Will Cassie and her pals live long and prosper? Will the aliens be defeated? Will humankind rule the earth ever again? So far, at least, The 5th Wave remains Yancey's top seller, and it's garnered high praise from kids and critics alike…as well as some nail-bitingly intense questions. On top of that, the author has written more than a dozen other novels along the same lines (think horror, sci-fi, and YA) for your reading pleasure. With the box office success of similar franchises like Divergent and Hunger Games, you probably won't be surprised to learn there's a string of movies based on this trilogy. And Evan-who may be more than he seems-basically wants to protect his ladylove, Cassie. Ben, who's adopted the nom de guerre 'Zombie,' is searching for revenge and the truth.

Cassie, orphaned and on her own, is searching for her baby bro. Humanity encountered the 1st Wave (complete electrical failure), the 2nd Wave (massive tsunamis), the 3rd Wave (an especially icky plague), and is now coming to grips with the 4th and 5th Waves (which we'll let you discover on your own). So bad, in fact, that more than 99% of humanity was wiped out behind the scenes before the book even begins. It's not just any alien invasion, either.

Oh yeah, this is probably important: The 5th Wave is about an alien invasion. In addition to the 21st Century YA tropes we already mentioned, Yancey borrows heavily on scare tactics from a number of popular science fiction works, including War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Battlestar Galactica. Just about everything here is borrowed from one venerable pop culture source or another, but it's a rip-roaring setup. You just can't go wrong with a dystopia and a steely-eyed young woman with a name that starts with a hard 'K' sound.ĭon't get us wrong we say this with compliments to the author of The 5th Wave, Rick Yancey. If it contains scientists and mind-blowing technology, we don't care if it happens in space (where no one can here you scream) or in the good ol' Victorian London.Īnd we're bonkers about post-apocalyptic scenarios where plucky heroines defy the odds and get embroiled in spicy love triangles… whether their names happen to be Katniss or Cassie. If it contains fantasy heroes acting like knights-or scoundrels-we don't care if it happens in Westeros or in a galaxy far, far away.

Author of the 5th wave