Rayne's Reviews > The 100

The best laugh out loud book I've read in 2015!

If this book had been a parody of the tired YA post-apocaliptic/dystopia/romancepocalypse genre I wish someone would just take out of its misery already, this book would've been utter perfection because it captures almost effortlessly all that's pure garbage about the genre and then presents it to the reader in the most abominably infantile and histrionic writing I've read in ages, and through the most pathetically shallow and stereotyped characters I've ever had the misfortune to read about.

The 100 reminded me a lot of my experience with The Maze Runner, which is, in my opinion, the perfect book to exemplify what happens when you have a really fantastic idea for a novel but don't really have the talent to write yourself out of a children's coloring book. The 100 goes even further than that because, at the very least, The Maze Runner limped its way through a decent plot, whereas I'm being exceedingly generous by using the words "The 100" and "plot" in the exact same sentence without adding "absolutely had no" in the middle. This novel had no idea what it wanted to do, no direction or clear cut path of what it was supposed to be besides some generic "evil government" and angst-riddled shitfest who abused the words "beautiful" and "heart" to such an extent that I wouldn't be surprised if the words were to disappear from all dictionaries because this book drained the available quantities for them for eternity.

So there's this girl, who's beautiful and perfect and nice and is supposed to know something about whatever, but fuck it, who cares because isn't she just so beautiful? There's this guy who would do anything (anything) for a girl who hates him, because why should a NO or "stay away from me" or the lives of thousands of others mean anything when it's true love, right? This other guy who would do anything (anything) for his sister, except perhaps pay actual attention to her and all the shit she's doing. There's the aforementioned sister who, because she's not the main character, is not beautiful, perfect or nice. And then there's this other chick who has it really tough because the love of her life is poor and nobody wants them to be together, even though nobody is actually going out of their way to stop her from being with the guy. And they are all in love with each other, because of course.

Sorry, should I have written that with spoiler tags? I literally just gave away the entire plot of this novel. The worst part is... Okay, so I can't even settle on what the worst part of this novel was, but one of the equally awful parts of this novel is that, for a story so intently and brutally pushing the romance angle, not a single one of these characters had any chemistry whatsoever with each other, there wasn't a single spark or connection between them. It was all so ridiculously superficial and over-dramatic, the romance here felt less like the characters wanted to be with each other and more like the author forcing Barbie dolls to kiss each other. None of this was romantic. Quite frankly, it was uncomfortably stale and it bordered on creepy several times.

The storytelling in this novel was so insufferably lazy. There's 5 different third person PoVs that shift back and forth between present and past, each scene jarringly forced to remember some unnecessary memory about something mildly related to what's going on because telling your characters' past in a way that does not abuse this technique or disrupts the narrative flow of the story would be too much work. Essentially, the 300 and something pages of this novel consists on what happens when someone throws water on an anthill and the ants just scatter and start running around in circles for an extended period of time. Not that I can actually blame these characters for having absolutely no idea what to do, in this poorly-planned, nonsensical dystopia, not even the adults or Evil Goverment(TM) seemed to be having the slightest clue about what they were supposed to be doing or the reasons behind their actions.

Everything about this book is regurgitated from a hundred different other previous books, there's very little originality or uniqueness to the story to keep one focused, interested or entertained, and in any case, the poor writing, shallow characterization, forced romance and anorexic plotting take away from any small ember that could've burned this book's way into a better rating. I haven't seen the TV series, but I'm told it's really good and nothing like the book. I'd be interested if I wasn't already aware of a blatant instance of racism in how the characters from the book were given life in the series, so I can say with all confidence that I am done with The 100 in all its forms.