Review: The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey

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Rating: 4 stars
Publisher/ date: Putnam Juvenile/  September 16th, 2014
Word rating: Much more action-y.

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.

This book was a crazy ride in the best of ways. This is one of those books where I think that saying even a bit too much might be spoilery, so this is a shorter review. 

We're plopped right into the middle of the events after The 5th Wave, and from the get-go, The Infinite Sea is much more action-based and for the lack of a better word, noisier, than it's predecessor. While the first book's success, I think, lied in the uncanny build-up and explosion of events, in The Infinite Sea there's something happening or about to happen all of the time. 

We switch POVs between several characters in the novel, which gives backstories and little snippets into more of the characters' lives. The first book definitely had more character-building than The Infinite Sea, but I guess that's understandable since the first book was, obviously, our introduction to the characters. 

I was a bit disoriented at the beginning of the book, since I didn't reread The 5th Wave before starting, but it only took me a chapter or two to be fully immersed into the world again. I couldn't put it down afterwards. 

All of the characters seem to be 1000x more badass than they were before (not that they weren't before *looks at Ringer*) and we see that kids have grown up fast and the emotional toughening up that they've gone through after the events of The Fifth Wave. 

That's the cost. That's the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you're left with humans with no humanity. 

In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker.

The above quote is said by Cassie, but the character that I really came to love over the course of the book was Ringer. I started to get hints that she would eventually become my favorite character towards the end of The 5th Wave, but the deal's sealed now.

All in all, a fantastic sequel, full of action, suspense, revelations, and drama (and surprisingly, in a good move by Yancey, not as much romance as one might have expected). Fans of the first book will definitely not be disappointed.