Review: The Last Star by Rick Yancey

Title: The Last Star
Author: Rick Yancey
Published: May 24th 2016 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
read in: May, 2016
Series: The 5th Wave #3

young adult • dystopia • science fiction • romance

“Life is a circle bound to fear. The fear of the predator. The fear of the prey. Without fear, life would not exist.”

The enemy is Other. The enemy is us.

They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.

But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.

In these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves…or saving what makes us human.

---

read my review of The 5th Wave #1 by Rick Yancey

read my review of The 5th Wave #2 by Rick Yancey

Reading the first two books was a very exciting journey which Yancey had written beautifully mysterious. But this third book though, was an entirely different thing. If you had been following my review of the first two books, you will know that the series had certain ups and downs along with some minor flaws.

This book was still being told in a multiple POVs, though more and more I felt like Cassie’s POV was the least exciting than the other characters POV. Is it just me or Yancey had made Cassie’s character utterly annoying and completely unimportant to the existence of the story. I could imagine myself reading the whole book skipping Cassie’s chapter and I still wouldn’t be confused about the story.

The other characters’ POV was entirely different though. I loved how Yancey had given more of Zombie, Ringer, and Nugget than what they had in the book before. I also loved that at a certain point, each character start to question their existence. Though to think more, the atmosphere in this book wasn’t quite as strong as the first book where trust was the main issue and the characters need to look after themselves without clinging much to the other.

“You’d think a common enemy would have forced us to set aside our differences and band together against the escalating threat. We turned away the stranger, the outsider, the unrecognized face.”

The Romance between Cassie and Evan was also getting more annoying. If you’re annoyed the romance in this series before, I bet you will feel how unreal and annoying in this book. Geez, I read so many reviews about the first two book complaining about the romance and I was hoping that Yancey would took the time to read it and just pour more action in this last book.

The ending, I would say, was quite predictable. I wasn’t shocked at all with Yancey’s decision at all. And for me, that had been the best choice since I’m not hoping that all of them are going to survive and live happily ever after. This is a post-apocalyptic YA after all, so happily ever after weren’t always the main focus.

To sum up the series, I can’t say that The 5th Wave was a strong series. It was quite refreshing and different (at least the plot line and the plot twist was), but there were just some minor flaws here and there that when they all come together couldn’t make the series stronger as they should have. I just hope the movie will go different direction a bit than the book.

---