(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16101128-the-5th-wave)
The 5th Wave has earned its place in my list of quintessential YA dystopian reads. It doesn’t beat books like Legend or Maze Runner, but it certainly is a shining gem of a literary work. As you may have inferred from the cover illustration, this book is an apocalypse story –specifically, an alien apocalypse story. “Oh great,” you may be groaning. “Come on, I’ve gotten my fair share of Independence Day and War of the Worlds already.” That’s exactly what I thought too; turns out, the author wrote this with this exactly in mind. Take the following excerpt: “Forget about flying saucers and little green men and giant mechanical spiders spitting out death rays. Forget about epic battles with tanks and fighter jets and the final victory of us scrappy, unbroken, intrepid humans over the bug-eyed swarm.”
But to provide some more key background info on the story, our central character is Cassie, a 16-year-old girl whose parents have succumbed to the previous apocalyptic “waves.” She has been somewhat managing to get by, her life goal being to fulfill a promise she made to her brother Sammy just before he was taken (or abducted?) by soldiers (or aliens?). Two other major characters are Evan, an alien super-assassin known as a Silencer, and Ben, a boy in Cassie’s grade prior to the apocalypse being who is now being trained to lead the resistance against the aliens. Here’s Cassie describing the apocalyptic waves: “1st Wave: lights out. [All electricity cut.] 2nd wave: surf’s up. [Tsunami.] 3rd Wave: pestilence. 4th Wave: Silencer. What’s next, Evan? What is the 5th Wave?” Reading this, at least 2 questions probably came to your mind. Why is Cassie talking with Evan, the enemy? And there’s a 5th Wave? The sequence of events that produces these questions is just as interesting as the mysteries themselves.
I really appreciated The 5th Wave because you could really tell the author had put in the effort to make it a new and distinct tale. And to be frank, it was kind of necessary if he wanted to make this book a successful one. As touched upon above, one of the key questions the plot (and the title) presents is what the 5th wave is, which ends up being something unimaginably sinister but also interesting. (Trust me, you’ll be surprised.) Something I noticed was that the concept of the waves is quite similar to the plagues in the Bible. But I digress. I figure that most young adults will end up enjoying this story because of its romance element and action-packed plot, especially towards the end. Do be warned, however, that the typical time to read this book, at least according to my e-reader, is over 7 hours.
Personally, I more so enjoyed this story because it explores the fundamental and philosophical question of what it means to be human. The book in fact opens with Cassie confronting a wounded soldier at a gas stop who’s begging for help. Cassie, though, is ambivalent about helping him, as there’s a chance that he is an alien in disguise. (The 4th Wave was all about the aliens taking control of people’s bodies, thus becoming Silencers and turning humans against one another.) Cassie ends up shooting the soldier even though he’s most likely innocent because she mistakes a crucifix in his hand for a gun. This led me to question what I would have done in a similar situation and how I could, if at all, tell an alien that acts just like a human apart from an actual one. This was also what made The 5th Wave a bit of a horror story for me. Evan, a Silencer himself, describes how he took over the body of a male from the human’s birth like many other of his species and had been biding his time for the right time to “strike.” While I’m no conspiracy theorist, such a prospect is absolutely horrifying. Imagine your neighbor, your friend, “a little old lady sweeter than your great-aunt Tilly,” as the book puts it, being an alien just ready for the right opportunity to pounce.
For an over-7-hour long read, you may be wondering if every part of the book was necessary. I’d say a definite no. The slow roll into the story, the gradual exposition, is nice and all but some parts could have absolutely been cut out. I try to give leniency to authors whose books I review because there’s always room for improvement in any piece of writing, but it was particularly noticeable in The 5th Wave. With that being said, it seems that the author was aware of his book being noticeably lengthy, given how he divided it up into “subbooks,” if that makes sense. This makes it perfect, arguably, as a road trip or on-the-go read, which I guess I agree with.
As for the characters, they weren’t particularly outstanding, but their “voices,” from their lingo to their general demeanors, felt quite realistic; the portrayal of the characters, who are mostly adolescent, is consistent with the traits of a modern teenager. Cassie’s obsession, or crush, with Ben was frankly annoying and cringeworthy. It didn’t really serve any purpose in the book except for making a weird semi-love triangle among Cassie, Ben, and Evan. A noticeably good move made by the author with the characters was dedicating each subbook to a single character’s point-of-view, which helped make the story more interesting.
If you enjoy this read, there are 2 other sequels and even a movie for you to gobble up, all testaments to the book’s popularity. While I can’t completely attest to the quality of these, a couple of the scenes from the movie have amassed millions of views on YouTube. This, though, doesn’t tell the full story; Rotten Tomatoes gives an absolutely terrible rating for the movie, with a 16% critic score and 38% audience score. Your call. But before getting to those considerations, if you find yourself to be an enjoyer of the dystopian, romance, and/or action genres, I recommend checking out this book!
Review by ~ Andrew
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