When I heard that a movie, 5th Wave was coming out, based on the book by that name, I of course, bought the book. I was sold upon hearing that the movie starred Chloe Grace Moretz, who I loved in Kickass, Carrie, Hugo, and Let Me In.
The story combines several different classic science fiction tropes. Author Rick Yancey pulls out all the stops, giving the young adult reader an alien-invaded, post-apocalypse dystopia as a setting. No zombies and no vampires at least. The alien invasion is both the body snatchers "they look like us" kind, and the Dalekesque "Exterminate!" kind. It's premised on solving the one issue that plagues every alien invasion movie made now: what if the aliens aren't dumb? What if: they remembered Earth microbes that might kill them; what if: they loaded their up-to-date anti-malware program and configured their firewall right? What if: they remembered they had a bad reaction to water that's on 60% of the planet and wore suits to keep it out? These have all thwarted aliens in recent invasions stories. Then take it a step further, what if: they were extremely hardcore about this extermination thing?
The answer to the question: we lose. No if's, and's, or but's. If their technology allows them interstellar travel, and they're hostile, they win if they find us.
Yancey begins with his protagonist, Cassie, pointing this out. The aliens (or The Others) have an almost fool-proof plan for curing Earth of human beings. However, the "Humanity Loses in a Shutout," scenario is very bad for sales in the Young Adult market. This obliges Yancey to make the aliens dumber as the story goes on. It was that or rewrite The Lord of the Flies, or some other tailspin tale that no self-respecting YA would read unless it's assigned in school. School is still expected to take the joy of reading and bum you out about it.
Some dumbing down is forgivable here. There's an automatic limitation to what a non-genius author can do to depict super-genius beings. The aliens have considered everything. Everything . . . except the possibility that one of them won't be one-hundred percent with the plan. And with that flaw, the Acme Invasion Kit sends them on a plunge into the ravine.
I could forgive the fact the aliens never thought of the possibility of defection. What threw me out of the story, though, was the central relationship. It was about as convincing to me as a spider falling in love with an ant crawling on the opposite wall. I guess even with the obscure language, that still counts as a spoiler.
When her little brother McGuffin brings our heroine to the alien headquarters and there's no escape from capture, the ventilation ducts save the day. For the 12,031st time in fiction history. You know, I don't mind characters trying to use ventilator ducts. I mean action movies have told us there's no safer or more secret way to navigate a super-villain lair. I just wish the heroic characters would get caught, and then have to think of something else. Ducts are the laziest plot device outside of horror. I was kind of impressed an alien super-genius thought of doing the same thing.
But I'm not saying it's easy at all to think up and write anything else. If the protagonist would just have to avoid the lair . . . but then it wouldn't be an action story. And it would be too close to real life.
I was never convinced at any point that the two first-person narrators were teenagers. The narration voice inside their mind sounded more like a middle-age male paraphrasing what they said. That's something that's probably that won't matter YA's, though.
However, probably none of this is important to a YA audience. Unlike the middle-aged, they haven't seen/read a million invasion stories, dystopias, and post-apocalypses in their lives yet. The ventilation vent won't seem like a cliche. While everything is new to them, an author might as well ratchet up the excitement by combining sub-genres. For its audience, this book is decent.
Yancey wrote scripts before he started writing novels. I bet this book came hot off the press ready to be filmed. This would explain the faults in the narrator voice. That's unnecessary in a movie. Yancey likely wrote the script first. Therefore, I think it's possible the movie is going to be much better than the book. And having Chloe Grace Moretz as the star will not hurt.
So, I still highly recommend the book for YA's, and look for the movie to improve it.
Update, 1/7/16: I've seen a clip now, and it shows a scene that isn't in the book. A good scene. Chloe Grace Moretz described another scene not found. So, there's a good chance the movie's going to be better than the book. So, I recommend it.
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