Described by publishers as the final thrilling instalment in The 5th Wave series, but I was left feeling unsatisfied and found it quite a frustrating experience.
I’m so pleased that I had only recently read The Infinite Sea or it would have made even less sense to me.
In this novel, we are told that this is the final push to stop the Others ending humankind. While there were passages that I thought were really well written, and moments of real beauty, there was just so much that seemed to conflict with what had come before or that was simply confusing.
The survivors seemed to spend the novel playing a cat and mouse game that nobody really seemed to know the rules to. Random characters appeared, simply to develop the story, and this was so frustrating.
From some way off I had a feeling about what might happen. Full credit to Rick Yancey for not taking that option – which is where it is clearly signposted as heading – but the actual ending just didn’t work for me. Maybe it’s designed to offer a comment on humanity and our need to trust…but it just was not satisfying.