Review: The 5th Wave

The 5th Wave
The 5th Wave, Book 1

Author: Rick Yancey
Pages: 480
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Publication Date: May 7, 2013
Source: Gifted - Thanks Audrey!

Description from Goodreads:
The Passage meets Ender’s Game in an epic new series from award-winning author Rick Yancey.

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.

First Sentence: "There will be no awakening."

Does It Pass the Bechdel Test? Only sort of. Cassie talks to a female doctor. It's not a long conversation, but I guess it counts. That's it, though. For the most part, the female characters (of which there are four that are alive) don't talk to one another.

Review:

Anyone who follows my book haul vlogs or my Twitter probably knows how excited I was for this book. The preliminary reviews convinced me that this book and I were destined to have a great love affair, that it would break me emotionally, and end the fairly long streak of lackluster post-apocalytpic/dystopian fiction I've been on. Well, The 5th Wave is good, and I can see why everyone's been loving it, but, perhaps because of the hype, it wasn't everything I dreamed it would be.

The 5th Wave hooked me right from the start. What really sets this book apart from the bulk of young adult fiction is the air of hopelessness that permeates this post-alien attack vision of Cincinnati. Cassie is a hard heroine, determined to survive for as long as she can, afraid she might be the last actual human alive. The 1st wave of the alien attack was an EMP, knocking out all technology in an instant. The 2nd wave stirred the oceans and killed those on the coast. The 3rd wave was a plague, carried by birds, that killed all but a few naturally immune or able to fight off the infection. The 4th wave consisted of the Silencers, sleeper agent aliens within human bodies. At this point, 7 billion people are dead, and the enemy could be anyone.

Too often, apocalypses in young adult fiction don't really wreak all that much destruction. Humanity seems to have a serious fighting chance, but Yancey's world is suitably bleak enough to please me. With the 5th wave feared and anticipated every moment, humanity hardly seems to have a chance in hell of surviving. I love how high the stakes are in this book, and that Yancey doesn't pull punches. The 5th Wave is dark and intense.

As the novel opens and we meet Cassie, we learn her rules for living, the first of which is to shoot anyone else she meets on sight. She knows that aliens are walking around in human guise, because she saw them murder her father, shortly after her brother, Sammy, and the other children were rescued by soldiers. As such, Cassie trusts no one. Cassie will kill to protect herself, without waiting to find out if the other person is human or alien, because there's no way to know, and she has to stay alive to find Sammy. It's not just Cassie, though. Every single surviving person in this world has blood on their hands. No one comes through these experiences innocent, and that is my favorite aspect of the novel.

Yancey's writing is beautiful too, complex and in no way talking down to the audience. He is even at turns poetic. This would be one of the rare YA books I would recommend to adults who normally turn up their noses at books for teens, because I think the writing and darkness of the subject matter will hold appeal for adult readers as well, even snobby ones.

However, much as I love the concept and the writing itself, Yancey's use of perspectives didn't really work for me. I had three main concerns with his use of multiple points of view. First, I had trouble discerning Cassie's narration from Zombie's, and was really thrown when the POV switched, even going so far as to wonder if Cassie was a boy all along and I'd missed something. I simply could not tell their voices apart except by seeing where they were or a gender reference.

Second, there are two perspectives used for only one chapter, while the rest of the story bounces between Cassie and Zombie. As a general rule, if a perspective is going to appear once, it's best not to use it at all, and I think that holds true here. Nothing was learned from those two single-use perspectives that could not have been discovered later with greater impact. The use of one of these even, whether intentionally or no, spoils a plot twist that could have been startling.

Third, the chapter from the perspective of Sammy is in third person, while the rest are in first. Rarely do I approve of this technique in multiple points of view either, however, it can be done to great stylistic effect, intentionally distancing the audience from a particular perspective to represent how closed off that character is. In this case, though, I fail to fathom this authorial decision. For what reason should the reader be distanced from Sammy? This section could have been emotionally resonant, following a scared, confused five-year-old through his experiences in this harsh landscape. Instead, the third person narration alternates between Sammy's childish thoughts and observations obviously coming from the narrator. Done in first person, this section could have highlighted Yancey's skill writing perspective, but, alas, this was not done.

Even though Cassie and Zombie were written in first person, I also failed to really connect with them. In Zombie's case, I suspect this was because he sounded like Cassie to me, so didn't really become his own person in my head. Cassie, though, I was well-disposed to like, and was bonding to in the beginning. Unfortunately, she stopped acting like the Cassie of the outset and embarked on an instalove romance. To be fair, the romance was not instalove from her side, but she pursued the relationship as well, and the whole thing made me roll my eyes. The one plus I will give the romance in this book is that I'm not entirely sure who Yancey wants Cassie to end up with in the end.

Overall, I very much enjoyed The 5th Wave and will be eagerly anticipating the sequel. Readers who enjoy dark, action-packed novels will want to pick this one up, as will those who liked The Host or Animorphs, but want something much more intense.

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Quote: 

"'From what you've told me about the Silencers, its not logical to rally anywhere.'
     'Or stay anywhere longer than a few days. Keep your numbers small and keep moving.'
     'Until . . . ?'
     'There is no until,' I snap at him. 'There's just unless.'"