When the aliens came, they didn't send robot ambassadors or bring magic technology or even land in conveniently combustible invasion machines.
They just hung in orbit, a pale green eye over the world, utterly silent and inert. It was almost as though they had no interest in the blue planet
below.
Until the First Wave.
In a series of devastating attacks, the Others take out over ninety percent of the human population in a matter of months. First they knocked out
the electric grid and machinery with a simple electromagnetic pulse. Then they flooded the coasts, destroying the world's biggest, most powerful
cities. Then came the plague... and, just as the survivors were crawling back, the Fourth Wave: sleeper agents, aliens in human bodies, hunting down
their own kind. What will the Fifth Wave bring?
Cassie Sullivan used to be a normal high school girl, worried about grades and whether she'd ever work up the nerve to talk to her crush, sports star
Ben. Now she's the last human on Earth, or may as well be. There's no way to tell friend from foe, and the last time she thought she and her family
were saved, she watched that salvation steal her kid brother Sammy and shoot her father dead in cold blood. It's only a matter of time before she's too
slow with her stolen guns, or runs out of water, or succumbs to exposure. She might just get it over with herself - but for one last promise.
Cassie may have done many things she never thought herself capable of - scavenging, surviving alone in the woods, even killing - but one thing she won't
ever do is abandon Sammy... even if rescuing him is the last thing she, or any human, ever does.
Review
Reading like The Hunger Games crossed with the later books in the Animorphs series, with a touch of The X-Files and
general apocalyptic grit, despair, and paranoia for seasoning, The 5th Wave grabbed me fast and didn't let go until the end. Cassie's not
perfect, clearly scarred by her experiences, and the people she pulls the trigger on aren't always aliens; indeed, every character in the book has killed
at least one other being by the end, even children as young as five or six. Still, she refuses to give up, even in the face of seemingly-certain doom.
Meanwhile, Ben finds himself at Camp Haven, on the grounds of a military base that managed to survive the four waves. Here, he and fellow survivors are
being trained to take the fight to the Others, a glimpse into how child soldiers are indoctrinated in the face of utter devastation and the breakdown of
civilization. It's not a bloodless process, to say the least. As Cassie struggles to keep her promise and determine whom to trust (tested sorely when she
finds herself in the company of the stranger Evan), Ben pushes to prove himself worthy of avenging his family - a family he blames himself for losing. If
you look too close, there are some logic flaws in the alien invasion plan, and of course luck has a way of being on the heroes' side (after nearly deserting
them), but that's true of many such stories. Ultimately, I found it an enjoyable, intense read. Now I'll have to track down the second book... and the
third.
Once, humans ruled planet Earth, numbering in the billions. Now, after the Others arrived and unleashed four population-devastating Waves of horror,
almost none remain... and of those, some aren't fully human anymore, but Silencers: alien consciousnesses downloaded into human hosts. Come spring, the
5th Wave will launch. An army of brainwashed child soldiers under the direction of Other leaders will hunt down the last stragglers.
Which gives Cassie Sullivan and her companions three months to live. At most.
After escaping the camp where her kid brother had been stolen and trained to kill, she, her one-time crush Ben, and a handful of fellow deserters are
almost out of hiding places. Wounded, starving, holed up in an abandoned hotel, they argue about their next move, even as they all know the truth. Not
even Evan, the Silencer who broke protocol when he chose his love of Cassie over his directive, can save them if they can't figure out what the Others'
ultimate plan is, a plan that has to be about more than mere extermination.
Review
It took me a while to get back into the rhythm of Yancey's dystopian tale, as I remembered who was who and where they were; it has been a few years
since I read the first installment, after all. From the start, though, Yancey's near-poetic voice carried me along, making the hopelessness, the rage,
the despair, and the devastation almost beautiful. Cassie shares page-time with hard-edged recruit Marika, better known as Ringer, the jaded sharpshooter
from Ben's squad who figured out the truth behind their "mission" before he did. Meanwhile, Evan managed to survive his risky gambit that allowed Cassie
and her companions to escape, but at a great cost, and General Vosch shows he's far from finished with their little group. Events move fairly quickly,
with plenty of action (and more than a little death and gore), pushing the limits of human (and inhuman) endurance as the story openly addresses what had
appeared to be a weak spot in the first volume: why the Others chose such a roundabout method to finish off humanity given their planetbusting capacities.
(Skirting spoilers, the question is only partly answered here.) Once in a while the angst borders on overkill, though when one is in the throes of a true
species-ending apocalypse, angst is a perfectly understandable reaction. It narrowly missed out on a extra half-star due to overall "middle book syndrome":
being in the middle of a trilogy means it both begins and ends a bit up in the air, and once in a while I felt I was being toyed with just to draw
important revelations out into the third installment. Beyond that, it made for an enjoyable, though harrowing, read, a true end-of-the-world dystopia
rendered lyrical.
Against all odds, Cassie Sullivan and her increasingly-small band of companions - her brother Sam, the traumatized young girl Megan, her former crush
Ben, the young medic Dumbo, and the Silencer with the alien soul Evan Walker - have survived the winter... but the coming spring will not bring fresh
hope, only the end of everything. Come the equinox, the alien mothership will obliterate all remnants of human cities and civilization with bombardment
from orbit, using the brainwashed recruits of the Fifth Wave to ensure that future generations will never again cooperate, never again form societies,
never again rise from the mud and animal distrust of their fellow humans. But Evan has turned on his own kind, and plans to sacrifice himself to destroy
the mothership when the aliens rescue him and the other Silencers before the bombs fall.
While Cassie may trust Evan Walker and his plan, Ben isn't so sure. He has his own ideas on survival, but first he must rendezvous with his squadmates
Ringer and Teacup, sent to the nearby Ohio caverns in search of other survivors. Only he doesn't know what really happened this winter, how Ringer's
mission went pear-shaped and left her at the mercy of their all-too-ruthless enemy General Vosch - and how, thanks to him, she's no longer quite as human
as she used to be. What she has learned about Vosch, the Fifth Wave, and the aliens will change everything... and possibly destroy the last, feeble
glimmer of hope the survivors still cling to.
Review
Once again, The Last Star picks up with no recap time, plunging the reader into a harrowing, bloody, and death-filled tale of humanity's last
stand against a seemingly unstoppable force. The Others' plan is even worse than simple obliteration; it's the rewriting of the human heart, breaking the
instinct of cooperation and trust, turning brother against sister, man against woman, mother against child, and child against everyone. Cassie sees
evidence of it already working in her kid brother Sam, now a hardened soldier who has forgotten his ABC's and his mother's face but can build a bomb and
pull a trigger like a seasoned killer. In many ways, humanity is already broken beyond repair... and yet, something within them manages to resist, even
in the face of seemingly certain doom. Here, Yancey started to lose me, as he skews a bit toward preaching and faith (never explicit, but a notable
undercurrent.) There's still a certain poetry, if bleak and dark poetry, to this tale of the end of everything we thought made us human and the discovery
of what our species's true weaknesses and strengths are. The action remains relentless and dark, with more deaths and more betrayals and more proof that
much of what was lost will never be regained, all culminating in an explosive and devastating finale that feels just a hair too drawn out and over the
top. On the other side, Yancey wobbles a bit on the landing, which helped shave a half-star off the rating. All told, The 5th Wave is a decent, if
dark, apocalyptic tale.
