The Last Star by Rick Yancey

Amy     

Lynnie  


young adult, fantasy, science fiction


The Last Star is the third book in Rick Yancey's Fifth Wave series.  We both included the first two books in the series--The Fifth Wave and The Infinite Sea--in our Best of 2014 posts as the story of alien invasion and the survival of humanity were full of action and intrigue as well as gripping characters. 

Amy's Review

This book was dissatisfying. First, it’s been 21 months since the last novel was released. It took me 15% of this book before I even could sort of remember where book #2 left off. There were insufficient reminders of previous events and the scene-hopping at the beginning of this novel put the reader in places that weren’t even related to the characters that we’ve come to know in the series. It was very disorienting, and not in the good way where the author wants the reader to feel like the characters. It took too many frustrating pages to even get a sense of knowing, sort of, what was going on. Then, Yancy pulls a Stephenie Meyer and suddenly starts giving the characters nicknames that they didn’t have in previous novels of the series—“Cup” for Teacup. Really?! “Bo” for Dumbo? I will say that it may just be me that doesn’t remember those nicknames in book #2….that’s entirely possible. (And it’s definitely not worth my time to go back to book #2 to find out.) But, I don’t remember them because it’s been so long since book #2 was released and this was just another annoyance while trying to figure out what this story was about!

So, okay, I eventually remembered the plot (sort of). I still never reached the point where I was able to sit back and enjoy the story because this whole novel felt slapped together, disjointed, difficult to follow, and, really, didn’t even feel like the same author. In fact, at one point, I thought I was reading The Stand by Stephen King (and, again, this is not a compliment but an explanation of why I could never get into THIS book). The humor is gone in this novel. Everyone has somehow finally realized how dire the situation is and they contemporize and philosophize about the world in which they now find themselves. They do this for pages at a time. None of the fun characters from previous novels are recognizable.

Only the last 10% of the novel held my interest enough to make me feel immersed in the story. And then the ending was a bummer. I accept it, but it’s still a downer. The moral of the story is that alien invasions suck. 

Lynnie's Review

So, this series ended.

Amy complained about not remembering the plot of The Infinate Sea after such a long time and I agree. I cheated however and read an overview of the plot online before digging into The Last Star and I do think that helped a bit.  I actually finished this a couple days before writing this review & have been debating what to say about it ever since. Honestly? I was a little disappointed with many aspects of The Last Star. I thought that many of the characters that had been so well-developed previously, seem to have completely different personalities in this novel. Also, there were so many unanswered questions at the end. I keep trying to talk myself into believing, "well, it's kind of the end of the world so of course there will be unanswered questions" but I can't quite convince myself to be satisfied.

That said, the action scenes are very fun to read and continue to be devastating as humanity turns on itself in the absence of anything left to believe in. If you read the first two books in the series, it's worth finishing it out with this book, but be prepared to be left scratching your head.