Review: ‘The Last Star’ by Rick Yancey

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.

[Goodreads]

Book details

Genre: YA Sci-Fi

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 9780141345925

Series: The 5th Wave, #2

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Review

Despite the success of The Fifth Wave and The Infinite Sea, the conclusion to Yancey’s bestselling post-apocalyptic series is, at best, mediocre. Four global catastrophes wiped out the majority of the population, and the fifth – the creation of child-driven death squads brainwashed into hunting down survivors – threatens to remove “trust” from the human vocabulary. The enemy, the Other, has almost succeeded in its initiative, yet Cassie, Ringer and Zombie will risk everything to preserve the last flickering fragments of hope on Earth.

In what should be an action-filled fight to save what’s left of humanity, Cassie and the dregs of Squad 52 do little more than wander around a wasteland reciting monologues about betrayal. Yancey seemed bored with his characters and eager to be done with the series altogether. Unfortunately, this seeped into his storytelling: the eerie, despondent tones that gave the first two novels their edge dissolved into little more than a monotonous drone. Even Cassiopeia – one of my favourite characters in Science Fiction – dulled from a fiery, witty heroine to an impulsive, sulking nuisance.

Overall, The Last Star was wildly disappointing, with few redeemable elements. As a series finale, it does the bare minimum in providing dedicated readers with closure.

Rating: 2/5

Recommended to: People looking for an excuse to be irrationally angry.

This review was also posted on Writers Write’s review page.