Thursday 9 May 2013

REVIEW: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Pub. Date: May 7th 2013
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Pages: 480
Readership: Young adult
Genres: sci-fi, post apocalyptic

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'm not a big fan of alien anything. Books, movies, TV... the only alien-y things I watch are Doctor Who and Roswell. It's not that I don't like sci-fi/alien things I just am picky and want it to be done right. The 5th Wave did it right and then some. It took me days after finishing to let everything sink in enough to write the review but my brain is still crying at everything.

The 5th Wave literally pulled me in from page one. I was like owl? Pregnant lady? Sleeping? WHAT!? And quickly turned the page to see what the heck was going on. We first meet Cassie, a teenager all alone in the woods after the first four waves took everything from her. All she has are her two guns, her brother's teddy, a tent, and a few personal belongings that she was able to grab. She's utterly alone, thinks she's lost her mind and willing to do anything to survive. Including kill people who still might be human. That's what this invasion has done: make you doubt your own people. They walk like us. Talk like us. Eat, bleed and feel like us but they are not us. They are the enemy. I adored Cassie. She was such a snarky little spitfire who reminded me of how I might be if I were stuck in a situation like the end of the world because of an alien invasion. She was also very smart and also very stubborn. She is determined to keep a promise she made to her little brother.

There is also other characters we meet: Ben Parish, Evan, Sammy, Ringer as well as others. I honestly loved them all. Well, ok, everyone except Vosch but that guy was an ass. The way the book was told was different from what I've seen, at least in YA. The chapters aren't really chapters, so much as parts. There are chunks, like Cassie's first part, that are 100+ pages. Soem are only 20 pages, some longer than that and each is told from a different character's POV. We get a lot of Cassie, Ben, one of Evan and one of Sammy. It really rounded out the story and showed the reader different views of the apocalypse and everything that was going on from bad to worse.

Then there are, for lack of a better term, the aliens. The invaders that brought on the end of the world as we knew it. Faceless, mysterious creatures that hover in the sky as the humans of earth die. They weren't some green-skinned, big headed, goggly eye little things. They weren't these gigantic monstrous mammoths or tall skinny silver men. They were faceless. They were sleeper agents walking among us looking human. I loved that. I thought that it was fantastic that the author made it so that we didn't know who was on the good side and who was one of the invaders.

I couldn't put The 5th Wave down. The characters were amazing. The plot and subplots were amazing. The writing was amazing. Everything was just so freaking amazing. The 5th Wave is a non-stop thrill ride that will leave you guessing to the very end.

★★★★★ 
I LOVED IT 

PURCHASE 

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