The Fifth Wave is a popular book by Rick Yancey made into a film in January 2016. Its premise, this being that aliens are in the process of taking over Earth and have exterminated most of the population, is an exciting yet dangerous one.
Unlike many dystopian fictions, we join the character as the world is in the process of falling – the aliens are releasing five deadly waves on society to try and wipe out the world’s population. The first book follows Cassie in her quest to save her little brother who is taken to a military camp.
My favourite part of this series is the character’s reflections. Usually I’m not a big fan of long, warbling thoughts that characters spew onto the page but The Fifth Wave has perfected character monologues. As you read the character’s thoughts go from despair, to hope, to fighting back. They think about what makes them human, what they’ll do next and how the alien invasion has changed them. You see their bursts of hope and strength and moments of utter despair. Reading the characters personal thoughts and contemplations really pulls the reader into the story and this is what makes the book so emotional. And this is why there are times, particularly at the end of ‘The Infinite Sea’, that I’m left completely distraught.
My only issue with The Fifth Wave is how gruesome it is. I’m very squeamish- like can’t watch a horror, doesn’t look at blood squeamish- so maybe this is more my problem than the novels, but I would not recommend reading it on a full stomach. It’s not scary, just the vivid descriptions of the waves, particularly the fourth wave (a disease which wipes out 90% of the population) can be quite grim at times. But, even for someone as squeamish as me, the book is bearable. I skim read the occasional paragraph and fluttered through the odd chapter, but overall, it’s not too bad.
The main characters don’t always come out alive in these books so I won’t go into any specifics, but I can say I really enjoy them all. They were all very human and proved to be very brave- just what you need when aliens are trying to take over the Earth. We get various POVs throughout the series, including some chapters narrated by Ringer, a girl who was so calm and collected in the first book that I wasn’t sure if she was human or alien. From her POV we get to see the confidence is a front and that her life was hard even before the aliens invade. As the books progresses the reader slowly discovers the chinks in her armour leading to the final, shocking, ending.
Cassie, another narrator, is slightly more typical. She’s a teenaged girl who was a little geeky in class and a big bookworm. I was surprised by how tough she turned out to be- not only surviving against the aliens but also fighting back. She lost her fighting spirit a little more in the second book and I felt the other characters didn’t give her enough credit for the daring rescue she attempted. Ben, the final narrator, adds much needed humour to the books. He was a top of the class, football player at Cassie’s school and his character progresses the most throughout the novels- going from jock, to ‘desperate to please’ soldier, to the light-hearted yet resilient rebel leader. His personality continues to develop, sometimes in a negative way, as the events of the novels unfold.
Overall, I really enjoyed this series. It’s middle, ‘The Infinite Sea’, doesn’t suffer from middle book syndrome at all and the dialogue and characters are captivating from the beginning. It’s well written with an enthralling plot but the character monologues are by far what makes it.
