After playtime

 

Tried to catch them playing, but here they are resting after play.










Book review: The Fifth Wave                             by Rick Yancey


I fear that I cannot wholeheartedly recommend The Fifth Wave.  The ending leaves so much unresolved that you have to be planned to read the sequel(s).  If they’re written yet.  But it’s better than the ending to Cinder—that was a total cliffhanger.   It’s more like an ending to one of the Harry Potter books, a breather before the next episode. Hopefully the author has planned a finite end, not a series that will go on and on until we lose interest.

But as to my recommendation…how shall I put it…?   If it hadn’t been written in the teenage voice, it would be phenomenal.   There are two main narrators—a high school nothing girl and a popular football jock boy.   The girl is more annoying than the guy.   They are not “together” in any way---no sweet romance—they follow completely independent paths in the narrative.   There are two other narrators, each taking short passages—one fascinating, one annoying.   Each of the primary narrators gets a whole big block of time—there is none of that annoying chapter by chapter context switching, which I HATE.  But—and this is a big but--teenagers are whiny and annoying even when they happen to be stone cold killers. 

It’s written by a male and he seems to be getting his gun handling stuff correct.   There is only one whoppingly stupendous coincidence employed to make the plot lines come together.   And the plot is so darn cool that you are two-thirds way through the book before you finally know who the good guys are.

And starring the smartest aliens I've ever met in a SciFi novel.