The Maze Runner

Published the same year — both feature teens trapped in adult-designed death systems, but Collins is more explicitly political where Dashner is more puzzle-focused

Boys building society in isolation — Golding's conclusion about human nature is far darker, making the contrast instructive about optimism and design

Dashner's most direct influence — children used as experimental subjects by adults who believe the ends justify the means, and the final reveal that the 'game' was real all along

Published two years later in the same YA dystopian wave — Roth's faction system is a more explicitly social critique; together the series define early 2010s YA dystopia

Older touchstone for the amnesiac community premise — Lowry's controlled society and the horror of discovering what has been taken also centers on a young person's gradual awakening

Older, more literary treatment of children raised as experimental subjects — Ishiguro's tone is elegiac where Dashner's is propulsive, but both ask what we owe children whose lives we design