The 100 by Kass Morgan and CW TV show

Book #2 of 2015

Well, it’s fair to say I’m obsessed. The discovery of this beauty of a book and television series is owed to my fellow Veronica Mars Kickstarter backer and friend, Melinda Medley, with the help of my good (and also obsessed) friends, Gavin and Zain. It seems that we often share the same taste.

For those of you who don’t know, The 100 is a TV show on the CW network, based on a novel of the same title by Kass Morgan (who recently engaged in a Twitter conversation with me about finding an agent… weeee!). I asked for both The 100 and the second book in the series, Day 21, for Christmas and received both. I loved the first book, written from four different character perspectives, and decided to indulge in the show before starting the second one.

The premise of The 100 is this: It’s a few hundred years after a nuclear war on earth. The humans who survived currently live in an “Ark” in space; it’s essentially a functioning space station, but its oxygen is depleting and the Chancellor on board needs to make a decision. This is where “The 100” comes in. One hundred juvenile delinquents are sent down to earth to see if the radiation on the planet has weakened and if the earth is livable once again. Most think it’s a death sentence; The 100 don’t expect to survive.

But they do. At least, some of them do.

Book vs. TV 

The book and the television show have a ton of differences. There are actually two characters in the book who I really like named Glass and Luke, who aren’t in the show. They are two protagonists who stay on the ark; Glass was supposed to go down to earth, but escaped the ship before it launched. Glass and Luke are an estranged couple and their back story is really intricate and complex, so I was initially disappointed to see that they weren’t included in the show.

Another huge difference between the first The 100 book and the show is that Clarke (the female protagonist, played in the show by Eliza Taylor and a character who absolutely rocks) has no parents in the novel, and in the show her mother is alive and well. In the TV program, Finn, Raven, Jasper, Monty, Miller, and a whole other slew of characters exist, making me wish I could read more about them in the books!  Also, I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but Wells’ (a male protagonist) positioning in the book is quite different than it is in the show as well.

Read. Watch.

Life on earth isn’t what the 100 teens expected. There’s chaos and violence; it’s Lord of the Flies meets The Hunger Games meets The 5^th Wave. As my friend Zain said, “It’s like all our favorite books rolled into one!” It’s uncharted territory for all of them; The 100 make their own rules. Life-threatening viruses, acid fog and “grounders” who survived the nuclear war all make appearances in this nail-biting story. I definitely recommend both the book and the show.

That being said, I am completely addicted to the TV series. On my Mexican vacation this week I plan to read book two, just in time for book three to come out in February. The timing is coming together quite nicely I would say, wouldn’t you?