The 5th Wave Trilogy by Rick Yancey

Alien books are not my thing.  However, last year, Amazon had a free chapter sampler of The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, so I tried it out.  Even though the plot has to do with an alien takeover, what I read was enough like the typical zombie-driven young adult dystopian novel that I ended up purchasing the book.

In The 5th Wave, an alien mothership has arrived and is orbiting the Earth.  After 10 days, the mothership sends an electromagnetic pulse that wipes out all electronic devices.  Later, the ebola virus is used to wipe out most of the human population.  The aliens want the planet for themselves, so they must wipe out the entire human population.  The book follows the story of several humans who try to stay alive in the midst of the chaos.

The 5th Wave contains this great quote about books.

"Books? They're heavy and take up room in my already bulging backpack. But I have a thing about books. So did my father. Our house was stacked floor to ceiling with every book he could find after the 3rd Wave took out more than 3.5 billion people. While the rest of us scrounged for potable water and food and stocked up on the weaponry for the last stand we were sure was coming, Daddy was out with my little brother's Radio Flyer carting home the books."

I enjoyed The 5th Wave, but not quite as much as other dystopian novels.  Not surprisingly, it is because I don't like books about aliens very much.

The second book, The Infinite Sea, was published this month.  I found The Infinite Sea not to be as interesting as The 5th Wave, and I felt that the book was bogged down with too many details.  Throughout the entire book the question is posed as to why the aliens are not content with killing humans as quickly as possible so as to be finished with it.  Why are they killing humans in the cruelest way possible in order to inflict great emotional trauma?  Apparently, the aliens are killing people in a cruel fashion because they hate people—or something like that.  I'm not really sure that I completely understood.

Near the end of the book, there was a revelation about the aliens and what they were doing.  I think it was supposed to be shocking, but I had no reaction.  I didn't care.  I so very much didn't care and didn't see what it changed that I almost want to say what it is.  But since that might be a plot spoiler for people who might think it matters, I'll refrain.  My reaction was, "Whatever."  I don't see how it changed what had happened.  Maybe a little bit.  But I really don't care.

So this book lost me around halfway through.  I suppose I'll purchase the final book in the trilogy once it is released just to see what happens, but I'm rather ambivalent.