School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-The majority of the first-person narration in this second book in "The 5th Wave" series (Putnam) shifts between Ringer, a beautiful teen with deadly aim, and tough-but-tender Cassie, who thought she was the lone surviving human. A third-person viewpoint is used for Evan, an alien who has shifted his allegiance in the face of true love and Ben (Zombie), badly injured but still in command of the ragtag paramilitary group of creatively nicknamed children and teens. The action springs back and forth in place and time as readers learn why Poundcake no longer speaks, how Evan is related to super-strong Grace, and why chess is important to Ringer. The "infinite sea" can be made of snow, of tears, of the floaty feeling of semi-consciousness, and, more than once, it is a sea of blood. Yancey keeps the pressure on, as Cassie and Ben seek to protect the younger humans and outsmart the devious Silencers. Ringer struggles to maintain her humanity in the face of nanotechnology and Evan struggles with turning his back on what his species has been working toward for thousands of years. Yancey's writing can be melodramatic ("The world will be consumed by the crushing dark"; "The Others didn't invent death; they just perfected it"), but will keep action-craving readers enthralled. With a 5th Wave movie in the works, and alien questions left unanswered, expect readers to be interested in this series for the foreseeable future.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
When aliens attack: the end of the world as we know it. Book 1 of Yancey's series saw 95 percent of the human population wiped out in a brutal alien attack that coordinated tsunamis, a horrific plague and teen soldiers bent on murdering any survivors. Just when readers might think it couldn't get worse, it does: The extraterrestrials bent on taking over Earth are now implanting carbon-dioxide-triggered bombs inside the throats of young children in order to wipe out any survivors. The first are easily extinguished in the prologue in an ominous tableau that no doubt is meant to foreshadow what will befall Cassie, Ben and the teen survivors from The 5th Wave (2013). What follows is a terse, streamlined volume packed with action and violence that will keep readers on the edges of their seats. At first it's hard to distinguish which character is narrating each sequence, particularly since Ringer, a secondary character in the first installment, takes over much of the page count in this installment. Her nickname says it all: She's tough, fearless, an expert marksman and a survivorand the bad guys particularly have it in for her. Everything culminates in a 180-degree reversal that turns the series' cosmos on its end and will no doubt have readers impatiently screaming for the third. A roller-coaster ride of a sequel. (Science fiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* While The 5th Wave (2013) was a sprawling apocalyptic vision of an Earth stomped to near submission by aliens, this sequel goes small, condensing its time frame to focus on a small band of despairing heroes. The result is an even better book a breathless, grueling survival story kicked off by a gut-wrenching concept: the Others using human children as IEDs to take out nests of survivors. Perspective shifts between Cassie, Zombie, Poundcake, Evan, and Ringer, with each character taking a turn in the spotlight, but the basic problem is communal: anyone who ventures outside their hideout disappears or worse. Evan's deadly relationship with fellow alien-human hybrid Grace takes early center stage, and Yancey's ability to generate sympathy for a species that wants to destroy us, with maximum cruelty, is a wonder. Later, it's Ringer who dominates the narrative when she faces off with Commander Vosch and becomes a guinea pig for the 12th System. Yancey's prose remains unimpeachable every paragraph is laden with setting, theme, and emotion and he uses it toward a series of horrifying set pieces, including a surgery scene that will have your pages sopping with sweat. The end, while confusing, seems to flip the script. Is there some Childhood's End-type purpose to this? Or is it all sound and fury? Waiting a year for answers, now that's torture. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Promotion of The 5th Wave was stratospheric, and with the film adaptation coming, expect blanket awareness of this sequel.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"The 5th Wave," the first book in Yancey's series about aliens taking over the world in increasingly brutal stages, left readers in a state of breathless suspense. The toughest teenage heroine this side of Katniss, 16-year-old Cassie Sullivan had cautiously aligned with a tenacious band, complete with an alien boyfriend and a former high school crush, in a fight to maintain at least a shred of human dignity in light of so much else being lost. Those anxious to find out what horrors the aliens have in store, and how humans can possibly endure - that is, anyone who read "The 5th Wave" - will thrill to the heart-pounding pacing, lyrical prose and mind-bending twists that continue here. Yancey's narrative shifts continue too, allowing for a slow pulling back of the curtain on characters including, intriguingly, the aliens themselves. With the introduction of new back stories, however, the fevered intensity of the story line diffuses ever so slightly; after all, "The Infinite Sea" is a "middle book" in the series, a position in which more questions than answers tend to be provided. But if all is not clear - and will not be clear - until the appropriate time, that's a neat parallel to the aliens' devastating waves themselves, and one suspects, exactly how Yancey wanted it. JEN DOLL is the author of "Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest."
