Review of The 5th Wave! Downtown approved!
Alien invasion? Yes! Multi-layered Armageddon catastrophes? Yep! Unlikely hero girl? Um hm! Against all odds mission? You bet’cha! Things-aren’t-the-way-you-think-they-are twists? Of course. “The 5th Wave” by Rick Yancey is a perfect dive at a swim meet if you’re into that kind of thing. Cassie Sullivan has lost everything to the 1st through 4th waves of an alien invasion. She lost friends to the chaos of a world without power (1st wave) and flood and earthquakes (2nd wave), her mother to pestilence spread by birds (3rd wave), her father to silencers (4th wave), and she’s not about to loose what’s left to the coming 5th wave. With unshakable focus and commitment, she takes on the unbeatable to rescue her little brother. She finds help in the unlikely – and even love – meeting the 5th wave head on. This book has what it takes to entertain and here’s why: It has a good plot. Cassie has lost everything, and well, she’s pissed, and willing to risk everything to save the one thing left of meaning – her little brother – even when billions of others were lost. If saving at least one innocent soul isn’t the most important thing, then what is? There’s a heck of a lot of action. Narrow escapes from alien super bombs, the element of sole survivor after most of the world is wiped out (come on … we all think we’re one of the survivors on The Walking Dead), in love with a mystery character, saving a vulnerable loved one from unforgiving brutality, vicious brainwashing tactics by aliens, wicked gun battles with alien technology, an alien invasion different from any other story before, impossible mission in an alien underground bunker, and so on and so on. Cassie is a convincing hero, and Yancey is convincing at portraying the fears, motivations and thinking of a high school kid put in unfathomable situations. The characterizations of people and places are convincing, and Cassie’s motivations are also believable. Although, while her motivation for trying to break into an impossibly defended alien base almost seems superhuman (is she an alien because her courage is almost too much?), her fearless decisions are believable because she’d gone through hell before making them. The background of the story is well-drawn – everything has gone to hell and most everyone is dead – but then the background is actually something quite familiar (deserted farm houses forests and cities; military bases; war zones; etc.). The real “background” to the story is the well-drawn intimate interactions between the characters. When considering the wild subject matter of the story, it is refreshing to see an author draw the reader in with warm and moving characters in that context. Rock on Cassie. Look forward to reading the next book, “The Infinite Sea.”
