'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 recolonise 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.'
The only experience I'd had of The 100 before reading the book was briefly watching parts of the first season of the television series when it first started airing several years ago, so I was aware of the basic premise, but that was about it. I didn't really remember much from the show, and knew that they'd have changed things anyway, so had no real expectations about what to expect when I sat down to read the book.
The main narrative of The 100 follows a society of humans that have survived the nuclear apocalypse by escaping to space. The ships that took them to safety now float in obit, connected together into a mismatched colony. The people on these three ships have spent centuries trying to maintain their technology and conserve their resources as best they can, sometimes to murderous ends, but now their resources are running low and the technology is failing, leaving returning to Earth as their only choice.
One hundred teenage delinquents are chosen to be sent to the potentially deadly planet below to see if it's safe for the rest of the survivors to return. Kind of like canaries in a coal mine. Now, if this sounds somewhat cruel to you, you're right. One of the first things that you learn about the society of survivors in The 100 is that its not a place you'd want to live. The ships have a big difference in social status and resources, with the citizens of one ship still acting like they're the upper class of society, engaging in fancy balls and classy events with gowns and wine, whilst others are living in abject poverty.
Even with this skewing of resources to favour one group over others there's still a shortage on supplies, meaning that intense measures are in place to keep the population under control. Death seems to be the main punishment within this society, with almost any adult stepping out of line seeming to end in execution. The teens that are in prison are only alive because they're waiting to reach eighteen, at which point the rulers seem to feel more comfortable in having them killed. With such tyrannical rule being sent to a potentially dangerous Earth almost seems like a nice escape from the horrors of their daily reality.
Over the course of the book we get to know a core cast of a few of these teens, not only following them during their attempts to survive, but getting to see flashbacks to their life before. We get to see a little more of how this society functioned, and the 'crimes' that led them to getting their death sentences at the same time. These sections were some of the most interesting in the book. They not only helped to build the characters, and show their motivations and personality in ways that their current circumstances couldn't, but also seemed to raise an interesting point; not everyone in prison deserves to be there.
This isn't a new idea in fiction, and a lot of stories have a hero falsely imprisoned. But whilst some of these stories involved characters framed for crimes they didn't commit The 100 takes a slightly different approach (though there is one character who does fall into that category as she was framed for something she didn't do), The 100 asks you the question of what if the crime isn't worthy of punishment?
The character of Glass, we learn, was sent to prison to await execution because she fell pregnant. This wasn't something that she planned. It just happened. Just like in the real world, sometimes you get pregnant when you never planned it. Even when she loses the baby she's condemned to death. Is that fair? Is it also fair that they want her to give up the father so that he can die too? They haven't added to the population, haven's put strain on these resources because the baby didn't survive, so is it still right to kill two people? The fact that some people are living in relative luxury when others are barely getting by highlights the hypocrisy of this sentence even more. There could be enough resources if they were distributed fairly, but instead people are being killed for relatively little just to maintain the status quo.
I don't know if Kass Morgan intended to create a work that demonised the prison system, but it certainly ended up that way. You come to hate the society that the survivors have created, and the heroes are 'criminals' that are death row inmates. Sadly there's not too much time to really think on this in the book, as events move so fast that we're not really allowed to focus on it. I do hope that this will be explored more later in the series, that perhaps when the other survivors come to Earth those who were victims of this awful regime rise up and get some kind of restitution.
What surprised me most about The 100 was the pace of the story. Kass Morgan manages to pack so much into the book, yet also does so little, that the book felt unfinished. Now, this isn't a criticism, so let me explain. By the end of the book the reader has been given a lot of information about the characters, shown so much of their backstories and gained such a sense of what they're like, that you feel like you've got to know them really well, yet so little has happened since the 100 arrived on Earth that it feels like there's so much more to happen. When I reached the end of the book I knew there was more to come, that this first book had barely touched upon the story, that I wanted to jump straight into the second book to read more. Very clever Kass, you hooked me.
The events on Earth don't cover a huge amount of time, and I think we only get to see a few days of the one hundred on the planet before the book ends on a dramatic moment that promises more to come. Whilst I hope that the story continues to use this exciting pace going forward I don't want to see the author keep using cliffhanger endings to ensure that readers come back for more. It works here, but more than once would get tiring. The story and characters are strong enough to maintain my interest.
The 100 was an interesting and engaging sci-fi story that had a lot more depth to it than I was expecting, and made me consider topics that I didn't really think it would. On the surface it's a story about teenagers being thrust into an exciting and dangerous adventure, but underneath that it raises some scary questions about the penal system and corruption that are still relevant to society even now.
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