The 5th Wave: Aliens and Romance Don’t Mix Well

Because writing a significant chunk of an alien apocalypse to be about 2 lovebirds forced together for no good reason is not a good idea

The 5th Wave is a series of 3 books about an alien invasion that uses all the tactical advice pointed out over the genre’s lifetime to completely demolish humanity. Written in 2013 by Rick Yancey, this series seems to be the more popular of his 2 main ones; The Monstrumologist being a novel series started in 2009, starring a gothic mad scientist and his assistant. Given this info, you might assume that The Monstrumologist simply has worse writing quality, given the fact it was written earlier in Yancey’s career, and thus hasn’t the expertise that he gained in the years between 2009 and 2013. This isn’t the case.

While it’s my opinion that The Monstrumologist does suffer from a few flaws, namely Yancey’s obsession with verbose descriptions of all that goes on in the story, The 5th Wave suffers from this and much more critical flaws — and though its successors suffer less from the main romance arc completely abolishing any sense of suspense or action, there still are issues with them.

The ideas are great in all of Yancey’s books, but I want to explain now why The 5th Wave is subjectively worse than The Monstrumologist. Keep in mind, that this is a full dissection of the series; avert your eyes if you don’t want overwhelming spoilers

1: Cassiopeia is Not a Fit Protagonist

It feels like blind fate that, of the 7 billion people killed in the alien assaults, Cassiopeia Sullivan was one of the very few survivors — because it feels like almost no character development occurred from the beginning of the First Wave in the books to the first time we find her, entering a convenience store, then being extremely remorseful about killing an innocent-looking soldier because she thought she saw a gun, and then proceeds to later flaunt this fact to all of her survivor-group as… evidence of moral superiority?

Yeah.

Now, in the second and third books, Yancey actually addresses the character flaws of Cassie…by using dialogue and snark to reference how much of an non-survivalist she is.

While I understand that her character is meant to be relatable to the teen females that read this book, I feel like it simply didn’t work well here at all. For those who ask why I say that it’s because, as the subtitle says, this book randomly diverts to a romance halfway through the script. This is an excerpt from the first book of dialogue between Cassiopeia and Evan — a random boy who saves her life and then nurses her back to health.

“You really loved her, didn’t you? “We grew up together,” his eyes glow at the memory “she was over here or I was over at her house. Then she got older and she was always over here or I was always over there. When I could sneak away. I was supposed to be helping my dad on the farm.” “That’s where you went tonight, isn’t it? Lauren’s house.” A tear falls onto his cheek. I wipe it away with my thumb, the way he wiped away my tears on that night I asked him if I believed in God. He leans forward and suddenly kisses me. Just like that. “Why did you kiss me, Evan?” Talking about Lauren, then kissing me. It feels weird. “I don’t know.” He ducks his head. There’s enigmatic Evan, taciturn Evan, passionate Evan, and now shy little boy Evan. “The next time you better have a good reason,” I tease him “Okay.” He kisses me again “Reason?” I ask softly. “Um. You’re really pretty?” “That’s a good one. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s good.”

Need I remind you, this is a story about the world being annihilated in precise, tactical strategy, designed to catapult humanity back to the Stone Age.

I have to mention now before I continue, that I understand that romance isn’t always bad — I too think that under the right circumstances, a relationship between two characters that only becomes stronger under difficult times is a good thing. I also understand that the context of this implies this is based off gratitude — and to that I say: it clearly isn’t when this relationship lasts the entirety of the series from then on, popping in every so often to waste a few pages.

That being said, while I can see the character of Cassiopeia doing this, because she never develops past this, what I can’t forgive is the way that Yancey seems to force this upon the story.

For one, this doesn’t start until apparently 6 months into the alien invasion, which means that Cassie had 6 entire months to realize that having this sort of outlook on the situation would do nothing but make you vulnerable and killed — and then reject it! Multiple times in the series, she doesn’t wish to become calculating and cold about her survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland because of her insistence on “maintaining humanity when the Others (the aliens) want to make us into them.” I can understand this being the deepest thing ever to be witnessed to the book’s intended audience, but I sorely wish that the book didn’t outright spoon-feed itself to them.

Not only this, but Evan the boyfriend is one of the enemies in this case, and yet still manages to keep Cassie’s devotion! Again, this criticism of Cassie’s character is never actually implemented into the novels in a way to make the main protagonist more enjoyable, but instead put into snarky dialogue spoken by Ringer, the omniscient cynical of this young adult novel — I won’t delve into her, because quite frankly, she has no depth to dive into: she is one of the more egregious characters within the novels, being that she never fails once in them, and maintains a cynical, snarky, future-telling tone throughout that really grates on any enjoyment one could have out of this book.

Characters like this blot out any good characters (which there are, despite my previous criticisms) and I think they could have been much better had they been given more room to expand their personalities.

I also think it highlights the genuinely unbelievable lengths that Yancey goes to in order to maintain some semblance of appeal towards a romantic young teenage girl/boy within this book, who believes that the wordplay and faux philosophy within is great. While I give the book a break on that and say that some of the more “deep” segments are decent, particularly when it comes to the character of Commander Vosch (who has to be one of my favorite characters within this series), it still is something that seriously impacted my enjoyment of the book — because there are great moments in The 5th Wave!

2: The Book Got This Right…

• Poundcake’s story arc is one that is parallel to that of Will Henry from Yancey’s better series, and it benefits from his expertise in writing that sort of character — but his silence and general simplicity made him appeal to me more as a character than Will Henry. I genuinely love the development on him, and his strikingly short “character chapter” (small chapters in the book where we get to see a first-person view from most secondary characters) has refreshingly incisive and great prose from Yancey in a way that I only wish he could have applied to the rest of the series.
• Commander Vosch’s character arc is refreshing from the typical two-faced traitorous military general because it feels like he is as sincere about his cover story as his true motives; it genuinely feels like everything that he does makes sense to him and him only in a way that isn’t true for any other characters — and I like it! The internal geography of his heart is jagged and/or perfectly smooth, depending on what is deemed necessary at the time. His fatherly love to Ringer is executed well, and I genuinely found myself wishing for a bit that he won the war before I reminded myself his ultimate goal was to eternally watch humans flop around in the fishbowl that the Earth would have become until entropy tore apart the alien device his digital consciousness would live in. It’s fantastic and I wish that Vosch wasn’t alone in being one of the only characters in this book who didn’t feel like a tired old trope.
• The prose in this book can be amazing sometimes: the prologue to the 2nd book of the series was a deeply refreshing short story after the first book’s dramatic, romance-ridden finale. The echoes to the first book are executed well in the second and third, yet they manage to be better — meaning in this case, they manage to be more about the alien invasion and go less into the romantic subplot Yancey used to purportedly make the book’s writing easier on himself and draw in a wider audience. Even in parts of the book I wouldn’t ever wish to reread, Yancey manages to make the book drip with detail — his raw ability to structure sentences is great.
• Ben Parish’s character, although not completely perfect, is definitely the best main character in the series. A perfect high school king thrust into an alien apocalypse. He takes it remarkably well, and I think that he genuinely brings some funny moments to the novel.

However, a few characters, good writing with some particularly bright segments, and innovative ideas, unfortunately, don’t save the book from its overall… mediocracy.

As I have neglected to mention throughout the entire review, this book has some really solid ideas within it. The idea of an alien species enacting the Zoo hypothesis because their theological beliefs push toward this tendency is great, and mixing this with an apocalypse that isn’t based on needless ground warfare, and uses the alien’s advanced technology to its full potential, and the idea of these aliens knowing us enough to be able to come incredibly close (save our protagonists) to removing our fundamental tendency towards mechanization in order to be able to permanently keep us on species-life-support is low-key genius.

However, such a book series would be incredibly difficult to write in a quality way, so I can’t say I blame Yancey for falling short of this near-perfect ideal. I also feel like Yancey, having already tackled young adult novel series before with great success, could have done much more with the idea than he did with The 5th Wave.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t, as he even somewhat admits himself in the credits of the second book, The Infinite Sea, and The 5th Wave is what we got out of this idea. I don’t think it’s a bad effort, but I look into the idea and find myself somewhat disappointed The 5th Wave turned out to be as mediocre as it did.