Chronological order
| Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Maze Runner | 2009 | James Dashner | Buy |
| The Scorch Trials | 2010 | James Dashner | Buy |
| The Death Cure | 2011 | James Dashner | Buy |
| The Kill Order | 2012 | James Dashner | Buy |
| The Fever Code | 2016 | James Dashner | Buy |
The Maze Runner opens with Thomas waking in an elevator with no memory of his past. He emerges into the Glade, a community of teenage boys trapped inside an enormous maze. The walls shift every night. Monsters called Grievers patrol the corridors. No one knows why they’re there or how to escape.
James Dashner wrote the series with cinematic pacing in mind. Chapters end on cliffhangers. Action scenes read like storyboards. The mysteries pile up faster than answers arrive. Each book expands the scope, revealing more about the world beyond the maze and the organization that built it.
The main trilogy follows Thomas and his fellow Gladers as they escape the maze and discover the truth about WICKED, the organization that imprisoned them. A plague called the Flare has devastated humanity, and the maze was designed to test potential survivors. The prequels, The Kill Order and The Fever Code, show how the disease spread and how WICKED recruited its subjects.
20th Century Fox produced three films between 2014 and 2018. Dylan O’Brien starred as Thomas. The movies grossed nearly a billion dollars combined and stayed reasonably faithful to the source material. Production on the third film was delayed after O’Brien was injured on set.
Reading order matters less than you might think. The prequels can be read before or after the main trilogy. They enhance the story either way, filling in history that the original books keep mysterious.