Rating: 2/5 
 ***Minor spoilers*** 
 I finished the Maze Runner trilogy a while ago, and I didn't think it was anything too special. I liked the first book but things seemed to go downhill from there. Because of that, I wasn't too intent on reading this book, and I only picked it up because I found someone to buddy read it with. I found it a pretty meh book overall. 
 This book is told from the perspective of Mark, a teenager who escaped New York after the Sun Flares hit (13 years before the events of The Maze Runner) and took out the majority of the city. He, along with his best friend Trina and others they found, left to find a settlement to live. The story begins in Mark's small village of survivors a year after the sun flares hit, and also introduces the Flare virus to the world. 
 I found this book pretty lacking. We don't really know much about the characters, and this caused me to not care much for what happened to them throughout the book. I also found it quite boring for some reason even though there was a lot of action. I found it interesting to learn how the Sun Flares were at first and what happened after. It was also interesting to discover where the Flare virus came from and why it came to be in the first place. 
 While I found a lot of downsides about this book, I still appreciated that we could learn more about life before WICKED. (view spoiler)[ I've had a feeling throughout most of the book that Deedee is Teresa. That would leave her to be around 17 during The Maze Runner, and it was also mentioned that several people that were put in the maze had immunity to the virus. Maybe if she isn't actually Teresa, she's one of the girls that were put in the other maze. I'm a bit sad that I may never find those answers. (hide spoiler)] 
 Overall, I didn't think this book was that good. The character development wasn't really there so I didn't enjoy it as much as I could've. While the action was good, everything else was lacking. If you plan to read this, I recommend you do it after you finish the trilogy so that you can appreciate the answers this gives. Although I don't think this was that great, I think if you finished the trilogy you should give it a go so that it at least fills in some of the gaps in the universe.