[Review] The 5th Wave - Rick Yancey

Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Price: € 18,30
Page count: 457
Language: English

Contents

Earth is being invaded by aliens but it is nothing like in 'The War of the Worlds'. The assault comes in waves.

First wave:     'Lights out' - Destroying our power system

Second wave: 'Surf's up'   - Triggering tsunamis

Third wave:    'Pestilence' - Infecting us with a deadly virus

Fourth wave:  'Silencer'    - Killing almost the rest of us with  

                                            infested humans

And the fifth wave is coming.

It is very different from 'The War of the Worlds' as it is highly unlikely that humanity will survive.

We follow Cassie who tries to save herself and what is left of her family and we follow Ben who is trained as a soldier to take up the fight.

My opinion

I was sucked into the story from the first page on and could hardly put the book down once I started it. Rick Yancey's writing style makes it easy to just go on reading although in the beginning it was rather difficult to differentiate between past and present as Yancey just switched from one to the other in one chapter, without even dividing the text into paragraphs.

I liked that there aren't only chapters from the protagonists' point of view but also from other characters when they were seperated from the main characters. Cassie was quite likeable although she has this romance going on which shouldn't have surprised me (it's YA, duh). But it kind of bothered me how she was determined not to trust anyone and then she goes all lovie dovie with the first male that finds her attractive and who, of course, keeps important information from her.

Another plus was that the female characters aren't only scared little things but they are independent and sometimes way more 'badass' than the male characters.

What bugs me most is that although the alien civilization is way more developed than our society, there are no female characters in charge. The leading aliens are all male.

In all those thousands of years that they have ahead of us they didn't manage to eliminate gender roles? I mean the only female alien that has kind of an important position is a doctor. Really?

However, I really liked 'The 5th Wave' beacuse of its pace and I enjoyed reading it a lot and I think I'm going to try getting my hands on the sequel soon (not too soon though, diminishing my TBR is still first priority). I do recommend reading this book if you haven't already!

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