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Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

The Last Star – Finale to Compelling 5th Wave Series

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Sometimes You Don’t Need to Know the Answers to Know What to Do

First the bad news.  Author Yancey never answers the questions of what the aliens were doing, why they invaded Earth, why they killed off so many, why they were so consistently cruel.  For the good news, most of our main characters survive and the tiny remnants of civilization remain.

Characters

Yancey developed his main characters, Cassey, Ringer, Ben, Evan and Sam, in the first two books and does very little to further them in The Last Star.  We do see Ringer developing tentative alliance with Cassey, and all the older characters keep trying to figure out what is going on, the alien’s plan and purpose.

The three main human characters, Cassie, Ben and Ringer, are confused and torn, angry and frustrated.  This feels real.  I don’t understand Ringer’s attitude towards Cassie, a little contemptuous until the end, but it fits her overall sense of superiority.  Ben is realistic, never quite sure of himself, never quite hopeful, never ready to give up, looking for people to love.

Evan is the saddest character, neither fully alien nor fully human.  Sam is stubborn.

Writing Style

The 5th Wave flows very well.  We have a start and an end and events and characters move one into the other.  The Infinite Sea takes a very different approach with mostly new characters and tone.  The Last Star is jerkier with pacing issues and diversions that don’t add much.

Yancey uses multiple points of view in The Last Star which gives more background and depth but also makes it less even.  The first POV character is the priest Silencer whom we re-encounter later as a 3rd party.  A few of the POV switches are disjointed.

The mood changes over the course of the series.  The 5th Wave characters are sad, frightened.  Cassie was terrified of being the last human and horrified that she had killed the crucifix soldier but we ended hopeful because Cassie and Evan ally and plan.   The Infinite Sea is darker as we see depths of cruelty and misery, but the characters are determined and will fight back.   The Infinite Sea has a sense of hopelessness in the beginning that changes; in the end we once more see hope albeit with sadness, loss and worry.

Plot Problems (Spoilers)

The ending is a bit too tidy.  In part it satisfies because we see hope for the future, a seed of family, community, learning.

Evan tells Ben there are more military bases than just the one in Ohio, and they also had been training kids to kill.  Evan takes his personal mission to clean up all these bases, killing thousands of indoctrinated kid soldiers.  The novel stops with Evan walking into the sunset, off to kill people while Ringer and Ben create a family and teach trust the hard way.

(Spoiler) The bomb requires one to breath in order to activate, which means the mother ship must have air.  Hmm.  If aliens are incorporeal why is there air?

(Spoiler)  Aliens embedded the program/personality/augmentation into Evan when he was in his mother’s womb, then activated it when he hit puberty.  At least some of the other Silencers and military leaders are adult humans.  Were they embedded as adults?  Or were their alien personalities (real or artificial) formed earlier?  If earlier then where was the mother ship all this time?

(Spoiler)  The Silencers expect to be evacuated before the aliens bomb every city and town on Earth.  Vosch tells Ringer that there are only 12 of the evacuation pods and none of the Silencers are going to the mother ship.  (Vosch lies all the time so we cannot know whether this is true.  It is true that he has a pod.)  So what are the Silencers going to do?  If they die in the bombardment then the 5th wave is done; if they lived then they too are betrayed.  Evan believes the Silencers would move to destroy the remaining bases but I don’t see the connection.  If I were a Silencer and my ticket home got torn up I’d fade into the background and be human.

(Spoiler)  Vosch has Evan’s character mind wiped, then reloads only the alien part with the result that alien Evan is solely a killer, no shred of personality or anything else.  Does that tell us the aliens are just killers?  Nothing else?  From a plot perspective, how did Ringer and Ben figure out which of the 10,000 plus personalities to reload?

There are other too-neat or unrealistic plot issues, but mostly they don’t get in the way of a solid book.

What Were the Aliens Doing?

Option 1.  Destroy Trust to Destroy Civilization

Ringer ends up believing the aliens are trying to reduce human populations and permanently twisting us to never trust, never again come together as community, never again build civilization, never again take over the earth and destroy other living creatures. Vosch hints at this with her although he never came out and agreed.  Destroying trust to destroy humanity while leaving a few humans alive is certainly one possibility, but it doesn’t make sense.

True, the aliens used unbearably cruel methods to kill the survivors of the first four waves.  They are betrayal itself, first of all the people who died, then of their children/soldiers and weaponized toddlers; even their Silencers are to be betrayed by abandonment and bombardment.

But consider this.  If you do not yourself witness small groups dying because they brought a booby-trapped child inside their home, would you still learn the lesson to trust no one?  I suppose if everyone who does trust dies, then the remaining survivors may have less innate tendency to trust and form communities (assuming there is some genetic factor behind trust).  But overall I don’t see this working.

I don’t believe the no-trust rule would settle permanently into our collective hearts.  People are hardwired to form families, to reach for something more than themselves, to build communities.  We need trust to have children, trust to form families.  Small families turn into larger family groups, then tribes, then hello civilization.  We could end up with Stone Age family group sizes but I don’t see how this could end up permanent.  The aliens would have to re-teach the lesson every few hundred years.

Last, for a group that supposedly venerates life they sure kill a lot of people.

Option 2.  Keep a Small Number of People for Hosts, aka Kill the Humans and Take Over

Evan believes that he is an alien personality downloaded into a human host.  He discusses the aliens’ origin and names with Vosh and is convinced that his purpose was to kill enough humans for the aliens to take over Earth.

This option makes more sense to me than number 1, although it begs the question how the aliens would operate without bodies and why they needed a planet if they were pure thought.

Option 3.  Aliens are Killers First Last and Always

Vosh strips out the human Evan leaving only alien Evan.  That stripped Evan is a killer, nothing else, no goal other than to kill everyone he can.  If this is typical alien mind, then the aliens are here to kill.  Perhaps they are just plain evil.

Option 4.  Something Else

It’s possible the entire story is a lie, that the aliens do in fact have bodies and are in fact trying to kill off everyone so they can take over the planet free of annoying humans.  Or something else, pick your favorite.

Ultimately

In the end it doesn’t matter why the aliens did what they did.  We don’t know and that’s probably Yancey’s purpose here.  The characters wouldn’t know.

If the purpose were to destroy trust – permanently – then Ringers and Ben’s determination to live with trust, to form community, to regain civilization would be the answer.  And if the purpose were to take over Earth, then Ringer and Ben’s nascent community and others with like minds would be bulwark against that takeover.

We don’t need to know the answer to enjoy the novel and the series, and the guessing adds to the sense of sorrow and terror that Cassie and Ringer and Ben and Sam and Evan would feel.

Overall

I can’t give The Last Star 5 stars, mostly because it doesn’t flow as well as it should and because the characters don’t change much.  It is otherwise enjoyable and thought-provoking.

4 Stars

The 5th Wave Rick Yancey Dark YA Science Fiction Alien Invasion

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What do you think of when you think “alien invasion”?  Independence Day?  Ender’s Game?  The 5th Wave will remind you of all these yet it is unique.

Alien horrors intent on destroying humanity? Check.
Young people fighting to save the earth? Check.
Now take this, multiply the drive to kill off humanity ten fold and throw in an ill-fated romance.  Unique, yes?

Really Rotten Aliens

What makes this book so good is the sheer viciousness of the alien plans and the preview we see of what the aliens will face when (if) they finally exterminate humans. The extermination plans are diabolical. First an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that wipes out all electric signals. That weakens earth’s nations and hobbles the armed forces. Then a giant tsunami that floods everywhere. That kills about 3 billion people. Then a plague to kill 97% of the rest.

That still leaves about 100 million human beings. The aliens, the Others, don’t want to hurt the planet, so they can’t drop an asteroid or set off nuclear weapons. As the book begins the Others are killing off the remnant off one by one with the fourth wave and are preparing for the fifth wave.

Spoiler Alert!!

The most evil of all their plans is their death camps. They bring in busloads of kids, reassure them, kill off about half immediately, then train the remaining half to do the killing. This is the fifth wave.  This is the part that doesn’t make much sense;  I can’t see why they would use kids and I sure didn’t understand why they blew up their own main base.

Puzzling Future Problems

The aliens will have a problem and we see glimpses of it in the main male character, Evan. You see, the aliens have no bodies. They gave their physical forms up when they left their home planet 10,000 years ago. They downloaded themselves into human minds to complete their work. Evan is one such human / alien meld and he finds being human all too tempting. He tells Cassie that most of the Others feel being human would be beneath them. Yet they must take on bodies to affect the physical world and finish the extermination.

I kept wondering what the aliens will do. If they have no bodies and they don’t want to be human, then do they continue to download themselves into human infants? Aliens die when their host body dies. How will they reproduce? If they intend to stay pure mind and not take on bodies, then why do they need to kill of humans? What use would they have for trees or animals or food?

The other point that puzzled me was the purpose of the fifth wave, human kids killing off humans. The fourth wave, Silencers or Others who look and act like humans, were effective killers. Why enlist little kids? Unless the Others were so twisted that it pleased them, I didn’t see a reason to switch from using Silencers to using fully human kids.

5 Stars but With a Catch

Overall I liked this book and look forward to a sequel. Yancey is an excellent writer who knows how to tell a story and enlist us in his characters’ lives. I felt like I was Cassie, alone, cold, frightened, driven to survive. I didn’t feel so much empathy for the second male character, Ben Parish who was at the boot camp learning to kill people. The whole boot camp section just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. In fact I put the book down for an evening because I got a little tired of it, a few too many cliches.

The first half with Cassie was excellent, 5 stars without a doubt. The second half with Ben was weaker and we had a bit too much of a miracle ending. So give that second half 3 stars for the Ben sections and 5 for Cassie.

Truly YA Fiction

Many of the YA fantasy fiction novels are classified as YA only because the characters are young. The 5th Wave is written for older teens. Adults will enjoy it as I did, but we’re more likely to look askew at the basic premise of aliens becoming human to kill off humans and we’ll be skeptical of the whole boot camp section.

If you can put aside your natural skepticism and take the book’s premise as valid you will enjoy this.

The Monstrumologist, Rick Yancey, YA Fantasy Fiction Review

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I liked Rick Yancey’s Alfred Kropp series so much I looked for more books he wrote. The Monstrumologist was disappointing. I could not get past about page 40.

Maybe I started The Monstrumologist with my expectations set too high after the Alfred Kropp series. Or maybe it simply just is not as good as the Alfred Kropp books.

I could not get interested in the main character, Will Henry, nor did the plot or style interest me. I did not finish The Monstrumologist and cannot recommend it.

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Alfred Kropp: The Thirteenth Skull by Rick Yancey YA Fantasy Fiction Review

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I enjoyed the first two Alfred Kropp books so much I got this one, Alfred Kropp: The Thirteenth Skull, as fast as possible. Like the first two books, The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp and Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon, the Thirteenth Skull is fun, fast and enjoyable.

Let’s be clear what Alfred Kropp: The Thirteenth Skull is. This is a fast moving fantasy novel aimed squarely at 15 year old boys. Yes adults will enjoy it, but it lacks the nuances and character that made the first two novels satisfying reads for adults.

Alfred Kropp somehow has gotten much more capable in this story and has lost his introspection and the bumbling worry that are so typical of 15 year old kids. The character instead is capable of wrestling a fully grown thug on the back of a flat bed truck going 70 miles an hour on the expressway carrying lumber, tying a rope around the thug’s neck and throwing him off the truck. Can you imagine the Alfred Kropp in the first two books being able to physically overcome a grown man or being willing to kill someone? The first Alfred Kropp was gentle, unassuming, the natural target for bullies and mean kids and adults. This Alfred is closer to being James Bond than to the kid next door or the kid we were growing up.

I still enjoyed Alfred Kropp: The Thirteenth Skull enough to look out for a fourth book and read it when it comes, but I will do so expecting a couple hours of pure escapism and shoot ’em up plot line.  I won’t expect a book that I’d want to reread or one that will linger in my mind the way the first two did.

3 Stars

You can read my reviews about the first two books here:

Review: The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp YA Fiction Rick Yancey
Fast Moving YA Fiction Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon Review

Fast Moving YA Fiction Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon Review

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I’ve had a busy week reading four fast moving, fun books.  It’s fun to read books with interesting characters, intriguing backgrounds and speed of light plots.  Of the four this week Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon was the most intriguing and fast moving.

I reviewed the first book, The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, here in this blog post:  Review: The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp YA Fiction Rick Yancey.  The Seal of Solomon is the second book in the series.  The third book, Alfred Kropp: The Thirteenth Skull is reviewed here.

Alfred has landed with a couple who are professional foster parents. They have a small house, several foster kids, almost no discipline and less attention or care. After Alfred’s stint on the Most Wanted list he faces even more nasty tricks from his high school classmates. When beautiful blond, tanned Ashley shows up at school and wants to be his friend Alfred falls fast.

Ashley is an operative for OIPEP who saves Alfred from a killer and delivers him to Operative Nine who needs Alfred – badly. A renegade OIPEP agent stole Solomon’s seal and the vessel containing demons from hell and it’s up to Alfred, Ashley, Operative Nine to put stop him from setting the demons free. They fail. Demons are loose and on the hunt for Alfred. They want to control the seal and the vessel and need Alfred to help. In hindsight I’m not sure why they needed Alfred and no one else, but it made for a great story.

Alfred figures out how to trick the demons and once more saves the world. Along the way he inherits tons of money which makes his professional foster parents determined to forcibly draft him into adoption.

Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon is noteworthy for the intricate and interesting backdrop to the story. Who is Operative Nine and why does he have the authority he does. Why is renegade agent Mike so determined to kill Alfred. What would it be like to work for OIPEP. What will the demons do when they control the world.

Those questions swirled around in my mind but only as a footnote to the real questions about Alfred. He is an amazing person, able to ignore the constant nastiness at home and school, determined to grow and to do the right thing. He is believable, the character we all inwardly feel we are – bumbling, not too swift, and somehow responsible for far more than what we want.

Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon had excellent dialogue, a fun, super charged plot, fascinating back story, interesting characters. I highly recommend it. Like the other Alfred Kropp books this is characterized as YA fiction, aimed squarely at 12-18 year old boys, but it’s good enough for adults to enjoy.

Review: The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp YA Fiction Rick Yancey

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Take a good look at the picture on the cover.

Sword. Chunky kid. Untied shoelace. What do you think?

Yes, the hero in The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp is a kid. Yes, he has King Arthur’s Excalibur. Yes, the villains are after him.

No. He is not a nerd, nor wimpy, nor skinny nor does he wear glasses. What he is, is an orphan with a very large head, a big husky body, not super clever, not college-bound, and he plays football only because he has to. The entire book is full of surprises like this. We have scenes that you just know how they will proceed – but then they don’t.  You have a character who seems miscast as a hero – until he becomes one.  You have ambiguous characters – until they reveal themselves.  I thoroughly enjoyed The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp. I loved the character Alfred Kropp, loved the plot, the fast pace, the on-going mystery of the ambiguous super secret organization OIPEP.

This is a very fast read; I finished in one evening, then ran downstairs to get the sequel on my Nook.  The book combines a fun read with some serious introspection on the part of a fifteen year old self-described screw up kid.  Alfred knows he will goof and make the wrong decision but he keeps on going, determined to set right what he caused to go wrong.  Yes, there is some coming-of-age in this book; after all you can’t avoid that when dealing with a teen protagonist.  But the coming of age is well done and just sort of happens along the way.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp is classified as YA fiction since Alfred is fifteen. No doubt boys will especially enjoy this but girls and adults will too.

I highly recommend this.