James Dashner, author of The Maze Runner and The Mortality Doctrine series, shares with readers two chapters of his latest book The Rule of Thoughts.
Dashner has returned to the world of the VirtNet mere hours from where his last book The Eye of Minds ended. When we last saw our teenage protagonist Michael, he had just come to the overwhelming realization that his identity wasn’t exactly as solid as he had once believed.
Reality wasn’t exactly real, his life wasn’t his own, and even his body was a stranger to him.
Related: Book review: ‘The Eye of Minds’ by James Dashner (spoiler free)
It’s a lot of information to process and deals with some pretty complex questions about being, identity, life and its purpose. You can see Michael scratching at the surface of those questions from the very beginning of the book and you can read a portion of that below:
Michael was not himself.
He lay on the bed of a stranger, staring up at a ceiling he had seen for the first time just a day before. He’d been disoriented and sick to his stomach all night, catching sleep only in fitful, anxious, nightmare-fueled jags. His life had blown apart; his sanity was slipping away. His very surroundings — the foreign room, the alien bed — were unforgiving reminders of his terrifying new life. Fear sparked through his veins.
And his family. What had happened to his family? He wilted a little more every time he pictured them.
The very first traces of dawn — a gloomy, pale light — made the shuttered blinds of the window glow eerily. The Coffin next to the bed sat silent and dark, as foreboding as a casket dug from a grave. He could almost imagine it: the wood rotting and cracked, human remains spilling out. He didn’t know how to look at the objects around him anymore. Real objects. He didn’t even understand the word real. It was as if all his knowledge of the world had been yanked out from under his feet like a rug.
His brain couldn’t grasp it all
His … brain.
He almost burst out a laugh, but it died in his chest.
Michael had only had an actual, physical brain for the last twelve hours. Not even a full day, he realized, and that pit in his stomach doubled in size.
Could it really all be true? Really?
Everything he knew was a result of artificial intelligence. Manufactured data and memories. Programmed technology. A created life. He could go on and on, each description somehow worse than the one before it. There was nothing real about him, and yet now here he was, transported through the VirtNet and the Mortality Doctrine program turned into an actual human being. A living, breathing organism. A life, stolen. So that he could become something he didn’t even understand. His view of the world had been shattered. Utterly.
Read more here, at MTV.com
It looks as though The Eye of Minds was a bridge into the deeper philosophical exploration that’s bound to happen in The Rule of Thoughts. And if this preview is just a taste of what’s to come, then we’ve found ourselves with an exciting an intriguing follow up to the series.
The Rule of Thoughts will be released August 26 wherever books are sold.
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