Title: The 5th Wave
Written by: Rick Yancey
Series: 5th Wave, Book 1
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Publish Date: May 7th, 2013
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Pages: 459
Source: Bought
Buy the Book: The 5th Wave
Synopsis: 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. (Via Amazon)
Shaunta: I’m often a little wary of books that are supposed to be the Next Big Thing. The 5th Wave is one of those books. With a $750,000 marketing budget, it was literally everywhere just before it’s May 7 launch. I preordered it–the first time I’d ever done that–because I couldn’t help myself. The synopsis was so compelling. The sample Penguin put up was incredible. And, frankly, I wanted to support the idea of alien-SF being the Next Big Thing. I’m happy to let you know that The 5th Wave lived up to it’s hype. I completely loved it. I loved how Rick Yancey turned the plain-girl-with-two-hot-guys-desperate-for-her trope a little inside out. Cassie is completely aware that both Evan and Benjamen wouldn’t even know she existed if all the other girls in the world were still alive. And then he threw in another girl–so there’s a kind of strange double love triangle going on that gave a very tired idea a fresh twist that I didn’t even know was possible. Cassie’s little brother is a tough, brave little guy–but still completely a five-year-old. He made me think of Bean from Ender’s Game. Maybe because his nickname is Nugget?
Brian: Like Shaunta, I too was a little hesitant to read a book that was being so heavily promoted it was bound to be a disappointment. But also, like Shaunta, I loved the idea of a YA science fiction book about an alien take-over, one told from a teenage girl’s perspective, no less, and so I jumped at the chance to check out this book. I’m glad I did. This is one of those nail-biting thrillers you can read in a few sittings—even at 459 pages, the book moves so fast you can charge through it. This is the first book I’ve read written by Rick Yancey, and I’m interested in checking out his other books. The back flap says that in addition to YA books, he’s also written adult novels, and a memoir (!). The 5th Wave may remind you of The Hunger Games, which I’m sure the book’s publisher is dying for, but it works well on its own as a story that is, funny enough, much more believable in terms of something that could actually happen. I loved the main characters, and like Shaunta, agree that the love triangle cliche was mixed up enough this time around to offer something interesting. I loved Cassie. Loved, loved her. She had a great voice that made me want to keep following her journey. Evan is a well-developed love interest, one with a backstory that will floor you! And I loved little Sammy, too, and desperately wanted Cassie to rescue him with each page I flipped through.
Shaunta: Somehow Rick Yancy took a collection of ideas that have already been explored half to death–love triangles, humanity turning on itself in the midst of an apocalypse, alien’s out to get us–and somehow manage to make them all new again. He made the alien’s bad–and then used the story to defuse the xenophobia. He made a love triangle relevant. He gave the idea of the last humans on Earth killing each other a chilling, truly scary, new twist. Yancey is a master storyteller, and The 5th Wave is a really good story, pure and simple. It pulls you along by changing things up over and over. The one thing that bugged me was the multiple first-person POVs. It took a while in the beginning to realize that I’d hopped into someone else’s head, and that was jarring. (The black pages indicate a POV change, BTW. I wish I’d known that from the start.) The book ended with more story to tell, but not on the kind of cliffhanger that might make you think that waiting a whole year to find out what happens next might kill you. (Does anyone else watch Nashville? Holy cliffhangers! Bad show. Bad!) I predict that we’ll see more alien apocalypse books in the near future. And I can’t wait.
Brian: Shaunta and I pretty much agree on this one, because while I enjoyed the book, the multiple POVs was my big fat problem with it. One, because ultimately I was most interested in Cassie’s journey and would have preferred to see this story from her eyes. And two, every time there was a POV shift, I was struggling to figure out whose head we were in, which I didn’t like. If this novel had been told in the third person, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but in first person, it’s jarring to jump from head to head and not know immediately who we are and where we are. One of my favorite novels A Home at the End of the World jumps from character to character in the first person, but each chapter is named after the character we’re seeing the story told from, and it’s always super clear within the first few sentences. A few of the early parts, I was three pages in and still not quite sure who we were. And like Shaunta, I would have preferred some kind of hint early on that a new part was a new character. But other than this problem, I was totally taken by the 5th wave. I loved that it’s not watered down at all in terms of its violence and thematic content, for a “teen” audience. This is brutal, uncompromising, tragic stuff, and not for the weak of heart.
