The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
My rating: 3/5 cats
i am not the kind of person who gets off on hating the things everyone loves – i don’t really see the value in reading books just to be snarky and contrary and “ohhhh, the plebs are eating this up, but iiii am the internet’s arbiter of taste and i only read underappreciated, obscure books and thumb my nose at what is popular.”
i do both. i have read Twilight, i have read Fifty Shades of Grey. i like to know what all the hype is about as much as i like to read bunches of underknown stuff. and both those books were fine, for what they were. i don’t see the five-star hype, but i also don’t see the one-star backlash. they are not terribly well-written, but they fulfill what they set out to do.
so, this isn’t me trying to be a wet blanket on what seems to be universal glee. i just 100% do not understand why everyone is raving. and i wish i did.
the book is fine. it, too, does what it sets out to do. i am not really interested in aliens, but i am grateful that this book takes the tired old YA aftermath premise and gives it a new kick by adding aliens. i appreciate the novelty, because most of the books i have read that are similar portray human-ruined worlds, and this one changes that game nicely.
i like that the heroine hates birds. they have a role in the destruction of the world; they are used as a tool by the aliens to help spread the disease that constitutes the third wave in alien domination, and there is the added detail of the owls that watch over the sleeping forms of people in the pre-invasion days. it’s creepy, and feeds my quite-sensible “birds are dinosaurs and now they want to make us extinct” concern.
there are some great psychological dimensions in this: who can we trust when the enemy looks just like us? is the only way to stay alive to stay alone? yancey introduces this nicely, and does a good job carrying and developing this theme throughout the book.
and that’s about all i can praise.
the love-story elements were particularly baffling. again, this might be my own personal blind-spot. i never really pay much attention to these portions of books, especially in YA novels. they rarely strike me as interesting or realistic – i usually just write them off as something that YA books seem to be contractually obligated to include, because it is expected of them – you need a love triangle, because you need something to set off the tension in the other parts of the story. i usually kind of gloss them as i am reading, with the exceptions of Graceling, On the Jellicoe Road, and pretty much anything Laini Taylor has written. those examples, i feel, successfully incorporated the romance angle into the larger work. but usually, they just seem like perfect-people wish-fulfillment, and are either too melodramatic and silly or too contrived.
this one was something else. this one was a little creepy, and i don’t understand why it warms the hearts of others. evan is a weird stalker type, hovering behind closed doors while cassie is sleeping, reading her diary, undressing her while she is unconscious, washing her hair like that dude in that x-files episode. and obviously he has his reasons, but the fact that she keeps catching him in his various lies and is conflicted between not trusting him but still needing him, and genuinely having feelings for him, for me, creates the wrong kind of tension and doesn’t ring true, not from someone who supposedly already has trust issues and has killed men for less. i do understand the “any port in a storm” mentality, so i am willing to give this a pass, but since it makes up so much of the story, it kind of casts its shadow wide over my appreciation for the book.
moving onto secrets, twists and turns. again, genuine bafflement that people are praising these in the book, which practically broadcasts its surprises every single time. in a book that frequently mentions chess, you would think it would mask its moves a little better. 1) consider POV, just for one second, and View Spoiler » 2) never, ever trust a milgram test. you see that, and the jig is up for your twist. 3) in a book that so frequently tells you “trust no one,” the reader is going to trust no one. so any twist that comes outta that loses its impact.
the only good moment that comes in the form of a twist is the scene with ringer and zombie in the war zone. you know which one i mean. or maybe you don’t. not the part where View Spoiler » that scene was very well-done.
children and teens being trained as soldiers to fight the enemy, no matter who that enemy is, makes no sense except within the confines of a YA novel, where the audience is presumably the same age as the characters, so it becomes an empathetic experience. there is no convincing reason to not use adults in this capacity. seven-year-olds are not going to win your war for you.
there is also too much repetition in this book. there was a passage i liked:
I might be – no, I probably am – doomed.
But if I’m it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I’m going to let the story end this way.
I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running, not staying, but facing.
Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity.
And if this is humanity’s last war, then I am the battlefield.
which is pretty cool. i like that as a battle cry.
but then, in the very next chapter, the coolness is undermined by the repetition of this mantra, in the contrast with another character:
“You are the human clay,” Vosch whispers fiercely in my ear. “And I am Michelangelo. I am the master builder, and you will be my masterpiece.” Pale blue fire in his eyes, burning to the bottom of my soul. “God doesn’t call the equipped, son. God equips the called. And you have been called.”
He leaves me with a promise. The words burn so hot in my mind, the promise follows me into the deepest hours of the night and into the days that follow.
I will teach you to love death. I will empty you of grief and guilt and self-pity and fill you up with hate and cunning and the spirit of vengeance. I will make my final stand here, Benjamin Thomas Parrish.
Slapping my chest over and over until my skin burns, my heart on fire. And you will be my battlefield.
which is probably something that people like – the turning of the one situation on the other, but there are just too many instances like this in the book – too many convenient echoes and repetitions and breathless realizations of what the fifth wave is. it made the characters less like humans and more like symbols. or chess pieces, to extend the metaphor.
and this was a problem, for me. i never felt like the characters were realistic, or made believable choices. if this was supposed to be a representation of what remains of humanity, it kind of stinks to know that this is what we are left with. the frustrating part is that both cassie and ben have moments of interesting insight, but then continue to act like cardboard people the rest of the time. and ringer is complete hot tough-girl fantasy material. which is a real letdown, because that character could have been so freaking cool.
and i was really looking forward to this, and it genuinely makes me sad to have such a lukewarm reaction. it is the same reaction i had to his book The Monstrumologist, which again, everyone seems to like.
this is me and magic eye puzzles all over again. i wish i could see what you all see.
