The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
Dec. 9th, 2013 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
The 1st Wave
Took out half a million people.
The 2nd Wave
Put that number to shame.
The 3rd Wave
Lasted a little longer, twelve weeks … four billion dead.
In the 4th Wave,
You can’t trust that people are still people.
And the 5th Wave?
No one knows.
But it’s coming.
On a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs.
Runs from the beings that only look human, who have scattered the Earth’s last survivors.
To stay alone is to stay alive, until she meets Evan Walker.
Beguiling and mysterious, Evan may be her only hope.
Now Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death.
Aliens have made contact and they’re not friendly.
The first wave of their invasion is an electromagnetic pulse that kills thousands and wipes out all technology. The second wave’s a tsunami that kills millions. In the third wave a virus kills 99% of the remaining population. With the fourth wave aliens who look like humans pick off the remaining survivors.
Against all odds 16-year-old Cassie’s survived each wave and is now on her own. Armed with an M-16 rifle, she’s looking for her younger brother Sammie who was taken away by the army after the fourth wave struck. When a sniper hits her in a sneak attack, she’s rescued by Evan Walker, another teen who lost his family in the waves. Evan’s her best hope of getting her brother back, but Cassie’s not survived for this long by readily trusting strangers …
Rick Yancey’s YA post-apocalyptic SF novel (the first in a trilogy) starts off strong but the introduction of different points of view really diminishes the tension by spoiling many of the coming twists. I loved Cassie – strong, sarcastic, smart but vulnerable – and totally believed in what she’d been through but the other characters (including Evan and Zombie) suffer in comparison. I also wasn’t quite convinced by the alien invaders or their plan for destroying humanity (which seemed needlessly complicated given their obvious technological advantage), although I did like the way the surviving humans keep trying to second-guess both their motives and what will happen next. I enjoyed the book enough to want to read the sequel but it didn’t quite live up to the awesome opening.
The first 100 pages of the book are great as Cassie goes through what each of the waves was like and the impact they had on her and her family. The most harrowing sections are those depicting the impact of the virus on Cassie’s family but I also enjoyed the scenes where she and her family take refuge in a camp run by former soldiers.
Zombie’s army training sections were straight out of FULL METAL JACKET and while I enjoyed the interaction between Zombie and the practical, thoughtful Ringer, Nugget was a little too cutesy for me given the darkness of having child soldiers.
Ultimately although it didn’t live up to the opening, there was enough here for me to want to read the sequel and I shall check it out.
The Verdict:
Rick Yancey’s YA post-apocalyptic SF novel (the first in a trilogy) starts off strong but the introduction of different points of view really diminishes the tension by spoiling many of the coming twists. I loved Cassie – strong, sarcastic, smart but vulnerable – and totally believed in what she’d been through but the other characters (including Evan and Zombie) suffer in comparison. I also wasn’t quite convinced by the alien invaders or their plan for destroying humanity (which seemed needlessly complicated given their obvious technological advantage), although I did like the way the surviving humans keep trying to second-guess both their motives and what will happen next. I enjoyed the book enough to want to read the sequel but it didn’t quite live up to the awesome opening.
Took out half a million people.
The 2nd Wave
Put that number to shame.
The 3rd Wave
Lasted a little longer, twelve weeks … four billion dead.
In the 4th Wave,
You can’t trust that people are still people.
And the 5th Wave?
No one knows.
But it’s coming.
On a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs.
Runs from the beings that only look human, who have scattered the Earth’s last survivors.
To stay alone is to stay alive, until she meets Evan Walker.
Beguiling and mysterious, Evan may be her only hope.
Now Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death.
Aliens have made contact and they’re not friendly.
The first wave of their invasion is an electromagnetic pulse that kills thousands and wipes out all technology. The second wave’s a tsunami that kills millions. In the third wave a virus kills 99% of the remaining population. With the fourth wave aliens who look like humans pick off the remaining survivors.
Against all odds 16-year-old Cassie’s survived each wave and is now on her own. Armed with an M-16 rifle, she’s looking for her younger brother Sammie who was taken away by the army after the fourth wave struck. When a sniper hits her in a sneak attack, she’s rescued by Evan Walker, another teen who lost his family in the waves. Evan’s her best hope of getting her brother back, but Cassie’s not survived for this long by readily trusting strangers …
Rick Yancey’s YA post-apocalyptic SF novel (the first in a trilogy) starts off strong but the introduction of different points of view really diminishes the tension by spoiling many of the coming twists. I loved Cassie – strong, sarcastic, smart but vulnerable – and totally believed in what she’d been through but the other characters (including Evan and Zombie) suffer in comparison. I also wasn’t quite convinced by the alien invaders or their plan for destroying humanity (which seemed needlessly complicated given their obvious technological advantage), although I did like the way the surviving humans keep trying to second-guess both their motives and what will happen next. I enjoyed the book enough to want to read the sequel but it didn’t quite live up to the awesome opening.
The first 100 pages of the book are great as Cassie goes through what each of the waves was like and the impact they had on her and her family. The most harrowing sections are those depicting the impact of the virus on Cassie’s family but I also enjoyed the scenes where she and her family take refuge in a camp run by former soldiers.
Zombie’s army training sections were straight out of FULL METAL JACKET and while I enjoyed the interaction between Zombie and the practical, thoughtful Ringer, Nugget was a little too cutesy for me given the darkness of having child soldiers.
Ultimately although it didn’t live up to the opening, there was enough here for me to want to read the sequel and I shall check it out.
The Verdict:
Rick Yancey’s YA post-apocalyptic SF novel (the first in a trilogy) starts off strong but the introduction of different points of view really diminishes the tension by spoiling many of the coming twists. I loved Cassie – strong, sarcastic, smart but vulnerable – and totally believed in what she’d been through but the other characters (including Evan and Zombie) suffer in comparison. I also wasn’t quite convinced by the alien invaders or their plan for destroying humanity (which seemed needlessly complicated given their obvious technological advantage), although I did like the way the surviving humans keep trying to second-guess both their motives and what will happen next. I enjoyed the book enough to want to read the sequel but it didn’t quite live up to the awesome opening.
