Book Review - The 5th Wave

Originally posted on my other blog - Binary Blogger.

I love to read and do it any chance I can get. Whether it’s short stories delivered via email daily, books about the latest in IT Security or Management to fiction novels, reading is a fantastic activity that everyone should do when they can. I use Goodreads regularly to find new books to read, authors to follow and skim other people’s reviews and I find it to be very helpful. However, every book I read I don’t write a review for, some just aren’t worthy of my time to give my thoughts on, others are either really good and deserve support or are on the other end of the spectrum and need to be called out. The 5th Wave falls into the latter category.

The 5th Wave is categorized as young adult (YA) fiction and seen as in the same class of style as The Hunger Games, Divergent and the The Maze Runner but that’s only because of the style and target audience. After I read The Hunger Games, a series I was consumed by and read all three books in a week, I have kept my eye on the young adult genre as it shows from time to time it’s not as young as they claim. The 5th Wave I saw sitting on bookstore shelves for a while now and started to see more hype about it. After I went back in time and started reading older books I haven’t before and got worn out by my mass consumption of political thrillers I decided to give The 5th Wave a chance.

The 5th Wave is about an alien invasion of Earth. A large spacecraft arrives in orbit, no contact can be made, and extinction level attacks start to happen that the society on Earth call waves. The 5th Wave is the assumed final wave where the remaining population is wiped out. It has aliens, invasions, fight for survival what could go wrong?

SPOILERS AHEAD

As I got into the book about 50 pages in or so the plot started to seem awfully familiar. I could place it at first but then as the waves were being described and talked about by the characters it became clear to me why I recognized it. The alien arrival and attacks or waves are a rip-off from a Discovery Channel series called When Aliens Attack. A TV series I was greatly interested in and watched whenever it was on. The series was exactly this book, how aliens could arrive on Earth and take us out without ever stepping foot on the planet. From the Manhattan sized craft approaching and entering orbit, sending down non-explosive massive mile-long rods to destroy cities with using kinetic energy and leaving no radioactive residue. The book even had a radical idea from the TV show about burying nukes and drilling huge pillars filled with water to super heat the water to steam and sending metal caps into space at the ship. All lifted from the show. The show and book went on to talk about using the birds to spread disease and and so on… This was a big disappointment when the pieces came together for me. Young adults would never catch it, unless they watched Discovery as much as I do.

The next major downfall of this book was a clear case of blatant plagiarism. I will use this term freely and loudly because anyone cannot deny this. There is a scene where the children and teenagers are going through a boot camp situation. The Drill Sargent and the dialogue is almost a 100% word for word ripoff from the movie Full Metal Jacket and the Gunnery Sargent Hartman. This was more apparent than the TV show plot lines.

Aside from the plot the writing style of this book was tough to follow. It would switch from 1st person to 3rd person back to 1st person and at times you weren’t sure which first person you were reading. You’d have to remember the scenario or location to put the pieces together whether it was Cassie or Ben you were following. The other supporting character Evan was never 1st person perspective. Stick to one throughout, don’t hop around.

By the time I got 3/4 of the way through I stuck with it to just finish it. I rarely abandon any book I read once I start and this wasn’t that bad to quit on it but it was close. The end was loose, non-climatic and attempted to leave you on a cliffhanger but I never saw the cliff.

There’s a sequel coming for this book but I don’t think I will rush out and get it. When I get around to it maybe, and that’s a big maybe, which means probably not. I have a 100 other books I want to read and this didn’t make itself worthy to stick with through any kind of long series.

Book Review: Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Here's a book review I wrote over on my other blog, Binaryblogger.com. I copied it here because it's a book review and is relevant to the art of writing. 

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Here are my thoughts around the book The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. That's right, after 30 years I finally got around and read the darn thing. I succumbed to the hype, the praise, the massive cult following. This book somehow became the entry book to geekdom or something. I was reading so many political thrillers, reference books on IT Security practices and non-fiction I needed a break before I tackled the 1000+ page Shift Omnibus. I opened it up on my Nook GlowLight eBook Reader and began. Spoilers ahead, don't worry, you aren't missing out on much.

A little background, I have started this book many times since I was a kid. I always seemed to make it to the destruction of Earth to where Ford and Arthur make it to the ship and then I stop. Reading it this time, determined to finish it, I understood why I gave up so many times before. The book isn't that funny. It has promises of humor and in some places it is witty, but the English (England) style quips and short bursts of quasi-intellectual banter gets old really fast. Reading this book was like watching a child play jacks. Focused on the jacks laying on the ground then out of the blue comes a bouncing ball distracting you for a little while then back to the jacks. At times I wonder if Douglas Adams made this book up as he went along and yes I know it was a radio show before the book. That might explain the transition to novel form wasn't as smooth as it could have been.

I can understand why some people would like this style of books and stories but not me. I will give it credit though, if you take away the characters and attempt at humor, the underlying story is not bad. Planetary destruction, political turmoil, an all powerful hyper-intelligent computer, and a very powerful spacecraft. But unfortunately it wasn't that way. By the end of the book I wished all the characters did what Marvin made the computer do. Every character was annoying, whiny complainers, shallow and one-dimensional. The only character I found that had some promise was Trillian and that was because she spoke the least and when she did she was all business.

I seriously doubt I will continue and finish the self-proclaimed 5 book trilogy (so witty).

Like anything I am only one person with my opinion and I didn't care for it. If others love it, great. We are both right.

End of Line.

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DayOne Journal App Ideas

I love the DayOne journal for iOS. It is simple, easy, the cloud sync is wonderful so I can pretty much get real time syncing between my iPhone, iPad and Mac. It makes me want to write in my journal.

Any writing is good writing... right?

The best part of DayOne I think is the tagging. Each entry you can tag. For example I have tags called Personal, Workout, Work, DayInTheLife, Random Thought. Even though all the entries are chronologically together, the tags make them life separate journals. With the PDF export capability you can only export a specific tag. That way you can print off your Personal tag put it in your hard copy file and tuck it away. If you want to use a tag called Blogging Ideas for the blog, write your thoughts in there on the fly and you can have an entire collection right there.

With the other bells and whistles you can have for each entry like Foursquare location adds, photos, and current weather when you wrote the entry you can really get a comprehensive of what you were writing about and where you were when you wrote it. I love it.

I wanted to write this post to tell you about a neat little idea I did yesterday called Day In The Life. Unlike a personal journal entry or thought dump, my Day In The Life tag were a collection of entries, with photos, throughout the course of my day. At the end of the day I exported that to a PDF and have a small insight to my 'normal' work day. I don't plan to do that all the time but when certain days pop up  it will be fun to paint that picture. Your own personal, more detailed Twitter-like account of your day that you can share or keep private to go back at some point to review.

Sure you could write one big entry that was a recap but with DayOne and a tag you can quickly chronicle it as you go. Who says a journal has to be a record of the past, make it a chronicle of events as they unfold.

Take your journal to the next level. I highly recommend DayOne app. I discovered it only because Apple named it the best app of 2012. I don't think you will be disappointed, I sure wasn't.

Time to turn the page.

Geek Book Review - The Zombie Survival Guide

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From The Living Dead by Max Brooks.

I recently completed this book on my growing fascination with the Zombie genre and the tangents to real possibilities. As I browse around the internet or catch a documentary this book always came up at some point so I thought I would break down and get it. My review is going to be on the content and the approach I took when I started to read it. Most will think this is a tongue-in-cheek book but the author's thought, research, and details that is in here go beyond how this book is sold and perceived.

First this book can be found in the Humor section of Barnes and Noble which I guess the right place for it to be only because no one would take it seriously if it was in the outdoors section with other survival guides. As you read this book, if you take away the Zombies, this book is filled with useable, strategic, survival techniques that can be applicable in many non-Zombie situations. How to fortify your house, survive on the food you have, what types of weapons are best for certain scenarios and other potential life savings tips.


Now the underlying tone, especially the last 1/3 of the book, is about a zombie outbreak of various levels. According to the book the zombie outbreak is caused by a very complex virus. Now for being abook of fiction, or so we are led to think, the details about the virus are extremely convincing along with the rest of the details of the levels of outbreak. If you are a fan of the show The Walking Dead and read this book you can't deny that this book was the guide for the comics the show was based off.

Even though you may think this is a gag book or a joke book because its about zombies think again. There is enough realism that is at the core of this book that I think it's actually useful in certain situations even if the zombie apocolypse never happens.

Time to turn the page.

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GTA Book Review: Killing Floor by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #1)

Write, write, write. That's what writers need to do. So to get me to write more and other things than just fiction I have decided to write reviews of books I have read. I am not going to go back and review stuff I have already read, only ones that I have finished recently.

I use Goodreads to track and find new books to read as well as get reviews. It's a great social reading site focused solely on books and authors. Of course they have mobile apps to make it easier to get updates and suggestions on the go.

My reviews are purely on the entertainment and story content aspect of a book. I am not going to focus too much on the style, writing capability of the work unless it's really bad and I will not get into the 'deeper' meanings trying to figure out what the author was trying to say. There are so many books out there and so little time to consume I read for absorption and entertainment, not for inner reflection or to find myself inside a fictitious world created by someone else.

The first book up for review is an older book, but new for me as it's my first entry into a very popular series by Lee Child. The Jack Reacher novels. For years I have been hearing about the Reacher character from my father, family and friends. But I have invested myself into other large series and the way I am once I start and commit to a series, I like to read them all sequentially and not try to get two series going at the same time. Especially if the series are similar in subject matter, the characters then tend to get mixed up by which one is from which world.

Killing Floor by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #1)
This is the first book in a long series by Lee Child. Jack Reacher is a 6'5", mountain of muscle and attitude. An ex-military police officer now wandering the country living off his pension trying to be as anonymous and off the grid as possible. We start out with Jack eating breakfast in a small Georgia town  where he goes to research an old story about a singer that was killed there decades ago. However his plans change when he is arrested for murder. He claims his innocence and the mystery starts to build. Between prison and interrogation his innocence is realized by new, yet out of town, detective and Jack's own police background gets him inserted to investigate the murders he was arrested for as he unexpectedly is connected to one of the victims. The small town corruption, international ties, and a secret that people are going to great lengths to protect become more and more clear as Jack Reacher digs deeper until he breaks open the case and goes after everyone.

This book is violent, descriptive, the story is complex and keeps you reading to see what happens next. There are 16 Jack Reacher novels and this being the first one you have to assume the character development gets stronger, the writing gets stronger, and the story constructs get stronger. There are faults in this book, but nothing to stop me recommending it if you are curious and want to get into the Reacher series. Why not start with #1?

Like all adventure novels you have to go into this like an action movie, it's fiction, suspend reality expectations. The circumstantial and coincidental scenarios that Jack gets into happens in novels and not in real life. There are things in here that do not reflect reality, but who cares. That's why we read action/adventure novels, to be entertained. If you are looking for a real to life detective novel go get a non-fiction book on FBI cases or detective memoirs. If you want a hard knocks, action packed, violent action/adventure/mystery book then read this.

The only other aspect of this book that is hard to get used to is that it's written in the 1st person from Jack's viewpoint. Some like it, some don't but it works if done right and this works but if you are not used to 1st person style it takes a while to get adjusted to it.

I give Killing Floor 5/5 stars purely on the entertainment value as a story and the foundation of the Jack Reacher character.

I will continue reading the Jack Reacher novels and will tackle the entire series over the next year, he's up to 16 books now. However I did alter my plan a little bit and am now reading the 1st book in Daniel Silva's series to see if that one grabs me harder. I heard Daniel Silva interviewed on the local radio station about his work and I was very intrigued by his approach to the world spy/terrorist genre which I love. So I am currently reading The Kill Artist and will decide where to go after that. I will get that book finished in the next few days and maybe try to start another one but I am eagerly waiting for Vince Flynn's new Mitch Rapp novel, The Last Man, to come out in November and I will read that in one sitting most likely.

So many great books, so little time to read them all. It's OK to be picky.

Time to turn the page.