The Last Star by Rick Yancey

The Last Star by Rick Yancey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is the 3rd book in The 5th Wave trilogy.

Meh. Such a disappointment. I guess I should have expected that after how tedious book 2 was, but I loved booked one so much that I hoped for something better for a finale. When it wasn't better, I should have stopped reading, but I kept hoping until I reached a point at which I felt I had read so much that I should just finish.

I could not connect to this story. It inspired an emotional flatline in me. It's exhausting and not as well written, to the point of being bewildering at times. From my point of view, the author didn't allow for the reader to bring any of themselves or their own ideas or impressions to the story. She preferred to exhaust me with her ideas and interpretations, apparently assuming I could not come to the right impressions on my own (which if that was a case, it would be a failure in the writing, not a failure in the reader).

Several of the main characters were inconsistent, as if they were entirely different people than they were before (but not because of anything that happened to them in the storyline). By the time the end rolled around, I cared so little that I can't even explain what happened, and I just finished the book yesterday.

I won't be recommending this series to anyone, which is kind of sad, because I loved the first book so much. However, book one ends on a massive cliffhanger, and everything after that is just dreadful. I can't put a reader through that. I'm annoyed I put myself through it, so I'll probably just go with denial and pretend this series doesn't exist.

Pages: 352

The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey

The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I loved book one of this YA post-apocalyptic series in which aliens have taken over the world and are trying to destroy humanity. This book never drew me in. Maybe it was me, as I was seriously fretting while reading and probably distracted, but the story never gave me good reasons to want to stop fretting and invest.

For me, it suffered from second book syndrome.

Pages: 320

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This story is incredibly bleak, and I was completely obsessed with it. I have no idea what that says about me, but let's stay focused on this alien-invasion survival story. It's told in multiple POVs, but the main focus is on Cassie, a sixteen year-old who is alone after The Others (alien invaders) brought down 4 waves of destruction upon humanity, wiping out the majority of the world's population. Her only goal is to find and rescue her younger brother, if he's even still alive after being collected, along with all the other living children, by soldiers (maybe human, maybe alien). She can't trust anyone, since the aliens can invade human bodies, making it hard to determine if anyone she happens across is friend or foe.

This is probably the best post-apocalyptic story I've read since the Ashfall trilogy by Mike Mullin. I need to read book 2 ASAP, and then I imagine I'll spend the next 4 months being upset about the fact that book 3 is not being released until May 24, 2016.

Pages: 512