The Infinite Sea (Rick Yancey)

The Infinite Sea
The 5th Wave trilogy, Book 2
Rick Yancey
Speak
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Once, humans ruled planet Earth, numbering in the billions. Now, after the Others arrived and unleashed four population-devastating Waves of horror, almost none remain... and of those, some aren't fully human anymore, but Silencers: alien consciousnesses downloaded into human hosts. Come spring, the 5th Wave will launch. An army of brainwashed child soldiers under the direction of Other leaders will hunt down the last stragglers.
Which gives Cassie Sullivan and her companions three months to live. At most.
After escaping the camp where her kid brother had been stolen and trained to kill, she, her one-time crush Ben, and a handful of fellow deserters are almost out of hiding places. Wounded, starving, holed up in an abandoned hotel, they argue about their next move, even as they all know the truth. Not even Evan, the Silencer who broke protocol when he chose his love of Cassie over his directive, can save them if they can't figure out what the Others' ultimate plan is, a plan that has to be about more than mere extermination.

REVIEW: It took me a while to get back into the rhythm of Yancey's dystopian tale, as I remembered who was who and where they were; it has been a few years since I read the first installment, after all. From the start, though, Yancey's near-poetic voice carried me along, making the hopelessness, the rage, the despair, and the devastation almost beautiful. Carrie shares page-time with hard-edged recruit Marika, better known as Ringer, the jaded sharpshooter from Ben's squad who figured out the truth behind their "mission" before he did. Meanwhile, Evan managed to survive his risky gambit that allowed Carrie and her companions to escape, but at a great cost, and General Vosch shows he's far from finished with their little group. Events move fairly quickly, with plenty of action (and more than a little death and gore), pushing the limits of human (and inhuman) endurance as the story openly addresses what had appeared to be a weak spot in the first volume: why the Others chose such a roundabout method to finish off humanity given their planetbusting capacities. (Skirting spoilers, the question is only partly answered here.) Once in a while the angst borders on overkill, though when one is in the throes of a true species-ending apocalypse, angst is a perfectly understandable reaction. It narrowly missed out on a extra half-star due to overall "middle book syndrome": being in the middle of a trilogy means it both begins and ends a bit up in the air, and once in a while I felt I was being toyed with just to draw important revelations out into the third installment. Beyond that, it made for an enjoyable, though harrowing, read, a true end-of-the-world dystopia rendered lyrical.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury) - My Review
When the Tripods Came (John Christopher) - My Review
The 5th Wave (Rick Yancey) - My Review