book was about a bunch of people being stuck in a super huge maze, literally. The maze opens during the day, and they have to make it back to the Glade (which is the main area) before it gets dark. Some sort of spider-machine creatures called Grievers roam the maze at night. If they get stung by it, they suffer great pain although there's a serum for it. Without the serum they'd probably die. The thing is, they all lost their memories before being sent to this maze. If they get stung however, they recall bits and pieces of their memories. Apparently, getting back their memories can help them escape the maze, especially for the main character, Thomas. The story just ended with them successfully escaping the maze, by jumping through a hole which they found a long time ago, at the end of the maze.

Apparently, it wasn't all over. When they came out of the maze, they were directed to yet another sort of trial, this time with directives. They were support to cross (I forgot how far, 100miles perhaps?) a hot desert-like place, totally rundown, and some zombie-like creatures called Cranks are living at random places in this desert. This is where the reader is slightly enlightened with what happened in the real world. There was The Flare, from the sun that increased the temperature of the surface of the earth, together with a biological warfare that released a virus that kills the brains, making you go crazy and die. So people infected with virus are called Cranks. In this book, they were talking about Variables and Patterns. It seemed like they needed to get the pattern of emotions from Thomas' brain to develop the cure for the infection. This book ended with them fighting a huge number of Cranks and successfully getting to the main WICKED (the company running all these trials, trying to find the cure) base. 

The third book was about WICKED giving the participants their memories back. Also, Thomas and most of the participants of the maze trials were immune to the virus, they called them Munies. However, Thomas and his friends were tired of WICKED and their human experiments. They refused to get their memories back because they didn't trust them. Perhaps 'giving their memories back' could be them just planting memories that they want them to have. This is all because Thomas and his friends were heavily manipulated along the way of the maze trials, and the scorch trials. On top of all of that, a couple of his best friends died, he was betrayed by another best friend/girl friend. Being betrayed was all part of WICKED's plan in arousing emotions for the development of the vaccine. They hate WICKED and eventually joined a right wing party against WICKED, called the Right Arm. In the climax, Chancellor Paige which is the boss of WICKED, leaves Thomas a message, showing him a way out, and also notifying him that there are other Munies still in the Maze. Thomas and his friends goes back to rescue them, successfully bringing them back to the base, and escaping through a flat transportation (some sort of teleport machine), to what seemed like paradise.

The trials failed. This paradise set up by Chancellor Paige was a fail-safe in case the trials failed. Since they couldn't develop the vaccine, mainly due to the fightback of the Right Arm being against human experiments, the Chancellor chose to just preserve the Munies instead and restart humanity from that bunch of 200 Munies, while the rest of the world, rots and dies. Did this story make sense? I don't know. I didn't like it. The ending seemed rushed and lazy for me. There weren't any exceptional writing style, mostly predictable. It seemed to have so much potential but the ending was just disappointing. I thought they could come up with some other cool idea. They just failed instead. It didn't make sense because the boss of WICKED just suddenly had a change of heart to abandon the experiment. On top of that, Thomas who was so 'the chose one'  type, just suddenly got tired of saving the world and escaped to paradise instead. Everyone just gave up, when they seemed all too passionate at first. Of course reading the prequel will shed light on many other things I want to know about, such as the development of the maze and how The Flare started, but the ending is so disappointing that I'm contemplating real hard on whether or not I should read the book.

Of all the illogical things that happened, developing a vaccine for a virus from studying human emotions was what I couldn't comprehend the most. Seriously, what does emotions have to do with vaccines? There was also a part of the story where Thomas could telepathically talk to some of his friends. What was all that for, and how did it lead to the cure? Nothing was clarified. Judging by three books, I doubt the prequel will be enough to sustain the number of questions Dashner himself raised. I kind of expected the ending to be inadequate, but it was worse than my expectation. I still can't believe everyone just abandoned the experiment. Unable to be successful in an experiment is one thing, abandoning it is another thing altogether. To makes things worse, there's a prequel to the prequel, coming out in 2016. Probably I'll read all the prequels together when they are all out. Relative to the books that I've put down because it was extremely boring, this book is way better because it at least kept me going for whatever non-comprehensible reason. Maybe I didn't enjoy this book that much because I'm not so into post-apocalyptic stories. I like to delve more into human behavior and emotions, choices and whatnot. More of daily life issues. I can't even settle what's currently happening in life, I doubt I'm bothered about apocalypse hahaha. Till next time! :)