We read The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey for book club this month. After seeing a lot of bad reviews for it, I went into it with pretty low expectations. Most of my fellow book club readers weren't impressed with it either, but I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. In fact I liked it enough to continue on with the trilogy, although I did not like the second and third books nearly as much. I ended up reading all three books in succession, so I'm going to post my reviews for all three here.
The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave #1) by Rick Yancey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Post Apocalyptic
Content: Strong language, Quite a lot of killing, Scenes with lots of dead bodies piled up, The conditioning and brainwashing of children in a boot camp setting
After the 1st wave, only darkness remains.
After the 2nd, only the lucky escape.
And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive.
After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.
Now,
it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway,
Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the
countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last
survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she
meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's
only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie
must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender,
between life and death. To give up or to get up.
I don't read a lot of post apocalyptic stuff, but most of the ones I have read have had the "aliens take over the world" theme. Certain elements of this reminded me of The Host by Stephenie Meyer, although that was a cake walk compared to this, and in the end, the stories had little in common. The atmosphere of this book, and the not knowing if you can trust other people thing reminded me a bit of the TV show Falling Skies. I think it was that atmosphere that won me over. It was tense, and the characters not knowing who they could trust made it interesting for me. Then there is also the "enemy turned lover" scenario that made it interesting too. I think I'm in the minority when it comes to the romance because I actually liked it, and it was one aspect of the book that I enjoyed. I liked the whole "love can change the way a person sees the world and others" theme there, and I didn't think it took over the story or anything.
I'm not gonna lie, this series was depressing at times, and there are some morally questionable things done by characters. I particularly found the boot camp where the children as young as five were being conditioned and brainwashed, and turned into soldiers hard to read. I almost wanted to stop, but I kept going. The main character, Cassie doesn't exactly come off as the most likable protagonist to a lot of people, but I was still able to like her. The thing is, I could understand her behaving in the way she does in this book, because she was a teenager put in a horrifying situation. She's lost her whole family. She's alone, and she's lost all trust in everyone. I could see a person becoming that way in this situation. I do think that the book could have shown us more people willing to trust and help each other. Most of those type of people end up dead in this book. That brings up the questions, how far should we go to save the human race? How much of ourselves should we sacrifice? What would we have to become in order to do that, and is it worth it?
In the end, I have mixed feelings about this book. I gave it 4 stars because there were things I liked a lot about it, and at certain parts I had a hard time putting it down. As a YA book I would definitely say this isn't a book for young teens. It's very dark and gritty. There is also a lot of cursing in this series as a whole, with lots of F bombs thrown in; more than in most of the books I've read written for adults in the last year.
The Infinite Sea (The 5th Wave #2) by Rick Yancey
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Post Apocalyptic
Content: Strong language, Quite a lot of
killing, A mostly off page sex scene, Kids as suicide bombers
How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.
Surviving
the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds
herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that
binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape,
Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate
goal: the extermination of the human race.
Cassie and her friends
haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the
Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate
battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.
I didn't like this book as much as the first one. Maybe because I really didn't care for some of the points of view that were written in this one. I felt like there were too many and it switched too often, and the story didn't feel as tight as the first book. Nothing really happens for the characters I liked, and there was too much written about ones I didn't like. I'm probably in the minority here, but I wasn't a fan of Ringer and we spend a good portion of the book with her. Add on top of that- plans that are made never coming to fruition, the character I found the most interesting from book one being handicapped and sidelined throughout this whole book, and then there is the twist on the twist from the first book. I can't say what it is because of spoilers, but I didn't care for this development, and I thought it added quite a few holes to the story that are going to be hard to fill. This book was disappointing.
The Last Star (The 5th Wave #3) by Rick Yancey
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Post Apocalyptic
Content: Strong language, Quite a lot of
killing, A mostly off page sex scene, Kids as suicide bombers, A gross scene with a mass grave
We’re here, then we’re gone, and that was true before they came. That’s always been true. The Others didn’t invent death; they just perfected it. Gave death a face to put back in our face, because they knew that was the only way to crush us. It won’t end on any continent or ocean, no mountain or plain, jungle or desert. It will end where it began, where it had been from the beginning, on the battlefield of the last beating human heart.
I was hoping this last book in the trilogy would fix some of the problems I had with the previous book. Unfortunately I didn't feel like it did. We got some answers, but not everything was answered in a satisfactory way for me. By this time in the trilogy I wanted to start having a feeling of hope, but for the most part it was all gloom up until the very end. The one thing I liked about this book was the fact that finally, in the end they saw the need to insert their humanity and start to trust again. Start to love and give people a chance again. In the end no one goes by their names they were given at the boot camp anymore. Ringer is Marika, Zombie is Ben, Nugget is Sam, etc. Not surprisingly Sam has a hard time with this transition. What traumatized 6 year old wouldn't by this point? But it still hurt to see him that way. This was a series that started out pretty strong and just fizzled out.
My main complaints:
Characters contradict themselves too much.
A revelation that Ringer makes to Ben. It added nothing to
the overall story, and came out of nowhere when it was revealed. Maybe
giving us some hints and having her suspect something first would have
helped?
The romance fizzled out and the scene leading up to sex was weirdly written. Evanland? I mean what was that?
Evan was yet again almost non-existent in this book.
Cassie's inner monologue was weird at times. Planting her flag on the sculpted beach? Uh, never mind...let's move on.
The mass grave scene was too much.
Some of the plot holes were sort of filled, but not all of them.
The ending was bitter-sweet, but not in a good way for me.
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