The Fifth Wave

I'm not a big fan of science fiction novels. And I'm definitely not a big fan of teen dystopian novels. But, having read and very much enjoyed Rick Yancey's The Monstrumologist, I was tempted to pick up his novel The Fifth Wave - and I'm glad I did.  This novel was so well done, with such fine plot and character development, that it was a pure pleasure to read. Basically, aliens from a faraway planet have launched a five phase invasion of the earth - not with giant spaceships, or lazer-firing robots or armies of monstrous creatures. No, Yancey has come up with a wonderfully inventive invasion scheme - and I'm not gonna tell you what it is 😅. What I will say is Don't see the movie. Read the book. It is a fairly long book, some 500 pages in my Indonesian language version, and the careful development of characters and methodical arrangement of plot elements just doesn't work in a 2 hour film fomat. I did watch the film, after reading the book, and found that it just had to cut too many corners and skip over important developments. No fun.