Review: The Infinite Sea

The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I very nearly didn't get this book. To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about the entire series. I remembered liking but not entirely loving The Fifth Wave, and when my brother asked me to get this from the library, I didn't even bother to look very hard for it. It was pure dumb luck that I happened to be looking for a different book and saw The Fifth Wave, and that the book I grabbed at random from the new books rack as I walked past was The Infinite Sea. Then I almost didn't read it, but finally I was out of other books that I wanted to read, so I picked it up with pretty much zero memory of what had happened in The Fifth Wave.
This, it turned out, was not nearly as big of a problem as I'd thought it would be. Sure, it was annoying that I didn't get the references they were making to some events, but enough came back to me as I read that I wasn't constantly confused. Which is good, because it left me free to experience this book at its fullest (well, except for editing out most of the swear words in my head).
Which was a very good thing, because this book was good. Really good. I kept expecting the writing to go downhill, the plot to become ridiculous, and me to stop understanding what was going on. The first happened only very slightly. The second happened not at all, and to be honest the plot in this book, especially the twist, was amazing. The last happened just a bit at the end- not that I didn't understand what was going on, but I didn't quite get how the character suddenly put all the pieces together. I do wish that had been a little more on-screen.
The characters were well done. Evan still annoyed me a bit, but not nearly as much as he did in the first book. Cassie remains a fine, strong character. Sam has become a bit... odd, but that's exactly how it should be considering the events of the last book. The minor characters were all fine. Ringer was... interesting. I don't like her, but she's a very well developed character.
As I said before, the plot was amazing. The twist was a stroke of genius (I should have seen it coming... and yet I didn't. I almost always see the twists coming if the clues for them are properly laid, and this time I only saw the hints in retrospect, so that was awesome). The ending was, honestly, exactly the sort of thing I hate- except that against my will I was smiling with tears threatening and I was thinking awwww, which is completely unlike me. I still don't quite get why I had this reaction (seriously, I should be mocking that scene right now) except that apparently the writing was good enough to do this to me against my will. It only left me with one possibly problematic complaint, which I'm putting on hold because I'm sure it will be explained in the next book.
Basically, it was a great book. Read this series. And I don't say that about many books.



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