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Sunday, April 26, 2015

Review Sunday: The 100 by Kass Morgan


Goodreads Blurb:
"No one has set foot on Earth in centuries -- until now.

Ever since a devastating nuclear war, humanity has lived on spaceships far above Earth's radioactive surface. Now, one hundred juvenile delinquents -- considered expendable by society -- are being sent on a dangerous mission: to recolonize the planet. It could be their second chance at life...or it could be a suicide mission.

CLARKE was arrested for treason, though she's haunted by the memory of what she really did. WELLS, the chancellor's son, came to Earth for the girl he loves -- but will she ever forgive him? Reckless BELLAMY fought his way onto the transport pod to protect his sister, the other half of the only pair of siblings in the universe. And GLASS managed to escape back onto the ship, only to find that life there is just as dangerous as she feared it would be on Earth.

Confronted with a savage land and haunted by secrets from their pasts, the hundred must fight to survive. They were never meant to be heroes, but they may be mankind's last hope."



Review:
I feel like I cheated just a little bit because I started watching the TV show before I read the book.  So I might be just a teensy bit biased.  Sorry in advance!

So after I finished this, I chatted with a couple of people and they all expressed what I had been thinking - that the book tends to wind in a downward direction while the TV show just keeps escalating.  Not that it isn't a good book... just that it wasn't particularly riveting.  For example, when the 100 touch down on Earth, you'd think they wouldn't really know what to do having lived on a space ship their entire lives.  Well, everyone certainly gets along find and dandy in that department.  There's the typical 'different types of leadership' thing going on but they're surviving.  It all just seemed very anticlimactic except for the wonder that Clarke experiences.

It is a good book, just... I don't know... it was just okay.  I did enjoy reading Glass's perspective on what was going on in the spaceship while the 100 are on Earth.

I really, really didn't like Bellamy in the book.  In the TV show, he's awesome and realistic and amazing.  But in the book, he was just an arrogant a-hole who wanted to do nothing but protect his sister but he went bumbling around in the dark to do it.  Going along with that and the point I made previously about the survival skills, we don't get to follow Bellamy on his hunting adventures or anything.  He just miraculously comes back with food and somehow everyone is fed.  Like what...?  I understand he was able to read books on the subject but really?  He's somehow an expert hunter just like that?  There was just so much missing from the book.

The Final Verdict:
A good premise but not very well executed.  I think I will still read the sequel just to see how it differs from the TV show and find out what happens.
3 stars


Quotes:
“Octavia was the only person in the world who truly knew him. There was no one else he really cared about ever seeing again. But then he glanced over Clarke, who was leaning over to breathe in the scent of a bright pink flower, the sun catching the gold strands in her hair, and suddenly he wasn't so sure.”


“That was the thing about secrets-you had to carry them with you forever, no matter what the cost.”


“He tasted like joy, and joy tasted better on Earth.”


“Everyone was pointing upward at the sky, which was turning into a symphony of color. First, orange streaks appeared in the blue, like an oboe joining a flute, turning a solo into a duet. That harmony built into a crescendo of colors as yellow and then pink added their voices to the chorus. The sky darkened, throwing the array of colors into even sharper relief. The word sunset couldn't possibly contain the meaning of the beauty above them, and for the millionth time since they'd landed, Wells found that the words they'd been taught to describe Earth paled in comparison to the real thing.”


“Bellamy didn’t know why the ancient humans even bothered doing drugs. What was the point of shooting junk into your veins when walking through the forest had the same effect?”


“Maybe here in the ruins of the old world, they could start something new.”


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

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