Day 21 is the sequel to The 100 and carries on straight from the previous book. The POV's are all from the same characters but, especially from Wells, other characters are now cropping up in the story to give a bit more dimension to the 100 confined kids sent to earth.
Bellamy's sister Octavia is still missing and he spends most of this novel trying to find her. Clarke is dealing with a new outbreak of some debilitating sickness. Glass and Luke deal with the terrifying fact that Walden and Arcadia are being deprived of oxygen. And Wells spends much of his time talking to an Earthborn girl they capture called Sasha.
The story develops when Sasha explains that Asher, who was killed at the end of the last book, was attacked by a broken off faction of Earthborns. She also breaks the news that the 100 aren't the first to fall from the sky. A ship landed about a year ago but Sasha is vague about what happened to the survivors. Clarke and Bellamy hook up but have a break up when Bellamy finds out that Clarke not only knew his ex, Lilly, but that Lilly was the one who Clarke agreed to put to sleep to escape the radiation experiments her parents were performing. Glass, with Luke's help, does a spacewalk so she can save Walden and Arcadia by opening up the closed Skywalk, freeing the people from their impending death only to find everyone is now trying to get a place on the last dropships before the spacestation runs out of air.
I didn't enjoy this one as much as the last mainly because of some terrible plot hole/twists that didn't work or felt flat. Firstly, at no time did I get the impression there were indeed 100 kids sitting around a fire or feeding themselves. I mean, if you remember your old school assembly, or anywhere where you see a huge group of people, you know they make noise. They break off into groups and do their own thing. An organised group would have proper leadership and elders but instead they still seem to be roaming around oblivious to the dangers. Even after Asher died, and even when Priya is found hanging from a tree.
Bellamy is adamant from the start he has to find his sister. You get his urgency in the beginning but when Clarke helps him they spend so much time kissing and making out that sometimes I think he's forgotten that his sister may be held by rabid animals who could be torturing her. I admit that he did have to take Clarke back to the village after the snake bite but hell, if that was my own sister I'd be back out there.
Sasha also comes across as too nicey-nicey and when she takes Bellamy and Clarke to see her father it is all a picture postcard setting of neat little houses the Earthborn live in. And the twist that the Earthborns had already rescued Octavia, that she was safe, kind of deflated the whole tension.
Right at the end when Wells is ready to leave, Bellamy, Clarke and Octavia are laughing and joking as they come into view. Surely Octavia, who has been held hostage by a faction we don't know about, shouldn't be laughing with the joys of summer.
My gripe through all of this book is the tension or lack of it. Everything was dealt with and tied up neatly without any other sense of danger. So far the 100 appear to have landed in paradise and everything is cosy. To be honest Day 21 fell flat.
I'm ready to try the next book, now that the remaining dropships are coming to Earth. Let's see if this one can rev up a bit of drama.