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sarea
When your biggest question is, "What pajamas am I going to wear today?" life is good.
My cousin B. is in town, and I took the opportunity to take three days off from work (which I desperately needed, btw), even though he's not even available every day, and even when he is, it's usually only in the evenings. I love doing nothing. All day. Every day. It feels like a really good purpose in life.
The only thing that bums me out is how quickly it's going. I'm already on day 3 of my vacation. How can that be?! Also, I hate being a girl. At least sometimes I do. Right now is one of those times. Also, my dizziness is back. Not in a really bad way, but still, it's there. And the tinnitus has never really gone away. That's annoying too.
BUT. Those things aside, it's pretty darn great to be on vacation.
I just finished The 5th Wave, by Rick Yancey. I really liked it. On the last page of the book I was like, "Oh, you are not ending things here, you bastard, you are n-- you did. Damn it." So of course I immediately went online and tried to find more info -- namely, if there is going to be a sequel. Which there is. Whew. And not too far off, either. May 2014. Could be worse. Could be like The Winds of Winter, which is going to come out when GRRM is damn good and ready. Sigh.
Anyway, T5W. I really liked it. Some reviewer said it was The Hunger Games meets The Passage, which is... pretty accurate. It's not a perfect book by any means, but it was entertaining. I whizzed through it. It took me 150 pages to be all in, but at that point, I was all in. The jacket description is fairly intriguing, but it omits a lot. Deliberately so, and I understand it, because you don't want all your plot twists given away on the book jacket. Then again, it's that much more interesting when you get extra details, of course. :D But I'm not going to give anything away outside a cut! What do you take me for.
I will, however, give everything away inside a cut. Super spoilery book details from this point on!
So this is the summary on the book jacket:
I guess because of the mention of The Passage, I thought it was going to be about zombies of some kind (even though technically, the monsters in that book are vampires, but they're like zombie vampires). It's not. It's about an alien invasion, and what the aliens do to wipe out humankind to prepare the planet for habitation.
The protagonist -- or rather, one of the protagonists, though the cover leads you to believe she's the primary one -- is Cassie. Cassie is your typical tough girl. Smart, capable, good with a weapon. Not unlike Katniss. I guess in a dystopian situation like this, those are the types who are most believably surviving on their own. Still, it gets a bit tiresome to read the same heroine over and over. I like her well enough though, so whatever.
There are three big twists in the book, as I see it. And here's where it gets super spoilery and there's no going back. I guessed two of three of them, but it is a YA novel after all. I don't think they were really that difficult to guess.
The first twist is the identity of the boy who's nearly died of Ebola, who they then train up to be a soldier. From the summary, you kind of assume that he's Evan Walker. He's not. During the first big chunk of the book, which is Cassie's POV (and from the summary, you think she's going to be the whole POV of the book; she's not), we learn that she crushed on a guy named Ben Parish in high school, before all the shit went down. He never even knew she existed. Cassie thinks she might be the last person left on Earth, which is an entirely unfounded and rather self centered assumption, given that we are given little to no idea what is going on outside the United States. Anyway, so we're led to believe that Ben and all of the people Cassie used to know are dead. Only, he's not so dead. He's the boy who survived the Red Death and is now going to be a soldier. I did not guess this twist, but I liked it.
Cassie is shot in the leg by a Silencer, which is what she names the alien hunters who go around killing the surviving humans. We get one short POV from the Silencer. We learn that somehow, the aliens have been able to "infiltrate" humans by making themselves one with humans (not unlike the new Cylons in Battlestar Galactica), who are activated at a certain point. This Silencer was activated at age 14, which makes him 18. He knows what he is and he does what he has to do. He for some reason can't bring himself to kill Cassie, who he's been hunting for quite some time and has had a million opportunities. Cassie collapses and wakes up in a warm bed, being cared for by a hunky guy. This is Evan Walker. He nurses her back to health and teaches her marksmanship. She gets emotionally involved. The second twist is that he is, of course, the Silencer who shot her in the first place.
The third twist is that the military that Ben's working for is actually the Others. They're training up humans to kill other humans, under the guise of being U.S. military. This too was not hard to guess.
Despite being able to see the twists coming from miles away, I enjoyed the book. It was "good predictable," meaning that even though I knew what was going to happen, I didn't know how, and also it felt right. The only thing that was maddening was how unquestioning the characters were. Even when they were right, they still could have questioned. Cassie assumes the men who killed her father and the others at Camp Ashpit were aliens. I can see why it'd cross her mind, but wasn't it just as possible that they were traitorous humans, or humans who were just assholes without having anything to do with the aliens? Of course, they did have the Eye, so I guess that nixes the latter one. But she assumed they were alien beings when it was very possible that they were humans who were tricked. Even now I'm not sure, other than Vosch, that anyone else weren't just brainwashed humans like Ben.
The other assumption is one Ben made. He completely buys, hook, line, and sinker, that the things he's told by the adults are true. He never once questions whether they could be lies, could be exactly what the aliens would tell him, so that he would do their bidding. It was a relief that Ringer wasn't that snowed, that she was able to make him see the light. (Though here's a contradiction -- why were he and Ringer allowed to go through the program, being of an age with Cassie, when Cassie was rejected as being too old?) My problem with Ringer was that she was pretty much the same girl as Cassie, only she looked different and was more stoic. But again, the same type of badass heroine.
The one twist that I was kind of waiting for but didn't happen was that I was half expecting Ben or Sammy to actually have "alien" inside them, like Evan. After all, Evan was just Evan until he was activated. I'm assuming that the kids on the bus who got a green result when their heads were scanned meant that they were infested (like Evan), but we never got any confirmation about that.
I am, of course, hoping that Evan is alive. I wasn't sure there would be a sequel to the book, and this one ends with it sort of being possible and sort of hopeful, but also not, because Cassie's with Ben, but Ben and Ringer have a thing, and that's not exactly a love triangle I particularly want to read about.
As I was reading through it, I was thinking that it'd actually make a really good TV series. Or movie, which I guess is what it's currently being optioned to be.
My cousin B. is in town, and I took the opportunity to take three days off from work (which I desperately needed, btw), even though he's not even available every day, and even when he is, it's usually only in the evenings. I love doing nothing. All day. Every day. It feels like a really good purpose in life.
The only thing that bums me out is how quickly it's going. I'm already on day 3 of my vacation. How can that be?! Also, I hate being a girl. At least sometimes I do. Right now is one of those times. Also, my dizziness is back. Not in a really bad way, but still, it's there. And the tinnitus has never really gone away. That's annoying too.
BUT. Those things aside, it's pretty darn great to be on vacation.
I just finished The 5th Wave, by Rick Yancey. I really liked it. On the last page of the book I was like, "Oh, you are not ending things here, you bastard, you are n-- you did. Damn it." So of course I immediately went online and tried to find more info -- namely, if there is going to be a sequel. Which there is. Whew. And not too far off, either. May 2014. Could be worse. Could be like The Winds of Winter, which is going to come out when GRRM is damn good and ready. Sigh.
Anyway, T5W. I really liked it. Some reviewer said it was The Hunger Games meets The Passage, which is... pretty accurate. It's not a perfect book by any means, but it was entertaining. I whizzed through it. It took me 150 pages to be all in, but at that point, I was all in. The jacket description is fairly intriguing, but it omits a lot. Deliberately so, and I understand it, because you don't want all your plot twists given away on the book jacket. Then again, it's that much more interesting when you get extra details, of course. :D But I'm not going to give anything away outside a cut! What do you take me for.
I will, however, give everything away inside a cut. Super spoilery book details from this point on!
So this is the summary on the book jacket:
After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.
Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.
I guess because of the mention of The Passage, I thought it was going to be about zombies of some kind (even though technically, the monsters in that book are vampires, but they're like zombie vampires). It's not. It's about an alien invasion, and what the aliens do to wipe out humankind to prepare the planet for habitation.
The protagonist -- or rather, one of the protagonists, though the cover leads you to believe she's the primary one -- is Cassie. Cassie is your typical tough girl. Smart, capable, good with a weapon. Not unlike Katniss. I guess in a dystopian situation like this, those are the types who are most believably surviving on their own. Still, it gets a bit tiresome to read the same heroine over and over. I like her well enough though, so whatever.
There are three big twists in the book, as I see it. And here's where it gets super spoilery and there's no going back. I guessed two of three of them, but it is a YA novel after all. I don't think they were really that difficult to guess.
The first twist is the identity of the boy who's nearly died of Ebola, who they then train up to be a soldier. From the summary, you kind of assume that he's Evan Walker. He's not. During the first big chunk of the book, which is Cassie's POV (and from the summary, you think she's going to be the whole POV of the book; she's not), we learn that she crushed on a guy named Ben Parish in high school, before all the shit went down. He never even knew she existed. Cassie thinks she might be the last person left on Earth, which is an entirely unfounded and rather self centered assumption, given that we are given little to no idea what is going on outside the United States. Anyway, so we're led to believe that Ben and all of the people Cassie used to know are dead. Only, he's not so dead. He's the boy who survived the Red Death and is now going to be a soldier. I did not guess this twist, but I liked it.
Cassie is shot in the leg by a Silencer, which is what she names the alien hunters who go around killing the surviving humans. We get one short POV from the Silencer. We learn that somehow, the aliens have been able to "infiltrate" humans by making themselves one with humans (not unlike the new Cylons in Battlestar Galactica), who are activated at a certain point. This Silencer was activated at age 14, which makes him 18. He knows what he is and he does what he has to do. He for some reason can't bring himself to kill Cassie, who he's been hunting for quite some time and has had a million opportunities. Cassie collapses and wakes up in a warm bed, being cared for by a hunky guy. This is Evan Walker. He nurses her back to health and teaches her marksmanship. She gets emotionally involved. The second twist is that he is, of course, the Silencer who shot her in the first place.
The third twist is that the military that Ben's working for is actually the Others. They're training up humans to kill other humans, under the guise of being U.S. military. This too was not hard to guess.
Despite being able to see the twists coming from miles away, I enjoyed the book. It was "good predictable," meaning that even though I knew what was going to happen, I didn't know how, and also it felt right. The only thing that was maddening was how unquestioning the characters were. Even when they were right, they still could have questioned. Cassie assumes the men who killed her father and the others at Camp Ashpit were aliens. I can see why it'd cross her mind, but wasn't it just as possible that they were traitorous humans, or humans who were just assholes without having anything to do with the aliens? Of course, they did have the Eye, so I guess that nixes the latter one. But she assumed they were alien beings when it was very possible that they were humans who were tricked. Even now I'm not sure, other than Vosch, that anyone else weren't just brainwashed humans like Ben.
The other assumption is one Ben made. He completely buys, hook, line, and sinker, that the things he's told by the adults are true. He never once questions whether they could be lies, could be exactly what the aliens would tell him, so that he would do their bidding. It was a relief that Ringer wasn't that snowed, that she was able to make him see the light. (Though here's a contradiction -- why were he and Ringer allowed to go through the program, being of an age with Cassie, when Cassie was rejected as being too old?) My problem with Ringer was that she was pretty much the same girl as Cassie, only she looked different and was more stoic. But again, the same type of badass heroine.
The one twist that I was kind of waiting for but didn't happen was that I was half expecting Ben or Sammy to actually have "alien" inside them, like Evan. After all, Evan was just Evan until he was activated. I'm assuming that the kids on the bus who got a green result when their heads were scanned meant that they were infested (like Evan), but we never got any confirmation about that.
I am, of course, hoping that Evan is alive. I wasn't sure there would be a sequel to the book, and this one ends with it sort of being possible and sort of hopeful, but also not, because Cassie's with Ben, but Ben and Ringer have a thing, and that's not exactly a love triangle I particularly want to read about.
As I was reading through it, I was thinking that it'd actually make a really good TV series. Or movie, which I guess is what it's currently being optioned to be.
