The problem with Dystopia novels.
I think it is pretty safe to say that the title summarizes what I’m going to say pretty well.
I literally had an idea for this post the moment I walked out the theater of The Maze Runner: Death’s Cure yesterday. The ending of the movie was really lazily written, although I do give it props for at least trying to be accurate to the book.
But how does that have anything to do with this post’s topic?
I love dystopia. It’s truly something unique. It portrays a story and world that overlaps in Science Fiction, Post-Apocalypse, Young Adult, and sometimes even Paranormal and Fantasy. It allows you to enjoy what you loved most about Science Fiction (the technology), but made it more realistic (and arguably more enjoyable) due to its Post-Apocalypse factor. Not to add on the relatability of it really brings the fear out of how the scenario is actually possible. Dystopia also provides some of the best relationships in the YA genre because there’s just something about people bonding through near-death-horrible-hell-hole situations that just appeals so much to us…for some, weird…mysterious reason.
However, we need to talk about a problem in this genre that seems like so far, no YA Dystopian series young adult author in this century seemed to be able to grasp.
What. The. Hell. Is. With. The. Endings.
I understand that it’s really hard to make a great ending and wrap up for a world that you created that by DEFINITION is a worst possible scenario for humanity. But the endings are really bad. I don’t know if I’m the only reader to have noticed this, but a Young Adult Dystopian series always decelerate in quality as the series progresses. Always.
It really sucks, because the first books are always so amazing. It makes us fall in love with the characters, the world, and everything about the book so much, and then they throw us a crap of an ending. It’s like the authors all are thinking: “I have absolutely no idea how to solve and save humanity in three books and my due date is approaching so I’ll just throw in a crappy ending. It doesn’t matter because my series is already popular and it can get me money either. Oh, and in case the crappy ending is not enough, I’ll make sure that the male protagonists that my readers adore will end up with the one girl my readers utterly abominate with their souls”.
And I KNOW that the authors think this because of how the endings are not even subtlety lazily written, they were flat-out lazy. It’s like the authors know that there is nothing we can do about it besides from dying from a stroke because of how mad we are.
I wouldn’t make this point so strongly today if not every single dystopian book I’ve ever read and ever will read is like this. Remember how I asked if I were the only one to think this? Well, looking at how the Goodreads review for all the dystopian series books goes down every single book, with the last book always having the worst review, something tells me they do agree.
If this isn’t convincing enough. Look at the swarm of Goodreads, Reddit, and other chat group’s horrified and absolutely enraged conversations about the endings.
Well, that was a very emotional rant.
So sorry for all the emotional outburst in this post. I hope it does scare any of you away XD. But in case if it’s not clear, the reason I decided to do this post after watching the Maze Runner movie is that the movie (being based on a Dystopian YA novel/series), of course had a crappy ending. Which finally made me realized the pattern after many experiences, and ultimately did this post.
What do you guys think? Do you agree? Please let me know (seriously, I’m curious).