'Weeks after landing on Earth, the Hundred have managed to create a sense of order amidst their wild, chaotic surroundings. But their delicate balance comes crashing down with the arrival of new dropships from space.
'These new arrivals are the lucky ones—back on the Colony, the oxygen is almost gone—but after making it safely to Earth, GLASS’s luck seems to be running out. CLARKE leads a rescue party to the crash site, ready to treat the wounded, but she can’t stop thinking about her parents, who may still be alive. Meanwhile, WELLS struggles to maintain his authority despite the presence of the Vice Chancellor and his armed guards, and BELLAMY must decide whether to face or flee the crimes he thought he’d left behind. It’s time for the Hundred to come together and fight for the freedom they’ve found on Earth, or risk losing everything—and everyone—they love. '
Whilst I enjoyed the first two books of The 100 there was always something about them that didn't quite feel right. I wasn't sure what it was until it came time to read this book, and realised that despite the protagonists having to try to survive on a world they knew nothing about, and the threat of the aggressive faction of Earthborn there was actually very little stakes, and no clear antagonist. Homecoming, however, changes this, and gives us a bad guy to hate. And it makes this the best book in the series by far.
With the previous book ending with desperate survivors of the floating colony heading to Earth in their ships Homecoming picks up with the members of the hundred rushing to their aid as they crash to the planet. These opening moments of the book are tense and action packed, and really sell the chaos of the situation. We did have this a little in the very first book, but it's magnified here, as there are multiple ships crashing down, with dozens of wounded and dead to deal with. It also shows how far the teenage delinquents have come in their short time on the planet, forming a competent rescue party and helping to save lives.
We mostly follow Clarke during these scenes, her being the main character with medical experience, and we see that whilst before she was treating minor injuries or the occasional food poisoning in the camp here she's right in the thick of things, dealing with a major disaster with a level of calmness and maturity that even an experienced doctor would be impressed by. We even see this when she discovers an injured doctor amongst the wounded, a man she trained under, and he tells her that she's become a great doctor. This might not seem like much, but it helps to contrast on the young woman who was still unsure of herself and doubting her abilities at the start of the series.
Unfortunately for the one hundred, however, one of those who survives the crash is Vice Chancellor Rhodes, a cruel man who always seems to put himself first. He's the man responsible for the 'deaths' of Clarke's parents, and her being arrested. Despite the hundred coming to their rescue, and displaying how well they've managed to survive on Earth Rhodes doesn't seem to see them as anything more than children, and criminals at that too. He quickly sets himself up as the antagonist for the book, and it creates genuine tension.
It's not clear at first if he's just going to be the kind of adult authority figure who ignores and dismisses the lead characters, resulting in interpersonal conflict, but he eventually reveals himself to be worse than that, becoming actively hostile to the one hundred. He wants Bellamy dead for his actions in the first book, and is willing to make the rest of the one hundred into slave labour to help build his new regime, one that's supported by armed guards he commands.
The rest of the book deals with the fallout of Rhodes decisions, and how the other survivors deal with it. There are a number of confrontations because of this, and more drama in this book than the rest of the series. It's also drama that comes from genuine danger, not just teenagers falling in and out of love with each other, so it feels more natural and less overblown.
The only part of the book that I didn't really like as much was Glass and her sections. In the previous books she was away from the rest of the group, doing her own thing, and this was fine. She was still in space whilst the others were on Earth, so it gave us an insight into what was happening elsewhere. It made sense that she had her own story. But here she and Luke make the decision to run off on their own, and leads to a series of events that almost ends in disaster before they return to the group. As there's no permanent consequence to this, and as they end up back with the group I don't really know why this story line was included. It would have made more sense to have them both join Clarke, Wells, and the others in their stand against Rhodes. As it is, Glass and her story feels completely separate to everything else, and ultimately a little pointless.
I was also glad that Kass Morgan chose not to force in as many flashbacks as in previous books. Whilst these made sense earlier in the series they're becoming less relevant as the story goes on. There were only about three or four in this book, and they were much sorter in length to previous ones, only being about a page or two long, but honestly, they didn't really add anything of note. Did we need to see Glass and Wells hanging out and having fun to prove they used to be good friends? Did we need a flashback to Clarke hearing her parents talk about radio transmissions when she could have just said 'my parents used to talk about radio transmissions'? I think that you could take the flashbacks out of the book and wouldn't lose anything from the experience, and suspect they were only included as the other books featured them.
I'm not sure what the fourth and final book in the series is going to be centred on, as the ending here really does feel like a resolution. The other books left little threads hanging so that you knew roughly what would be part of the narrative for the next book; but that's not the case here. This could have been the end of the series, and it seems to have been written that way. I'm curious if book four will feel like part of a single whole like the first three, or more like a sequel.
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