101 by Margaret Chatwin

Trigg and Ren are brother and sister living in an abusive home with their father. One night he begins to beat Trigg so badly, after hitting Ren as well, that both siblings believe this will be the end of Trigg’s life. Instead Ren takes matters into her own hands and as a result the 2 siblings steal their dad’s car and are arrested and put in a prison known as 101. Few to no details are know about this prison, only that it houses the “worst of the worst” offenders. The governmental party in power is known as the NAO (New Age Order) and the trial the siblings is given is a farce as are the prison facilities.

SPOLIER ALERT*The government rules with an iron fist, Trigg was senteneced to 3 years for Grand Theft, and Ren is sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder. END SPOILER ALERT

One of the interesting things about this prison is that it is made up of small townhomes, each housing approximately 3-4 inmates. The men and women are segregated, but not fenced off so they can socialize. There is no curfew, or any other laws regulating inmates behavior. The hope of the NAO is that the inmates will kill one another, or at least give the guards a reason to kill them.

Trigg’s main concern is to find Ren and protect her, however he doesn’t find her for almost a month and during that time she has gone through hell. However she is resilient; and manages to help Trigg and his group of other inmates try and topple Ace, who is the absolute worst inmate around. Seeing him in my mind SPOLIER ALERT* kill both Dane’s girl and Billy Jo END SPOILER ALERT was enough to make me hate even more than I already did. I enjoyed seeing Trigg finally beat the crap out of him. I would have done even more knowing what had happened to his sister.

While reading the book it was easy to get caught up in the characters. I felt like Chatwin did a good job or developing her characters, so it was easy to understand where they were coming from. The only character that I noticed being slightly underdeveloped was Ren. While she started out with a good beginning development, I thought Ren wasn’t as fully rounded as Trigg and some of the other characters.

The ending was truly a shock for me, I anticipated the prison outcome. But, I had no idea what the actual ending for Trigg and Ren would be.  I think Chatwin does an excellent job of interweaving themes of governmental control/secrets, love, and taking a stand even when it means your life simply because it is the right thing to do.

I didn’t notice many grammatical errors, which contributed to the overall enjoyment of the book. However, I did notice sequential numbers throughout the book, almost as if Chatwin wrote an outline and forgot to take the numbers out once she fleshed the book out. I don’t know if this is a result of reading a pdf on my nook, but I’ve never seen this in any other pdf books or documents. However, there’s a first time for everything. Hopefully, it’s just something that showed up on my nook as a result of the pdf file; because that did detract from the book. It would break up sentences & leave pages half blank.

Overall, I would give this a solid 3 stars, and some people will probably think it is deserving of 4+ stars. Had it been a trilogy like the Hunger games where you really see the characters develop and go through paradigm shifts then I could myself a higher rating. Trigg and Ren didn’t change all that much considering what they went through. Granted, Trigg did learn to finally fight back physically, and mentally plan strategic attacks. However, their personalities & outlook on life I thought stayed the same throughout the book. What led them to prison, however wrongly were the same characteristics that put them there in the first place due to their dealing with their father.

I do look forward to reading for of Chatwin’s work, she is a talented author.

The Sin Collector

THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS*I went into this book thinking what an interesting concept it was. However, it didn’t really live up to what I had envisioned, but maybe lack of backstory, and some of the questions will be rounded out & explained in the next book . It was certainly an interesting read. Liliana, or LiLi as Billy called her is a Collector. She takes on all the sins a person has before they die. She is basically immortal, the only thing that can kill her is the Castus dagger long thought to be gone forever. 

She has lived for over 120 years, and seen the best and the worst in mankind. After seeing all the death and destruction in WWII she stopped taking on others’ sins. She is trying to live as normal a  life as she can, considering she  can sense everyone's sins. She is getting by until she runs into Billy, her first and only friend she had growing up. He too is a sin-eater, better known as a Collector. He lures her into believing that everything she knows is a lie; which is fairly close to the truth. She never had to take on anyone else’s sin; Billy didn’t. She become extremely frustrated with her former mentor, Olexander for never telling her these things.

All mentors leave the trainees after the trainee turns 20. This is when they have to learn to fend for themselves and begin to collect others’ sins. As Billy brings LiLi over to Dublin to supposedly relax while he visits with his mother (since no two Collectors can be in the same room without becoming physically ill). She passes out in a pub, because of another Collector being there. Billy believes that the Castus, a group of humans, who believe that Collectors should be eradicated, is nearby. As they begin to hunt for clues, Olexander and a group of Collectors pop up. LiLi is caught in the middle of Billy and Olexander. Each is telling her not to trust the other, and she begins to doubt who to place her trust in.

As the story continues, this is where I begin to have issues with it. Billy is the traitor; the Castus killed his mother and now he’s serving them. Why would anyone, especially someone who knows the history of the Collectors and the Castsus choose to serve them after watching his mother die a painful death? The author didn’t do a good job truly explaining why Billy would do this, and turn his old friend LiLi over to them? Was he truly that brainwashed?

Also, why is the Castus making a comeback now? They haven’t been around since before LiLi was born. Again the author provides no explanation.  I do like that LiLi was able to see people’s auras, but why did that happen? Maybe that will be explained in the next book. Rebecca, had that same gift, but she was extremely old, while LiLi is still quite young for a Collector. Also, it was interesting that Quinlan’s aura was red and orange, while another character who was not nearly as evil had black around his aura. That seemed a little strange, I felt like Quinlan should have been the one with black intermixed with his aura. However, that’s just my opinion; the author could have had her own reason for showing Quinlan’s aura the way she did.

I will admit, I did cry at the very beginning of the book when George died. For some reason it really struck a chord with me, and I loved how he didn’t want LiLi to take his sins. That is a life well spent in my estimation.  Overall, I would read the second book just to see if my questions are answered, but I’m not waiting for it on baited breath.

Grammatically, I didn’t notice a lot of errors. The one thing I did notice was that when the pdf format converted itself on my Nook, only 2 lines were typed before a space interrupted them. I felt like I was reading poetry. However, I believe that is purely a formatting issue with trying to read a pdf on a Nook. I doubt that the book is actually written like that.