The 5th Wave (Book 1): Rick Yancey Paperback – 7 May 2013

It seems only fair to warn you that, should you pick up Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave, whether in innocence or with deep intent, you will lose all sense of time and self. Your sleep will be invaded by the urgent compulsion to read and your need to communicate with other humans will degenerate to `shhhh' sounds. I picked it up on one day and finished it the next with big bags under my eyes. It's not a short book, not that that makes any difference to the drive to finish it once you've started. The longer the better.The 5th Wave is a story about alien invasion, told by a number of youngsters who have survived the initial four waves of terror which have wiped out most if not all of their families and left so few alive to fight the threat. They all live in dread of the fifth wave. What will it be and when will it happen? They all know it must come because it is horrifically clear to the few left that no human is meant to survive this cleansing of the planet. This sounds exciting and blimey it is!Young Adult science fiction done well is unbeatable in my eyes. But Rick Yancey has not only raised the bar, he's also removed some of my difficulties with YA fiction on the strength of his superb characterisation. I don't expect YA fiction to be aimed at me (I am more youngish than young) but I do want it to be populated by believable characters, including the teens. I was one once, after all. The central figure of The 5th Wave is Cassie, a 16-year-old young woman who worries about her self-image, boys, seeming vulnerable, at the same time that she worries about whether The Silencers will kill her dead. The beauty is she knows how this would seem. She worries about it. She is a witty, warm, living, breathing young woman on the page and I empathised with her completely and liked her very much indeed. There is a little romance here but it's fragile, fraught and full of feeling.Cassie is such a strong character and we see so much of the story through her troubled eyes that she's hard to compete with but there are others too who have left a strong impression here. I'm mentioning no names - I would really like you to discover the people of this novel for yourself.You expect sound worldbuilding in a good YA SF novel and you certainly get it here. We follow the decay of daily and family life, of normality, through the waves. You also expect a thrilling plot and you'll find it here by the bucketload. Rick Yancey has written a story so tightly plotted and packed with imagination that it's almost impossible to put the book down at the end of a chapter. The structure and plot are designed to pull you in and the characters ensnare you deeper. The prose balances perfectly the action of the story with the thoughts of the characters. The tension between the two is superb. If I read a YA novel I enjoy more this year, I'll be very happy indeed

Actual Rating: 3.5 Stars.I can understand the hype, definitely worth the read, but there were things that bugged me too much for it be any more than 3.5 stars.Ok, this was kinda dark? In a good way, but, yeah, dark.One of our narrators, Cassie for Cassiopeia, is a 16 year old girl trying to navigate the world of post-apocalyptic-alien-invasion Earth. Through Cassie's flashbacks, we are introduced to the Others and the Waves they have unleashed upon the Earth in an attempt to rid it of it's current occupants. We are then introduced to a second POV: Zombie, and through both his and Cassie's POVs, we learn the survivor's tales.We're presented with four POVs in total in this book. This was three POVs too many for me. Firstly, we only see two of those POVs once, which to me meant they were unnecessary. I don't agree with introducing multiple narrators only to use half of them once. Second, I didn't really like Zombie's POV. I didn't enjoy reading his chapters as much as I enjoyed reading Cassie's. Maybe it's because we started the story with Cassie, but I didn't really like reading about Zombie. Also, you get about 35-40% of the way into the book before you reach Zombie's first chapter, so you're already starting to bond with Cassie and her story, so it's jarring and frustrating to have that narrative end to take up with another one. But I suspect that my like of Cassie's POVs is mostly down to Evan, to be honest.Unfortunately, Cassie is another example of a so-called "kickass-heroine" that I really cannot stand. Unfortunately, I cannot explain why without giving away spoilers, so my reasons are under the cut. (view spoiler)But not just Cassie, Ringer too. This bitchy way Yancey has of portraying his women really winds me up because it is NOT what being strong and kickass is about. They are just being bitches. I'd love to read a dystopian book where the heroine is a decent human being.Despite really liking Evan, the insta-love thing he had going with Cassie was, well ... strange. Also, slightly creepy, and the entire narrative of Cassie's story changed as soon as he turned up which was very jarring and really disrupts the reading experience. Don't get me wrong, Yancey did his job because I am totally shipping Evan/Cassie, but it was not a job well done. The Romance was not well done. Too abrupt and, as I've said, creepy.Okay, rant over. On to what I did like.The actual plot was awesome. Incredibly awesome.The writing, I loved. I love these simply-written, short sentences, no waffle, no unnecessary descriptions books. I hate spending pages reading descriptions of people and places, it's boring. This isn't. Yancey gives you enough to be able to picture it, but he lets your imagination to most of the work, which is just the way I like it.Yancey has created a villain that isn't really a villain. They're killing Earth's occupants, yes, but they have a reason. They're trying to save themselves. You're not going to like them any more for that fact, but there's an understanding of that level of self-preservation that I'm sure we can all appreciate. But, they're still the super-villain. They're thousands of years more advanced than humanity; they've been watching them and waiting for the right time. They have an understanding of humanity and the way it will think, act and re-act; in fact they have a better understanding than humanity itself which is what has made it so easy for them to eradicate most of the world. Yancey does a good job with the "what makes us human?" question, especially with Evan.Definitely worth the read. I really enjoyed it. And everything that I found wrong with the book is likely to be particular to me. I would strongly recommend giving it a try. I will also be reading the second book as soon as I can get my hands on it.