The Last Star (Rick Yancey)

The Last Star
The 5th Wave trilogy, Book 3
Rick Yancey
Speak
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Against all odds, Cassie Sullivan and her increasingly-small band of companions - her brother Sam, the traumatized young girl Megan, her former crush Ben, the young medic Dumbo, and the Silencer with the alien soul Evan Walker - have survived the winter... but the coming spring will not bring fresh hope, only the end of everything. Come the equinox, the alien mothership will obliterate all remnants of human cities and civilization with bombardment from orbit, using the brainwashed recruits of the Fifth Wave to ensure that future generations will never again cooperate, never again form societies, never again rise from the mud and animal distrust of their fellow humans. But Evan has turned on his own kind, and plans to sacrifice himself to destroy the mothership when the aliens rescue him and the other Silencers before the bombs fall.
While Cassie may trust Evan Walker and his plan, Ben isn't so sure. He has his own ideas on survival, but first he must rendezvous with his squadmates Ringer and Teacup, sent to the nearby Ohio caverns in search of other survivors. Only he doesn't know what really happened this winter, how Ringer's mission went pear-shaped and left her at the mercy of their all-too-ruthless enemy General Vosch - and how, thanks to him, she's no longer quite as human as she used to be. What she has learned about Vosch, the Fifth Wave, and the aliens will change everything... and possibly destroy the last, feeble glimmer of hope the survivors still cling to.

REVIEW: Once again, The Last Star picks up with no recap time, plunging the reader into a harrowing, bloody, and death-filled tale of humanity's last stand against a seemingly unstoppable force. The Others' plan is even worse than simple obliteration; it's the rewriting of the human heart, breaking the instinct of cooperation and trust, turning brother against sister, man against woman, mother against child, and child against everyone. Cassie sees evidence of it already working in her kid brother Sam, now a hardened soldier who has forgotten his ABC's and his mother's face but can build a bomb and pull a trigger like a seasoned killer. In many ways, humanity is already broken beyond repair... and yet, something within them manages to resist, even in the face of seemingly certain doom. Here, Yancey started to lose me, as he skews a bit toward preaching and faith (never explicit, but a notable undercurrent.) There's still a certain poetry, if bleak and dark poetry, to this tale of the end of everything we thought made us human and the discovery of what our species's true weaknesses and strengths are. The action remains relentless and dark, with more deaths and more betrayals and more proof that much of what was lost will never be regained, all culminating in an explosive and devastating finale that feels just a hair too drawn out and over the top. On the other side, Yancey wobbles a bit on the landing, which helped shave a half-star off the rating. All told, The 5th Wave is a decent, if dark, apocalyptic tale.

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