Review: The 100 by Kass Morgan
A hundred juvenile delinquents are sent down from a dying space station to figure out whether Earth is habitable again, three hundred years after a nuclear war. They are all under eighteen, they have all been imprisoned for something, and exactly none of them have wilderness survival skills. The 100 by Kass Morgan kicks off the series the CW show was eventually based on, and reading the book post-show is a strange experience.
The premise is, I’ll say it, fantastic. Throwing teen criminals at a radioactive planet as expendable test subjects is the kind of high-concept hook YA dystopia was built for. Morgan also makes a smart structural choice in rotating between four POVs (Clarke, Wells, Bellamy, Glass), which lets her cover both the Earth landing and the political mess back on the Ark.
Where the book really, genuinely struggles is the execution. The chapters are short, which makes the pacing feel zippy at first and increasingly thin as you realize there’s not much under the hood. Characterization is sketchy. Clarke is “smart and serious,” Bellamy is “brooding and protective,” Wells is “loyal and earnest,” Glass is “the one having a love story on the Ark,” and the book leans on those one-line descriptions instead of layering anything more. The romances develop on rails. World-rules go fuzzy when convenient.
The TV show, which I came to first, did a vastly better job of taking these bones and putting muscle on them. I kept finding myself thinking about how a particular plot point landed harder on screen because the show gave it room. The book just keeps moving.
For who? Younger YA readers, dystopia fans who want something quick, completists who watched the show and are curious about the source. Skip if you want depth.
Fast and fine. The show is better. I will probably still read book two.