Date finished: 10 April 2014
Series: The Fifth Wave, #1
Rating: 5*
Rick Yancey, I am utterly enraged.
I have a couple of questions before I begin my review. Okay,
maybe only one question. Are you mental? Seriously, though, I think you need to
have a brain scan or some sort of testing, because this book was insane, for lack
of a better word. Everything about it - the storyline, the characters, the
writing – took my breath away and shoved it into some deep dark black hole in
my soul, and only really released it when I turned that stupid last page and –
Oops! There are the Acknowledgements, and an advertisement for “The Next Wave”
in place of the other three hundred-or-so pages that I expected.
When I turned that page, I let loose. The First Wave: about
five solid minutes of gasping as I flipped through the pages, desperate to see
if I missed something, to check that Yancey hadn’t just ended the novel at possibly the
worst moment in the history of literature. The Second Wave: incoherent speech
as I tried to verbally process exactly what just happened. The Third Wave:
denial, as tears started running down my face and ruining that last stupid page
of the book. The Fourth Wave: screaming, shouting and questioning. A lot of it.
It may or may not have involved an almost-flinging of the book at the wall.
And the Fifth Wave?
No one knows.
But it’s coming.
I think it requires a certain amount of craziness to come up
with a story as incredibly gripping and original as this one. The 5th Wave is, hands down,
the best futuristic Sci-Fi novel I have ever read. I love everything about it
except the ending, and even then I love the ending when I hate it with all of
my being but it’s so beautiful that I love it.
Yancey, you and I need to have a little chat about
cliffhangers and the importance of closure before you write any more novels, is
that understood? It has detrimental effects on my sanity.
Rick Yancey’s writing was absolutely fantastic. After
alien-type stories have been written and filmed to a slow and painful death,
The 5th Wave was refreshing in its multiple narratives and unique
storyline. The intellect behind it, and the way Yancey kept throwing the story
on its head with plot-twists, left me in a states of elation and excitement
that were only ever interrupted by states of horror and despair at Cassie’s
story. By the time the novel ended, my brain had been flung in so many
directions that it probably resembled a mashed-potato-type mush, and my
emotions had been so overused that I practically dissolved into a
teenage-girl-coloured puddle on the floor.
I highly recommend reading The 5th Wave, and praise Rick Yancey on his execution of
a brilliant novel that will most definitely rank high on my list of “Books That
Ruined My Sanity and Made Me Cry.”
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