THE FIFTH WAVE BY RICK YANCEY: A Good Book with Powerful Characters
If this book
review turns out to be an unusually positive one, please do not resort to
thinking I received financial benefit from Rick Yancey. To be honest, I felt an
emotional connection with the author, because of an interview I watched with
him. I watched one of his interviews in YouTube and in it he said something
that piqued my attention. He said before being a full-time author, he was a
government employee, working strict schedules for an average pay-scale. Nothing
is wrong with working tight schedules or receiving a meagre pay cheque at the
end of the month. Perhaps, one should
work on ways to come to terms with these ideas if one has a dream to chase and
a light to follow.
“I was writing at the
time, and I thought, “Well, I need something to pay the bills, and I’ll just
hang on to this until my writing takes off, or I actually get off my butt and
get a master’s degree in English and maybe teach somewhere.” Then twelve years
later, I was still there,” remarks Yancey in a detailed interview given to http://www.lightspeedmagazine. com/.
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Every human being goes through a set of
affirmation techniques in one’s course of early adult life. In The 5th Wave, a Young Adult novel about
alien invasion, Cassie Sullivan grows out of her worst fears through affirming
her humanity, and this existential event is at the centre of the book. Evan
Walker, the protagonist is an alien being in human form. His mission is to kill
Cassie. She names his kind of killers Silencers. Cassie lives through the fifth
wave of alien invasion. She lost her parents and young brother in the previous
four waves.
In some uniquely uninspiring way, The 5th Wave does not hesitate to copy
the tension between Bella and Edward from Twilight
saga, where the male counterpart had to kill the female partner in order to
satiate the mission bestowed upon him by the centre of his origin. It is some
original commitment that Evan Walker and Edward Cullen are struggling with in
each of these novels. Then there is the sexual tension. Although Twilight saga explored the sexual
tension between the two characters, the driving force in The 5th Wave is the existential question of the encounter with the
Other.
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Symbolically speaking, the Other could be
anyone including the culturally, socially, and politically marginalized people.
The 5th Wave asks the question of
facing a ‘global’ Other. The 5th Wave works
within the frame of sci-fi literature. It utilizes the same theme that one may
see in H G Wells’ novels as well as in countless Hollywood movies ranging from
Independence Day to to the cinematic representation of War of the Worlds. What
makes The 5th Wave different from
other stories on alien invasion is its tenacity in supplying alternative
possibilities for the scenario. It’s not surprising if you found the book a bit
spooky. The 5th Wave shares the
knowledge of how insecure we ought to feel in our ordinary existences. An
electromagnetic pulse, just as the one that appears in the book, could cut down
almost all our technological implementations, in all walks of life. For
example, patients will die on operation tables in hospitals, airplanes and
vehicles may crash onto one another due to lack of any human control, libraries
would be shut down and computers just won’t work any longer.
The 5th Wave follows the narrative style for a Young
Adult novel. That does not mean there is an accepted way to write YA that is
approved by the Committee of letters in the Indian Parliament. But there is
always expectation from the reading community. In a YA novel, there should
always be a young female protagonist, in search of something; sometimes
identity, sometimes family members, as it happens in The 5th Wave. Cassie searches for her little brother Sammy. Look
how important the notion of journey is in today’s literary super hits. The Alchemist has one, The Hunger Games has one, although this
one is not through a longitudinal plane. The Games, still invokes the sense of
a journey in all its grandeur and challenges.
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The 5th Wave is a good book that thrills, provokes
thoughts and asks some simple yet elegant questions on life. In the beginning
of the story, Cassie accidentally kills a soldier, who she identifies as the
crucifix soldier. This accident changes her state from a ruthless killer to a
caution human being caught in the web of several ethical and emotional
concerns. This is the point where the story really begins. The beginning of The 5th Wave is located at the spot
where Cassie is transformed by the weight of the act committed by her into a
human being. After losing her father and little brother to unknown forces,
Cassie creates the self-identity of the sole-survivor of the alien invasion.
This brings up the issue of staying alive not for a personal reason, but for
the entire human race. The only way Cassie could achieve this feat in an alien
infested planet is to attack and kill anyone or anything that moves bringing
thoughts of insecurity to her mind. Cassie uses her M16 Luger to perform all
her early killings.
When she realizes that the soldier she
met in the abandoned utility story is putting his hand in his jacket, Cassie
pulls the trigger. That was part of the rule that she created as a defense
mechanism. That was her special way of surviving. She was partly following her
intuition and partly her wisdom. But she was wrong this time. The soldier she
met at the utility store put could not react when the bullet from her M16 Luger
separated his life from body.
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The lifeless arm of the soldier came out.
It had a crucifix in it. Perhaps, that was his way of keeping himself alive;
perhaps, it was his prayer. But this time, it didn’t work either. Cassie
realizes that this was not an alien in human form, one of the Silencers, but
just a man. Just a moment back, contrary to what she had thought, she was not
alone in this blue planet. But she had just killed that last unknown partner in
the death-game.
Throughout the rest of her battle, Cassie
finds herself struggling with this moment. Can she even think about overcoming
the impact of this moment? Well, if you want to know the answer, you must read The 5th Wave. It’s a good book. I am not
saying this because Rick Yancey’s humble beginning appeals to my situation
also. The 5th Wave is a good book
because it delivers a good story in a readable language with powerful
characters.
Happy Reading.
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