Review: THE 100 by Kass Morgan

The 100 by Kass Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Hunger Games meets Lost in this spectacular new series. Now a major TV series on E4.

No one has set foot on Earth in centuries - until now.

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 re-colonize 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 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. 

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I decided to read this book after watching the first season of the TV series. Immediately I was hooked—mainly because I realised the book was so different. We’ve got new characters in this book (including main character Glass) and new storylines.

The narrative is split between four POV characters: Wells, Clarke, Bellamy, and Glass. And I guess because I read this after having watched the series, I can’t help but compare it. I soon realised that characters who’d died in the TV series early on weren’t going to die in the book—instead, we get to know a lot more about them. And these four characters are really well written. They’ve got flaws. Though I have to admit that with the exception of Bellamy, their narrative voices sounded a little similar.

While these four characters are extremely well written, I found many of the secondary and minor characters a little flat. I’d have liked to see Luke and Thalia especially fleshed out a bit more. Octavia’s characterisation seemed a little stronger, but again, not as strong as the POV characters.

So I loved the worldbuilding in this book. Perhaps more than in the tv series, though it is of course similar. But the book feels a lot more realistic. The science is more explained--and it seems like their technology has taken a more natural progression than in the books. An example of this is the cornea slips that many of the main characters have on the spaceship, which don't appear in the TV series.

Talking of the spaceship--it's a lot more structured in the book. And there are clearer divisions. So you've got different sections of the ship, such as Phoenix, and each has a different class-status and we see the conflict between these classes and how some are seen as dispensable. I thought this provided a great way to look at modern societies and how elitist some people can be.

The narrative is told through a mixture of present day action for all four POV characters and their flashbacks. And the flashbacks are what really held the book together. They made everything so much more cohesive; they also really helped me understand the lead-up to the book’s set up. Reading the final flashbacks at the end was an “aha” moment as it made me truly understand what had been happening at the beginning. Not to say that there hadn’t been enough info provided at the start—there had, but the ending just gave it all that little bit of extra meaning.

So this book is shorter than I was expecting it to be. And although Glass had a clear arc in her narrative, there wasn’t so much a complete arc for Clarke, Wells, or Bellamy. Instead, the final few pages introduces another element—the other people who have survivor on earth. This clearly sets up for the next book, and because of this, for me, the book’s written more like a TV series than a novel series. I thought that was especially interesting.

And I do just want to say that although Clarke has two love interests--Wells and Bellamy--it's not really a typical love triangle, which I really appreciated. We see her with both of them at different times in the book, but the romance is definitely not a huge drive-force of the book, which I really appreciated.

The writing is so addictive though, and I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended if you want a YA dystopian/post-apocalyptic/science fiction read.

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Review: THE PLEASURE PLAN by Laura Zam

The Pleasure Plan: A Sexual Healing Odyssey--1 Woman, 6 Sexual Problems, 30 Curative Adventures by Laura Zam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Pleasure Plan by Laura Zam

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book going in—but as soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to read it. I’m in a group with other writers whose releases have been affected by Covid-19, and we each decided to buy and review 5 other books from the group. When I saw Laura Zam’s book, I was so intrigued. And part of this is because I am asexual. I don’t experience sexual attraction—so reading a book about sexual wellbeing and learning how to heal so you can enjoy sex appealed to me because I was curious. Sexual attraction and sex drives are outside of my own experience. And I do like reading about things I don’t experience or don’t identify with. I am also a massive fan of medical memoir, and I read this whole book in under a day.

The Pleasure Plan is part medical memoir, part self-help book. Zam tells us her story of healing from sexual trauma and her experiences of vaginismus, a physiological condition that makes vaginal penetration difficult or impossible, due to the body’s reaction to fear instigating muscle spasms.

This is such a personal story and I really commend Zam in writing it. It can’t have been easy, and the prose is well-written and the story insightful. She examines various medical professionals’ views toward female sexual experiences and sexuality, also examining the agency needed when one seeks out a diagnosis. She also explored her celibate year and what her sexuality means for her.

This book is so, so personal. I think that’s one thing that really surprised me. It recounts some very intimate moments in her search for sexual healing, and in doing so, Zam makes herself vulnerable. This book reveals her bravery.

But this book isn’t just about sex. It’s also about her marriage and her husband. It’s about the experiences that shaped her, the childhood sexual abuse she suffered, and how assault is about power. It’s an examination of her past relationships and patriarchal cultures. It’s also a story about her family and friends too, those who support her, and how they’ve been subjected to the negatives of patriarchal culture. It’s about Zam’s work as a playwright and the one-person play she also wrote on this topic. It’s about her examining her pain from many different angles as she seeks to heal herself.

The Pleasure Plan is a very feminist text. Zam encourages women to take control of their bodies and shows them that their pleasure is important. It’s the feminist slant that I was really able to engage with. As an asexual, I didn’t really identify with Zam’s desire to “fix” her sexual problems, not on a personal level, but I did find it really interesting. Particularly the examination of sexual drive and Zam’s year of celibacy. (I was also really pleased to see it called celibacy as often it’s mistakenly referred to as asexuality—but right from the start, Zam tells us she’s a sexual being and doesn’t identify as asexual, so I was really pleased about this distinction.) Zam tells us of the many professionals she consulted and one of them—one of the first in the book—did say it is fine to have no libido. I really appreciated this—as so often asexuals are treated as if there’s something wrong with us that needs fixing. We’re often viewed as “broken.” And so when Zam questions the idea of being broken at the start—“what if I’m just broken?”—this was something that really engaged me and that I was able to relate to, albeit Zam was talking about the painful sex she experienced, and not identifying as asexual and being perceived as broken because of others’ views on asexuality.

But when you look at Zam’s experiences without focusing on sex and her quest for sexual healing, you see the statements that she’s also making about female health care. And these are universal things. Zam shows us how female health is often seen as of lesser importance than male health. It seems women are expected to endure some pain—and often female pain isn’t taken seriously or it’s just seen as “normal”. At one point in the book, Zam tells us of how she hides her pain, feeling ashamed to talk about it, only to discover she’s actually got complications from appendicitis and is at risk of becoming septic. The doctor tells her she must have a high pain threshold and I think this is a part that really spoke to me. Because this memoir highlights female resilience in a society where female pain isn’t talked about and thus female resilience is often overlooked or ignored.

The writing itself is really good—and it’s clear Zam is a writer. All the other people in her book have great descriptions and characterisation, and Zam is at times analytical in how these people’s behaviour is shaped by their own experiences. These people feel real.

The workbook/self-help sections did throw me a little. Each chapter ends with a little section where the reader is invited to work on healing from their own sexual trauma or dysfunction so they can enjoy sex. Obviously I am not the target market here, but I have never seen this format before in a medical memoir. It made it fresh and new, even if I was surprised at first. But for those reading this book because they also want sexual healing, I can really see how these parts will be helpful.

Overall, this is a thoughtful and insightful memoir that I’m sure will have significant value to many women seeking sexual healing.


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Review: MASK OF SHADOWS by Linsey Miller

Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As soon as I started this book, I knew I was going to love it. Well, I mean, before I started it I was sure I’d love it too—an epic story of assassins, set in a fantasy world, and with a Gender-fluid main character? What’s not to love?! And this book really delivered.

From the first page, I love Sal. They’re confident and independent, and their goal was so, so clear. Their motivations for their actions felt so, so real. And the best thing? This isn’t a story *about* being gender-fluid. It’s an epic fantasy story of revenge where the main character is gender-fluid. But it’s not their only defining character trait. And their gender-fluidity is accepted in this fantasy world and not made a huge thing of.

The book follows Sal as they compete with other auditioners to become Opal, one of the queen’s assassins. I love assassin stories. And I loved this one. There are definite Hunger Game vibes as all the auditioners are set tests and are allowed to kill each other at times. I love stories with tests like these. This is one hell of a job interview, and Sal’s building romance with Elise is so believable and well done. I also love how it was just part of the story, and not a main focus. The plot stays centred on Sal’s determination to be the last auditioner and become Opal, their desire for revenge on the Erlend lords who destroyed Nacea (where Sal comes from), and their determination to stay alive.

The worldbuilding for this fantasy kingdom is also great. It’s believable and there’s a lot of politics wrapped up in it and that just seems so realistic. While we get a sense of the politics as the auditions are taking place, it’s only once the audition has finished that we understand just how politic this book is in its exploration of these fantasy kingdoms.

Halfway through reading this I learned it was book 1 of a duology and I immediately went and bought the second book so I’d have it ready upon finishing. (Plus I bought Linsey Miller’s other book as well, which I’ve heard has an ace MC, making me very happy!)

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