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Friday, August 1, 2014

You Should Start a List

. . . of all these awesome books I keep recommending for you.

Also, you should thank me for pointing out which ones have upcoming movies, like The 5th Wave. Normally, I wouldn't write about YA fiction on this high-class intellectual website. But since Rick Yancey wrote a book that isn't insulting to my intelligence, I will give credit where it is due.

T5W is about an alien apocalypse. It tracks Cassie Sullivan and some surrounding characters in their attempts to survive. The aliens in this book are surprisingly less cliche and aggravating than one would expect. Their planet is apparently out of commission, so they found Earth and decided to take it. Before doing so, they need to eliminate all the humans. 

But because they need to preserve the natural world, their approach is not as simple as "blow everyone up." (No, Michael Bay, you may not direct the film adaptation.)

As you should have inferred from the title, the alien takeover takes place in five waves. The first wave is the giant electromagnetic pulse which eliminates nearly all human technology, and also kills a whole bunch of people who happened to be flying in an airplane or speeding on the interstate at an unfortunate time. The second wave dropped really large metal rods on fault lines, leading to actual killer waves affecting all coastal cities. The third wave killed 97% of the remaining population. It was a modified form of Ebola which kept the same deadly symptoms but was genetically engineered to spread far faster. And in the fourth wave, the aliens enter human bodies and replace our consciousnesses with their own; these invaders are then used to snipe wandering survivors.

If I tell you the 5th wave, it would ruin, like, half the plot, and besides, you'll have a hard time sleeping tonight anyway. 

Cheers,
Isaac

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