The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan

ISBN: 0385736843
419 pages
published in 2010.

The sequel to Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth. While definitely sequel in content (and quite enjoyable in its own right), I don’t know if I would say that it is its sequel in spirit. While the original book was full of mystery and excitement, this one just doesn’t seem to cut it. Part of me wants to blame the characters, as I didn’t particularly like any of them. While the teenage characters in The Forest of Hands in Teeth seemed new and original and quite unlike the way teenagers are portrayed in most YA novels, these characters seemed just the opposite. I felt as if I had met them all before — and not in the good way. They were all incredibly whiny, incredibly predictable and not very likable at all. I kept getting the feeling that I wished I could just skip all of the story about them and just hear more about the atmosphere and the world-situation, which was just as interesting and vivid as in the first book.

On top of that, the “big secret” in this book was not nearly as fun as the one in the first, and I felt as though it was stretched a bit. It seemed as if Ryan wanted something to keep the reader turning pages through loads and loads of teenage drama (with zombies!) hoping that when we reached the end we’d feel fulfilled because we’d know more about the lives of her characters — which, I might add, we hoped would make us actually care whether they lived or died. Unfortunately this was not the case.

Still, I give this book four out of five carrots for the sheer originality of the setting and the writing quality. There is a third (and final?) book coming out next year, and I will most likely pick it up right away. It’s not very often that I buy books in hardcover unless I already know I really like the series, and I bought The Dead-Tossed Waves in hardcover. This, too, attests to Ryan’s writing skill. Although I would have been more impressed if she would have put new puzzles in!

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