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The Last Star  By  cover art

The Last Star

By: Rick Yancey
Narrated by: Phoebe Strole, Ben Yannette
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Publisher's summary

The highly-anticipated finale to the New York Times best-selling 5th Wave series.

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.

Praise for The Last Star

“Yancey’s prose remains achingly precise, and this grows heavier, tighter, and more impossible to put down as the clock runs out.... This blistering finale proves the truth of the first two volumes: it was never about the aliens.” (Booklist, starred review)

“A haunting, unforgettable finale.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Yancey doesn’t hit the breaks for one moment, and the action is intense, but the language always stays lyrical and lovely. It’s a satisfying end to an impressive trilogy, true to the characters and the world Yancey created.” (Entertainment Weekly)

“Yancey has capped off his riveting series with a perfect ending.” (TeenReads)

“[T]he ending provides both satisfaction and heartbreak.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Yancey's writing is just as solid and descriptive as in the first two books….What Yancey does beautifully is reveal the human condition.” (Examiner.com)

"Rick Yancey sticks the (alien) landing in the action-packed finale to his The 5th Wave invasion saga.... And the author gives us a major dose of girl power as well, pairing Cassie and Ringer for an uneasy alliance that provides the best moments in this fantastic series’ thought-provoking and satisfying conclusion.” (USA Today)

Books in the series:

The 5th Wave (The first book of The 5th Wave)

The Infinite Sea (The second book of The 5th Wave)

The Last Star (The third book of the The 5th Wave)

©2016 Rick Yancey (P)2016 Listening Library

Critic reviews

"Loss and sacrifice intertwine with the underlying questions of morality, family, and human strength, and the resolutions of two apocalyptically doomed romances are appropriately understated, but no less electrifying.... [T]his blistering finale proves the truth of the first two volumes: it was never about the aliens." (Booklist, starred review)

"[The Last Star] again unspools from multiple perspectives, keeping readers as off-balance as the characters, who must adjust to a world where they can trust no one.... After hundreds of pages of violent, nonstop action, the ending provides both satisfaction and heartbreak." (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about The Last Star

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Wait.... what?

It is painful to give this only three stars. Especially since I thought the first book was so well done. I had high hopes for how the series would end. But sadly, I'm disappointed.

It has a lot of the elements that made the other two successful - well developed characters, well developed relationships, loads and loads of action, and some twists and revelations, solid writing. But the problem I had with it is that the premise/plot just got more and more preposterous as the series went on.

In the first novel, it is an alien invasion. That in itself is always an interesting premise, but this particular invasion was done very well, was somewhat unique, and the way the story unfolded we were left with many questions that we were eager to have answered. In the second novel, the author decided he didn't like his premise - even stated so in interviews, and decided in some ways it didn't make sense to him. So no longer are we dealing with an invasion. Okay, so then the big question we are left with in the second book is what are we dealing with, what are these aliens up to and what exactly is happening here?

I can't tell you, as it would be a spoiler, but the answer given in the final book is just flat out silly. And makes a whole lot less sense than the original story premise that the author rejected. I suppose it was necessary to explore a theme that the writer seemed to really find fascinating (what is humanity, what makes us human, how could you destroy who we are on a fundamental level, etc). I didn't find it a fascinating enough theme though to justify contriving such a wacky turn regarding the aliens and why all this was happening. The motivation of the aliens makes absolutely NO sense at all. Again, I don't want to spoil any plot points, but given what we are told the aliens hoped to achieve, it really, really makes no sense at all - yet continually is presented as the "only" solution. I can easily think of many alternate solutions that would be far less pointlessly vicious, much more effective, much more logical, and would likely require less resources and energy, though again, to propose them here gives away the story a bit, so I won't.

And the notion there is some kind of altruistic motive makes no sense too, given what the aliens did. So ok, is it some kind of interplanetary conservation effort or something ? Again, it makes no sense. If we take the insect analogy the writer uses at several points in the story, and apply it to humans and insects, there is NO WAY we would look at even insects and think this is a good solution, or makes sense in any way. And it seems to me that it wouldn't even work... And it would only have a chance of working if the aliens were to stay forever to keep it going... Okay, given that, why not stay forever and do something else - any of the MANY alternatives, which I won't propose as I can't spoil it, but just a little thought and anyone can think of other ways that make way more sense. It reminded me of The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the solution is just preposterous and not something any species that valued life would do - at least not an intelligent species...

Also, the notion of a benevolent motive was muddled with all the clear hate of humanity, and outright evil actions... And it just isn't plausible that aliens would go to this much trouble just to be evil with nothing to gain and no one to benefit really, but also wouldn't do this if they wanted to be saviors. And if we are to assume that the nature of the aliens is that same nature they want to instill in the humans, that they already embody the "solution", then by the very solution itself, the aliens should never have developed enough to be able to do all this in the first place... (It is hard to explain without spoilers) The motivations just made NO sense. Which is really weird as the writer rejected his original motivation as he thought it made no sense, though I would ague it made far more sense than this turn of events.

When it is finally fully explained what is going on, my feeling was "wait.... what?"... It seemed so anticlimactic in that it really was just weak in so many ways and didn't make sense. So without that major aspect being worthwhile in this story, we are left with your typical YA stuff, and that is more emphasized in this book- the banter and relationships of the characters, who ends up with whom, who is a bad guy, who is a good guy, who is a hero, loads of fights and action scenes, how do these teens deal with their crisis, and teen romance, etc... It is pretty typical stuff. That said, those who enjoy that will enjoy this and the writing is still strong. I however found that once the main premise and plot had degraded to silliness, the little skirmishes and battles got very dull, and the tension had diffused for me, as I couldn't get past the many jarring aspects of the plot which had really devolved.

The narrators do a wonderful job - as with the other two books.

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36 people found this helpful

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The WORST ending to a trilogy of all time

I listened attentively for the first two hours, though I did initially stop after a few minutes since it starts with the priest--a completely new character I wasn't interested in. I was generally bored or confused in the first couple of hours. So many POVs made the story feel too disjointed.

Then I started listening less attentively for the next couple hours and finally with half an ear. So in the end, I'm really not clear what the explanation for the whole the "alien invasion" story was. Apparently a lot of people (who presumably listened or read more attentively than I) were confused.

But had he not dropped the ball with his characters, I would have at least been interested in their stories. But there just wasn't anything there. Yancy spent so much time developing his characters and their stories in the first two books, but in this book (other than one character), nothing.

The only thing good about this book was the two fantastic audio narrators.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Really? That's how it ends???

I really enjoyed the first and second novel and was really interested to see how the final book pared it all together. I was utterly disappointed! I'm usually the type that likes most stories and can get through most books but my goodness, getting through this novel was very difficult. I usually go through a book a week, this took weeks to get through because I would get so turned off from where it's going.

Without giving the ending away, I just think that this ending lacked so much imagination and intellect. I thought throughout the whole novel that it would be a challenge to understand what the alien's objectives truly were being that one would have to put themselves in the mindset of an extremely advanced being but oh come on!!!! You couldn't think of anything else to be the reason for it all? I love the idea of the second novel, wow its' just us versus us and the aliens are just sitting back and observing but then... really.... that's why? You're telling me they came here and killed millions for... ugh! I feel the author just gave up all imagination!

Finally the plot line was horrendous as well. My goodness they really shouldn't have had Ringer as the main character for so long, she is so boring! The author also went into some philosophical rants here and there which just weren't deep enough to be interesting.

So sad this is how it ended! And trust me, I'm an easy reader to please!

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The best star

I can't begin to thank the author for giving us such a great final book to this amazing story. I loved that many things about this story. But I gotta say I'm glad for how Cassie ended. It left it for so much interpretation and hope. I liked that Evan is helping out and mayfly is such a new and inspiring character (mayfly is not Cassie in this case) I liked that there were no loose ends and although some of my favorite characters had to die I wasn't as depressed as I thought I'd be. All in all a great story.

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Too anti God propaganda

I'll admit it has interesting concepts but I don't like to image the authors gives God.

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So why did the aliens kill everyone????

I like books that leave you thinking at the end, but not ones that make my head hurts trying to figure out what happened? nothing makes any sense. I loved the first book, the second book was just the normal spot filler that muddle books are but the third book was just ridiculous. I feel like the author wrote the first book and then had writers block so the had someone else write it for him. there is no way the second and third books were written by the same person who wrote T5W.

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Not a good read.

Book 1 was relatively the best in series. After reading book 2, I was somewhat disappointed as a reader but I continued to look forward to book 3. After reading book 3, I am left with more questions than answers. Not sure what happened to Cassie and how Evan remained alive. They story line did not add up for all characters. Despite being fictional, the plot was completely unrealistic and difficult to process. Completely disappointed with 3rd book and series as a whole.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
  • GH
  • 06-14-16

Fitting...

In this last of the trilogy, Cassie and her mates deal with finality. As with most of the these post-apocalyptic YA books, there is lots of death, lots of message and lots of hardship. There were a number of interesting twists and turns and many of the twists you don't see coming all the way up to the end.

I found the alien resolution a bit on the wanting side. But, I do think the trilogy plot was reasonably fresh. I like the way the author moved from Cassie's POV in book one,expanding POVs throughout will the end till you saw everything through everyone's POV. Those whole loved Hunger Games, Divergent, Breeder series, Steelheart, ... will like this trilogy.

I give this work a thumbs up. Read all three. When the moves come out -- watch. The first and third will be the best. But isn't that always the way?

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Disappointed

Definitely not on a par with the previous two books, struggled to stay focussed and had to constantly reread sections...

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

What we loved about the story was missing

My husband and I read The Last Star together. We both loved The 5th Wave. We both like The Infinity Sea. We felt like it was an in-betweener with the purpose of setting up the final book with a grand slam. We weren’t completely sold on The Last Star. The narration was excellent.

It picks up a few weeks after The Infinity Sea. The story started out creepy and all sorts of awesome. Then we get to the main characters. Ringer finds herself in a new mess. Ben, Cassie and Evan were a mess of emotions that seemed off based on their past behaviors. You would think by now that some trust might have been established between them after saving each other’s life again and again, but no. What we both loved about the characters wasn’t there in this book. My husband seemed to think Ringer was written perfectly.

The timing seemed off throughout the story. It was rushed in place and dragged in others. During intense moments with action huge information drops were given leaving you going “what just happened?” Most of what we needed to know happened in the last 25% of the book. There was a lot of filler that didn’t add too much to the overall story. The filler seemed to get the people in the right place for the ending to happen but it wasn’t really interesting to read.

I did love when the plan needed to be implemented it was the girls that did the butt kicking. Go girl power and all that.

I know that many, many readers had a problem about the end. Do I like the ending? I’m on the fence. Did I expect something similar to happen? Yes I did. A life would need to be sacrificed to save the world. It’s a dystopian after all.

My husband and I both agreed we didn’t like it but it was better than okay. 3.5 stars.

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