The 5th Wave Themes

In a book where humans' alien attackers are actually referred to as "the Others," it seems like a safe bet that Other-ness will somehow figure into its themes. The interesting thing about the Other...

The Others are into mind games like whoa. First they disguise themselves as humans, which allows them to secretly infiltrate (and eventually take over) important military bases. Then they train chi...

Have you ever noticed that, when it comes to the end of the world, survivors tend to be persistent sons of guns? Whether it's The Walking Dead or The Road, fictional apocalypse tends to bring out h...

In a book about the end of the world, you can expect to see a lot of death. This particular alien apocalypse has wiped out more than seven billion people, which is almost everyone. Almost.The scale...

From tectonic plates to the circle of life, things on Earth are always changing. That's nothing new. Still, when seven billion people croak in just a few months' time, a lot of practical—and emot...

Fear of murderous alien colonizers would be enough to make your mind play tricks on you. That said, these particular murderous alien colonziers are really, really into playing with people's minds....

The Others are waging a war against the human race, and so far the humans have had a hard time fighting back. You'll notice that the struggles of characters like Cassie and Ben aren't anything so g...

Identities in The 5th Wave are super-unstable. The human characters, especially Cassie and Ben, feel disconnected from the happy high school students they were before the attacks. On the alien fron...