Introduction

“You couldn’t expect anyone else to share your suffering. You had to carry your pain alone.”

The 100 is Kass Morgan’s debut novel that focuses on a world in the future where the earth has been destroyed by a nuclear winter and humanity’s survivors live on a space ship. When a mechanical failure threatens humanity’s life, 100 juvenile delinquents are sent to earth to see if the planet is inhabitable for humans once more. The story follows The 100 as they navigate unfamiliar terrain and try to make their little spot of land inhabitable for the rest of humanity.

My Thoughts

I’m a big fan of the TV show. I bought the this entire series about two weeks before the series finale because I knew that the show would leave me dissatisfied and I wanted to be familiar with the source material. I thought that this would be like most cases where the books are better than the show but I was rather unpleasantly surprised while reading.

I’ll have to do a review on the series as a whole once I finish it but this first book leaves much to be desired. It’s not often that I think a screen adaptation is better than a book but this might be one of those times. The writing is very easy to read, though, and despite the sort-of cheesy writing, I found myself turning the pages to find out what happens next in these characters’ lives.

The one thing I liked the most about the books though is that the characters are pretty stupid. I’m not saying that they’re not intelligent – they all did a much better job at surviving than I would’ve – but it’s very obvious that they’re teenagers. Being threatened by hunger, frostbite, and unclean water wasn’t enough to deter our main characters from the painful trials of teenage romances. I often found myself screaming at a certain gentleman character to stop being such a simp and step up as a leader.

The book ended on a cliffhanger that I was already prepared for because of the show but I’m looking forward to moving on to the next books in the series.

Rating

Overall, I give the book three stars. I compared the writing to that of Twilight. The writing is really the only reason why I gave this book 3 stars, other than the fact that not much really happens throughout the book. First books in a series aren’t always a knockout though and I’m sure everything will get better as the series goes on.