One of the most terrifying aspects of Rick Yancey's (The Monstromologist) novel of an alien infiltration is the sense that it could happen imminently, with contemporary references that place the action in the here and now.
Sixteen-year-old Cassie Sullivan opens the story, and her first-person narration takes on the kind of stark, lone survivor quality of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Other chapters move between Cassie's unrequited high school crush, Ben Parish, and a Silencer--one who has infiltrated the population but is allied with the Others, alien beings attempting to take possession of the earth for their own species. Cassie reveals how the Others choreographed the extermination of the Earth's inhabitants. The 1st Wave, a massive electromagnetic pulse, killed half a million people. For the 2nd Wave, the Others dropped a metal rod twice as tall as the Empire State Building over a fault line to create flooding in all major coastal cities. Birds spread a plague for the 3rd Wave; after these three, 97% of the population was wiped out. The 4th Wave involved Silencers, stealth snipers that pursued the small number of survivors. The 5th Wave, which unfolds through the course of the novel, is the most chilling of all.
The only other survivor in Cassie's family is her five-year-old brother, Sammy, whom soldiers herded onto a school bus bound for Wright-Patterson, the government stronghold, with all the other preteen children. Ben Parish, who survived the 3rd Wave, becomes the top recruit for the government, and his path intersects with Sammy's, as they're both trained to fight the enemy.
Yancey's structure of moving among these narrative voices keeps readers off-balance. When Cassie, severely injured by a Silencer, decides to leave her cover, she says, "I am the one not running, not staying, but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield." The author sets up her resolve in contrast to the military commander of Wright-Patterson, who tells Ben, "I will teach you to love death. I will empty you of grief and guilt and self-pity and fill you up with hate and cunning and the spirit of vengeance. I will make my final stand here,... and you will be my battlefield."
Who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, and how can you tell? Does being born human automatically give you humanity? If you are not born human, can you develop humanity? Can war cause you to lose your humanity--and if so, is that worse than death? Yancey raises penetrating questions in a suspenseful thriller. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: In Rick Yancey's suspenseful tale, an alien invasion of Earth asks readers to question what makes us human and what causes to lose our humanity.