Review - The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

The press release proclaims The 5th Wave [US] [UK] to be the next Hunger Games and though it may yet be so (only $750,000 is going into marketing!), I wasn't fully convinced. My thoughts on this book run the gamut of ratings. Here's why: (and there's no coincidence there are 5 waves and 5 stars)

5 Stars

Wow, great start. I just picked it up for a second to get a feel and 100 pages later, I was hooked. Aliens come to earth only to begin to wipe humanity out? Great, this hasn't been done for a while at least not this way.

The aliens, or Others, start killing off humanity through waves as you may have already guessed from the title. The first, they cut off the power. Next, they wipe out all the coastal cities through tidal waves since most large cities are situated near large bodies of water. Then, pestilence and disease and lastly silencers or assassins. Very cool, I want more!

I was even up all night that first night because my mind wouldn't let go of the concept. I was afraid for the aliens in my room one moment, trying to survive on my own in the wilderness the next. There's no way this book could let me down right? ...erm...

4 Stars

It's a brutal reality, people have to survive by whatever means necessary and we're told over and over - trust no one! It's a great tagline, but it begins to break down because when you, as a reader, don't trust anyone, it gets much harder to be surprised. I will say, I never saw what actually does happen coming.

3 Stars

Things are still going well, but suddenly, some unnecessary discussions of current topics pulled me out of the story. Both times, they got me thinking about things that didn't matter at all in the context of the story and really didn't need to be there.

Also, this says this book is for 12 and up, but you better believe I won't be letting my 12-year-olds read it with the language it has. I'm not so oblivious that I don't think they don't hear it all the time, but I disagree with the marketing that says this is for 12-year-olds when it barely makes the PG-13 standards. This is more a personal pet peeve and doesn't take much away from the book.

2 Stars

Something that might have been the reason this book didn't completely work for me, but was definitely was something I couldn't get over. You see, there are only so many people who survived the plague. Individuals were lucky to have their immune system overcome the plague, but it's rare and whole families surviving is almost unheard of. We're getting into spoiler territory so I'll warn you here:

spoiler: Our main protagonist, Cassie, and her father and brother all survive. All but their mother who succumbs to the plague. Almost a complete family and they almost all survive. Everyone else has to figure things out on their own, but they get to rely on each other and especially their father to help them survive.

Skipping over a couple parts, the father agrees to let the younger brother, Sam, who's five-years-old go with some military guys and stay behind because the guys have said they don't have enough room. The father has a hard time with it of course, be he eventually trusts them.

This just wouldn't happen. There's no way. It's rare enough that an almost-complete family could still be together, but for the military to require them to separate would be a huge enough sign that something fishy's going on.
/spoiler

And thus begins where I started to question if I am not the right market for this book. I have three kids and thinking of this situation from this perspective, makes this such an impossible choice it's not even funny. This is something I actually haven't had to think in any previous YA book I've read, especially The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, and I think that's a testament to why they did so well.

1 Star

The love story. Plain and simple, this fast-paced and entertaining novel gets bogged down for love. There are two rather lengthy sections (of 13) devoted to this and each time, all I wanted to do was read something else.



In addition, there's one big "show up" moment toward the end where everyone happens to be at the same place at the same time, but for which an explanation is sorely lacking. 

Conclusion

It's sad because The 5th Wave started out so well. Aliens take over and start wiping humanity out by waves. First the power, then tidal waves, then pestilence and disease, and then assassins. Now it's the fifth wave and what is it? A boring romance? That will definitely wipe this reader out.

3 out of 5 Stars (cutting it down the middle)

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher.

Ender's Game Trailer

I don't show many trailers, but I've been waiting for this one for quite a while. I'm attempting to keep expectations reasonable, but I don't think that's reasonably possible.

eBook Deals

It's been a while since I last posted some eBook deals to the blog. I've had a few requests lately, although I'm pretty positive some of those are just spammers (really really good ones), so I thought I should post some. If you want to know my secret (that's not even a secret), I use BookBub for the most part and the rest I usually find doing a search through Amazon. Also, The Tattered Scroll has a list of eBook deals that is updated pretty regularly and I would never post deals that he finds ... never.

[$1.99] The Dreaming Void (Void Trilogy #1) by Peter F. Hamilton
[$2.99] The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson
[$2.99] Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
[$2.99] Lamentation (Psalms of Isaak #1) by Ken Scholes
[$4.98] Ender's Game (Ender #1) by Orson Scott Card - Good time to start this one...hint hint
[$2.99] The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson - Yup, still this price. Great book.
[$2.99] Wide Open by Deborah Coates - Sarah seems to like it.
[$2.99] Hounded (The Iron Druid Chronicles #1) by Kevin Hearn
[$7.99] The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch - Okay, not even close to a "deal" in the true sense of the word, but I consider "quite possibly the best reading experience of your life" to be one dang good deal for only 8 bucks.

EDIT: [$2.99] The Dragon's Path/Leviathan Wakes by Daniel Abraham/James S.A. Corey - This was just added today - May 7, 2013.

Review - The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

The Past:

Thousands if not millions of years ago aliens crashed to earth and wanted nothing more than to return. To make that happen, it became necessary to encourage technology growth in any way possible and when homo sapiens came around, they were the horse the Quasing (wraith-like aliens who can inhabit living bodies) bet on to make their return home a reality. 

The Present:

Split into two warring factions, the Prophus and the Genjix, the Quasing use humans in a network of spies not only to further their goals of returning home, but also to prevent their counterparts from their own ambitions.

Now:

Edward Blair is sold out by his own friend and now former Prophus agent. It's either surrender or get killed, but there's also another way to protect his Quasing, Tao from falling into the hands of the Genjix.

The Lives of Tao [US] [UK] jumps into the life of agent Edward Blair, but our time with Blair is a short one. After being betrayed, we see the first glimpse of what a Quasing is and what it can do. As explained above, they are aliens who can inhabit humans (among other living creatures) and who have lived through the entire history of humanity and longer. This presents an interesting device that allows the Quasing's host a wealth of knowledge at the drop of a hat and which reminded me a little of Brandon Sanderson's novella, Legion, at times. 

The Quasing, Tao, is forced to find a new host almost immediately in the book, and happens upon the main character of the book, Roen Tan - an out-of-shape computer engineer who is in no way prepared for a life of espionage. Instead of a short training montage, we go through the beginning of Roen's training, his workouts, his non-007 type jobs such as monitoring a mailbox, and his progression to missions with more responsibility and danger. 

I love a good training or schooling book and this one's no exception. Roen has to not only master his body, but learn to function with his symbiotic Quasing relationship.

While sometimes confusing, because it can sometimes be difficult to tell if Roen is talking to Tao inside his head or to another person, a fun dynamic develops between Roen and Tao as Tao sarcastically tries to get Roen in shape. Other people have Quasing too and luckily The Lives of Tao is told in third person limited so we don't get the back-and-forth from any other character but the one point of view.

This book is filled with great ideas, none of which are bogged down in exposition. The fast pace is kept up throughout the book and the way things are set up to train Roen really help that - lots of training mixed with action makes for a happy reader. One of those ideas, only hinted at above, essentially makes the Quasing the cause of pretty much every major (and probably minor) event in history.

Toa himself formerly invented Tai Chi and inhabited Genghis Khan among other famous historical people. This was a fun concept, but I did find it hard to take fully. It's not ever claimed, but it's made to seem that every single event was caused by the Quasing and if everything, then nothing caused by humanity. Then again, you can't complain too much about it because the concept works and it has to be thorough.
 
In the end, I had a great time with The Lives of Tao and will be checking in this October for the second installment in this series, The Deaths of Tao. Great ideas mixed with great action and a non-stop pace made this book extremely hard to put down. Bravo, Mr. Chu!

4 out of 5 Stars (highly recommended!)

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher.