Saturday, November 1, 2014

The Infinite Sea | Rick Yancey


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 is the second book in the 5th Wave series and I absolutely loved it! It does a perfect job of bringing back the characters we loved in the first book and still continuing the plot in an interesting way. It shed a different light on the whole alien situation and honestly really makes you think.



Spoiler-Filled Discussion

Like the last book, this one was also split into several different "parts" where it switched point of views. And once again, I had no idea who was talking during the first book. I assumed we were going to hear from the same cast members this time, however this time we get Ringer's perspective, which was interesting. 

As we switch from Ringer to Cassie, we see the exact same conversation, but it was somehow different. Reading from Ringer, we only got a short glimpse of their interactions, while from Cassie we got the whole showdown, while they insulted each other and everything. It's interesting because it really captures the essence of each personality. To Ringer, that conversation may not even have been important enough to capture in her story, while Cassie went into detail about it. 

The Infinite Sea isn't a particularly long book (although it still took me like a week to read) but there is so much action just jam-packed into these pages, it goes by even faster. 

At some point we get a glimpse of Evan, after he essentially sacrificed himself. I assumed he wasn't dead, since that would kill off the main ship in the book. But I liked seeing that one scene going into his past. I thought it was really interesting that him and his "kind" knew what was happening and the clock was basically ticking down to when they could take over. 

There were so many aspects to this book that were just: 



One of them being the idea introduced in the prologue of the use of children as bombs. It's just one of the ways that we know the game is changing, they didn't just use "a big rock" to wipe out the human race, rather they're twisting the humanistic characteristics we have on ourselves, so we're basically killing ourselves. The first four waves were the rock, plagues, natural disasters, the works. But this fifth wave is brutal. Not only are they spreading distrust within the remaining adults, but we can't even care for a child without the fear of being blown up. 

Although I was disappointed that Cassie, Evan and Ben's appearances in the book were so short-lived I loved hearing Ringer's side of the story. I loved going back into the main headquarters of Vosch and again trying to dissect this entire alien attack. 

One of the biggest plot twists was at the end, when Ringer brought up the idea that maybe there never were any aliens. Throughout the entire book, there's a repeating analogy of rats brought up. They're the analogy for the humans, the "pests" of the world. The aliens are the superior being, the ones "responsible" for getting rid of these "pests", but what if the rats just eliminated themselves? What if the rats chewed and gnawed on each other until there were none left? What if the humans just thought there were aliens and fabricated this entire attack on their own. What if you just left the rats to kill themselves? 



I also noticed this underlying theme of hope in all of the dystopians I read. It was touched upon in the Hunger Games movie. Hope keeps people going, it makes the fight worth fighting. Although Cassie and Ben and Evan and all the other characters know the imminent probability of their death, there is a small, minuscule part of them that truly believes they may be able to live through this, and it's that small piece that keeps them fighting. 

While this was a thrilling piece of literature, the banter between the characters (primarily Evan and Cassie) prevented it from becoming overwhelming. The bits and pieces of humor throughout the book made the story so well-rounded. 

Words can honestly not describe how excited I am for this book. I need it. I need it now. 




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