Rick Yancey
The Last Star
G.P. Putnam's Sons
338 pages
6.8
Blurb
The enemy is Other. The enemy is us.
They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.
But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.
In these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves…or saving what makes us human.
They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.
But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.
In these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves…or saving what makes us human.
Review
In the final installment of The 5th Wave, Rick Yancey fails to remind us the stupendousness of the first installment. The Last Star seems messy. the plot is directionless, and its point of view is confusing. The only good thing about the book is the emotional ending, but even that also fails to salvage it from the black hole of dreadfulness.
There seems to be some kind of syndrome that infects young adult books where a trilogy kicks in with a great start, then it's followed by a great successor, only it's ended by a meh resolution in the final book. Dashner's The Maze Runner comes in mind, when at first, it looks great in the first book, even better in second one, but leaves some sour taste in The Death Cure. Arguably, Divergent series follows the same pattern, even though Divergent, the first book of the series, is not that great. Yancey's final installment of The 5th Wave series, The Last Star, joins the elite club of books who suffer from this syndrome.
I still remember the day when I read The 5th Wave for the first time. It has a charming main character who possesses a great humor, Cassiopeia, who makes the journey in this bleak world of Yancey's creations seems more cheerful. The 5th Wave also introduces the concept of humanity; the one thing that makes human human amidst the catastrophe that falls upon the human beings, which becomes the main theme of the book, and Yancey emphasizes it heavily. The 5th Wave on paper brings more to the table; it's not just a War of the Worlds-y alien survival story, but it's something that can question what humanity means.
However, in The 5th Wave, Yancey's cluelessness of where he should bring this story has started to show. And it's ultimately proven in The Last Star. The pieces of puzzle that are still scrambling in the first two books are forced to fit, making it an ugly puzzle. This final installment does not provide answers, it offers more confusion which is fueled by the multiple PoVs that are hard to follow. Yancey's cryptic narration and metaphor don't help either, only adding more wrinkle in my forehead. The epilogue of the book is great and remarkable, though, even if the journey to this epilogue is really questionable and unimpressive, but I can say that The Last Star closes Cassie and her pals quite well. Kinda.
There seems to be some kind of syndrome that infects young adult books where a trilogy kicks in with a great start, then it's followed by a great successor, only it's ended by a meh resolution in the final book. Dashner's The Maze Runner comes in mind, when at first, it looks great in the first book, even better in second one, but leaves some sour taste in The Death Cure. Arguably, Divergent series follows the same pattern, even though Divergent, the first book of the series, is not that great. Yancey's final installment of The 5th Wave series, The Last Star, joins the elite club of books who suffer from this syndrome.
I still remember the day when I read The 5th Wave for the first time. It has a charming main character who possesses a great humor, Cassiopeia, who makes the journey in this bleak world of Yancey's creations seems more cheerful. The 5th Wave also introduces the concept of humanity; the one thing that makes human human amidst the catastrophe that falls upon the human beings, which becomes the main theme of the book, and Yancey emphasizes it heavily. The 5th Wave on paper brings more to the table; it's not just a War of the Worlds-y alien survival story, but it's something that can question what humanity means.
However, in The 5th Wave, Yancey's cluelessness of where he should bring this story has started to show. And it's ultimately proven in The Last Star. The pieces of puzzle that are still scrambling in the first two books are forced to fit, making it an ugly puzzle. This final installment does not provide answers, it offers more confusion which is fueled by the multiple PoVs that are hard to follow. Yancey's cryptic narration and metaphor don't help either, only adding more wrinkle in my forehead. The epilogue of the book is great and remarkable, though, even if the journey to this epilogue is really questionable and unimpressive, but I can say that The Last Star closes Cassie and her pals quite well. Kinda.
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