'The 5th Wave' by Rick Yancey

The 5^th Wave, Rick Yancey (2.0)

I normally don’t read other reviews after reading a book, prior to writing my own so as not to be swayed by their opinions. I broke that habit for this book, as I was curious. Interestingly, the reviews are very polar – either this book is great or the worst Sci-Fi ever written. In the end of the day, I’ll have to side with my tried and true Sci-Fiers and not recommend it. The book was highly anticipated and had great ‘press’. At the beginning I was generally ok with the premise: aliens seem to be trying to take over Earth starting with an EMP that takes out all technology (wave #1). Then they drop a really heavy object on a couple major faults and create large earthquakes and tidal waves that take out millions more (really? Seems pretty unique, but unnecessary). The third wave is pestilence – an ebola-like disease spread by birds (pooping everywhere) – at least that one makes some sense. This is all told in flashbacks by our protagonist, a scrappy teenage girl. So, forgiving the unlikelihood that really smart aliens who have been watching Earth for thousands of years would use these methods, the beginning of the book has some charm. Where it goes wrong is when the book starts to read like a harlequin romance series – when our scrappy heroine, who has been ruthless to this point on her rules of survival, goes googly-eyed over the first guy who helps her [spoiler alert – he is OBVIOUSLY one of the humans-taken-over by aliens who HAS JUST SHOT HER]. Ick. Give the girl some backbone Mr. Yancey. Oh, and then there’s the whole side story of the children being trained as soldiers (basic training a la ‘Storm ship Troopers’)– just to kill more humans. Yeah, that makes sense and much easier than just introducing another strain of pestilence that takes out the remaining 3%. Hmmmm, and I heard the movie was a flop.