The Fifth Wave novel review

Award-winning author Rick Yancey is back with his new book The Fifth Wave. Having written many other books such as A Burning in Homeland and The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, this book had many high expectations from readers. That said, it is adequately written, but aside from a few good plot points, the book isn’t very interesting.  It is a paranormal romance that can be summed up my merely two plot facts: alien invasion and cheesy romance. There can only be so many ways to retell an alien invasion, and not so subtly revolve it around a romance or two, without it being so overdone that from the second it starts you just want it to end. Compared by critics and the writer to books such as The Host, The Passage, and even Ender’s Game, it was given a standard to live up to. However, it fell short by a mile.

The Fifth Wave is told from the P.O.V. of four different characters, mainly centering around a girl named Cassiopeia. The aliens attacked in four stages. First, cut off  the power. Second, cause tsunamis along the shore pushing everyone inward. Next, release a disease that kills of over 97% of the remaining population. And finally, release The Silencers (aliens that look like people) to wipe out the remaining humans.

During the 4th wave, Cassie found herself in a refugee camp with her father and little brother Sammy when what’s left of the U.S. military comes to help provide shelter. Taking only the young first and claiming to come back for the adults as soon as possible, Sammy is taken away and Cassie promises that she is going to find him no matter what. When the military turns out to be Silencers, Cassie manages to run away and set out on her trek to find her brother. Only problem is, on the way she picks up a different Silencer. This is where the love interest comes in.

It is the classic story of the bad guy falling for the good guy; the bad guy is so in love that he is willing to give up his bad ways to be with the girl. This is Evan Walker, another increasingly confusing point of view to seemingly help tell the story. It mostly just succeeds in muddling the plot and confusing the reader to a further extent. Tracking Cassie for days, he knows he’s supposed to have killed her by now, but something’s stopping him. He’s watched her fretfully try to sleep at night, read her journal, and now knows almost everything about her. So when Cassie injures herself, instead of finishing the job and killing her like a good little evil alien, he heroically turns his back on all of his kind and helps her. They fall in love, everything is good and dandy, and he even offers to betray his whole species and help her get her brother back. Isn’t that sweet?

Here is where the writer makes another mistake: Cassie is portrayed as a badass girl who is independant, has tough skin, and won’t let anyone get too close to her. But once she meets Evan it’s like she becomes a whole new person to accommodate for the romantic aspects. She magically becomes this new, more domestic version of cassie when it is convenient for the story. Not to mention, the romance is developed in the first third of the novel and isn’t really needed to get the information Evan supposedly serves for. Instead of slowly stripping down her character like some writers may do to show that it may have been a front to hide her true emotions, the writer changed her personality so quickly it was almost as if we were seeing a different girl take Cassie’s place.

Just when you think you’ve had enough, the book switches perspectives again. This time, it’s Ben Parish, a boy that hasn’t even seen Cassie sense the first wave, and even before that didn’t really know who she was. The only thing he serves to do in the story is give us some information about the aliens that we end up learning later on anyway from Cassie’s alien informant boyfriend. This brings me to my next point.

Alien invasions are overdone and overused, and i’ll give Yancey a point for trying to be original, but this alien invasion is just plain old confusing. In his desperate attempt to be original, he has made it so detailed and muddling that it was all but impossible to understand.

Overall, I thought The Fifth Wave was mostly a let down compared to all the rave reviews I had seen prior to buying the book. It is worth checking out to some small degree, but there are so many other great or even mediocre books to choose besides this that there really is no point in wasting your time. It had some good aspects but with the main plot points being the biggest let down it ruins what could have been the rest of a good storyline.