“I will say that the last 100 pages of ‘The Last Star’ are some of the most intense writing experiences I’ve ever had, because you work so hard with a big story like this that spans three books. “The third book, ‘The Last Star,’ takes both those things and slams them together, kind of the way nuclear fission works,” Yancey continues.

The intensity is on a more emotional, existential level. “The first book is all action and narrow escapes and making really tough choices. “I think that it takes the best elements from the first two books,” he says. The third novel, “The Last Star,” is due out in May, and Yancey, as you might imagine, is “very excited for it.” “As I was watching him work, I turned to my wife, ‘Gosh, I should have made his part bigger in the book, this guy’s great.’ It was that kind of feeling.”įans who like the film can dig into the books, with the first two available now. “As the casting went along, I was very pleased with the choices that the producers were making, particularly with Ron Livingston as Cassie’s dad,” Yancey says.

The rest of the cast includes Nick Robinson (“Jurassic World”), Liev Schreiber and Ron Livingston, who plays Cassie’s dad, Oliver. Cassie has to try to keep her younger brother safe, but it’s impossible to know who to trust when aliens could be anywhere around you. The first wave took out all electricity, and later waves started to decimate society, leaving only a few survivors. The story follows Cassie (Moretz), a teen girl living in a world that has been invaded by aliens in a series of waves. “The core scenes and the things that … really loved or hooked into from the books, really do make it to the finished film,” he says. The 53-year-old Florida writer believes that fans of the book series will be “pleasantly surprised” by the film, which he says maintains the spirit of the novels. They’re just two totally different art forms.” “I understood, because I’m a realist, that as an author, you can’t expect your 500-page novel to be totally translated into film. “I had heard horror stories from other writers about taking their work and totally changing it, so I had some trepidation going in,” Yancey says. For Rick Yancey, the author of the YA novel “The 5th Wave,” which is coming to theaters on Friday starring Chloe Grace Moretz, the experience turned out to be a positive one.

Author of the 5th wave