The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey
Published: September 9th 2014 by Penguin Books Ltd (UK)
Number of Pages: 300 (Paperback)
Series: The 5th Wave, #2
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. (goodreads.com)
“You never know when the truth will come home. You can’t choose the time. The time chooses you.”
I've waited so long for this book. It was one of the books I anticipated most this year, but unfortunately I didn't quite get the satisfaction out of it which I hoped for.
“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 first book, The 5th Wave was brilliant and different then all the other alien books out there. The Infinite Sea unfortunately didn't manage to catch up with that level of awesomeness. Maybe it's just me or maybe not, but I had bigger hopes for this book.
Something that is very important, is that if you plan on reading The Infinite Sea you have to read, or re-read, The 5th Wave before doing so because otherwise you will be endlessly lost. Also, unfortunately the first 100 pages or so seemed to drag on for an eternity. All that happened, or rather did not happen, over those pages could easily have been summed up in a novella and be publishes as an extra to the story. There is a lot of jumping back and forth between was currently happening and things the characters remembered. This made me stop a lot of times and just ask myself "what the hell is actually happening right now?" because I was just really confused at time what was happening, to who it was happening and if that is a new even or something in the past.
What really made this book interesting were the last chapters which picked up the pace, had action and things actually started to happen, whereas in the first 100 pages everything seemed to be in standby mode.
“Maybe you reach a certain point in evolution where boredom is the greatest threat to your survival. Maybe this isn’t a planetary takeover at all, but a game. Like a kid pulling wings off flies.”
I was quite surprised by the choices Rick Yancey made in regards to the POV's. A big portion of this book was told from Ringers perspective, which at first I wasn't sure if I liked because I wasn't a huge fan of Ringer in general, and not from Cassie. Surprisingly enough the chapters written in Ringers POV were the most interesting and gripping parts of the book.
When it comes to the characters in general, Cassie was just a tat weird, Ben somehow transformed into this really annoying character and Evan had a way too small of an appearance in this one.
All in all, The Infinite Sea turned out not to be what I hoped it would be, which maybe was also caused by the fact that it was much shorter than The 5th Wave, about 160 pages shorter. This of course meant that fewer things could happen and that many things had to happen faster or in a different way. Unfortunately, what happened is that barely anything happened for the most part of this book.
But, no matter how disappointing The Infinite Sea might have been, I'm still looking forward to the finally of this series. I'm excited to see how it will all end and if we will get answers for all the questions we might have.
I give The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey 3 out of 5 Stars.
