YA Review: The Infinite Sea (The 5th Wave #2) by Rick Yancey

Title: The Infinite Sea
Author: Rick Yancey
Series: The 5th Wave
Book #: 2
Pages: 300
Reading Level: YA
Book Rating: 
Goodreads Rating: 4.34
Published: September 16th, 2014

How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.
Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.
Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.

Taschima's POV:

The Infinite Sea was good... up to a point. I feel like this one was so different from it's predecessor. It introduced a lot of things, but it also took away others that I had come to expect and love. The Infinite is nonetheless dark, thrilling, and captivating, well worth the reader's time.

The Infinite Sea is told in four different POVs. FOUR. Let's just say that from the very first page I found myself extremely confused because I had NO idea whose POV I was reading from. Zombie? Cassie? As it turns it was neither. We are introduced to a new POV right off the bat without even the courtesy of a name at the beginning of the chapter. Keep in mind, The 5th Wave was released a while ago and so my memories of the first book were a little murky at first. I didn't remember who this "Ringer" chick was. Soon enough you start getting used to her, but it was a rough awakening.

So I felt a bit cheated because so very little of the story is focused on Cassie and Zombie, and almost all of it is told from Ringer's POV. Ringer is a character that you soon turn to like because she is strong and resilient. But that isn't the point. The point is to not have any expectations when it comes to Infinite Sea because all of those will be blown out of the water. The fourth POV was Poundcake's. By the time his turn to shine comes though you are well acclimated to the story and the characters so it isn't a huge shock and I really enjoyed his story. It was sad and yet relatable. No surprise that abuse might play a part in the reason he is always to silent.

While in the 5th Wave we spent most of our time constantly moving from point A to point B I felt like most of the infinite sea was stationary. The amount of different setting could easily be counted in one hand alone. It spent a lot of time figuring out one question, "why are the aliens making this fight so personal? Why are they killing us in Waves instead of throwing a big ass rock at us?" So there was a lot of rambling about rats (long drawn out metaphor of the rats), rocks, level of risks, etc. After a while it starts to get repetitive, with every other character thinking along the same lines.

One thing in which The Infinite Sea excelled at was plot twists and turns. A lot of the things that happened I didn't expect them to happen, hell I didn't expect it to be told from 4 different POVs! It held a lot of surprises for the reader's. It is equally satisfying and painful. The ending was probably my favorite part of the book, both Ringer's and Cassie's POV endings. They were both unexpected in their own way.

At the end I learned to love Ringer, and I really did appreciate learning about Poundcake's backstory. Overall it was just different than was I was expecting. I really did miss having Cassie as my main POV, and even Zombie. Ringer does make some very questionable decisions at the end of the novel how can she have sex with Alex when he betrayed her so badly?!?! I would kill him. The writing is still phenomenal, even the acknowledgement at the end of the book is worth reading. The Infinite Sea did a great job of setting up for the big finale, and if I was excited to get this title you do not know how EXTREMELY excited I am about getting the next one.

PS; May I just say that I felt Sam was incredibly unfair and a little brat? His sister went through HELL to get to him, to get him to safety, and all he does is yell at her and not even a thank you for rescuing me from the bowels of hell. Little brat.</spoiler>