The Dead-Tossed Waves (Forest of Hands and Teeth, Book 2) Hardcover – March 9, 2010

Just finished this book a second ago, and was happy with it as a whole.Ryan's writing style is unique. Some people will take issue with that; they will not be able to get accustomed to the lack of adjectives and the "inner voice" monologue going on throughout. But I think a certain beauty is in that which is different.It's true: there is a voracious amount of inner dialogue in this book. The protagonist talks about how she's frightened very often, and about how she doesn't see a point in pushing on through the zombie apocalypse. But that's the only "con" I can see here. The rest of the novel makes you think, makes you fall in love with the new characters, ties up some loose ends from the last novel, adds to the overall worldbuilding and look & feel of what surrounds their villages.I REALLY liked the character development. I also felt like I was there with the characters, living it with them. I know that sounds odd, but Ryan really does write in such a way that it feels like you're right there, living it with them. Putting yourself in their shoes, urging them to take the next step. And then they do, and it's magnificent.

This is the second book in The Forest of Hands and Teeth series. Gabry, a teenaged girl, lives in a lighthouse with her mother, Mary. On a dare from her friend Cira, she goes outside the fence with a group of teenagers, including Cira’s brother, Catcher to an abandoned amusement park. What was a lark becomes a tragedy as they are beset upon by the Mudo, infected with the zombie virus. While Gabry escapes, Cira and many of the others are either killed or captured upon their return and sentenced to work as soldiers/guards in the city, which is a death sentence for most. Cira begs Gabry to find her brother, who she finds has been bitten. Along her perilous trip she meets the mysterious Elias who keeps her safe and provides some key insight into Catcher’s condition. Her mother’s revelation and disappearance, along with some trying circumstances lead to an escape into the Forest and to secrets of Gabry’s past. While uneven, at times, I appreciated the building of the world mythos and would have liked to have learned more. I am hoping that the third book will provide some resolution to the story.

I am trying to finish up some series that I started reading, and Carrie Ryan's zombie series is at the top of the list. I love the world-building; zombies have been decimating the human population for decades, cutting off the remaining human settlements. Life revolves around not getting eaten by zombies. A bite will turn a normal, healthy human into a slavering, mindless monster. Walls and fences have been erected around the towns and villages to keep the creatures out, and Gabry's mother, who lives in the lighthouse, must patrol the shoreline and dispatch any of the undead that the tide brings in. Gabry is content with her life; she obeys the rules, helps her mom, and tries to stay out of trouble. This makes one giant lapse in judgment on her part almost inconceivable. Bowing to peer pressure, she sneaks over the wall to go to the old roller coaster, putting herself, and her entire village, at risk. Gabry and her friends are, predictably, attacked by a zombie, and the consequences of her breaking the rules will have repercussions she could never have guessed at. It sends her on a harrowing race through the Forest of Hands and Teeth, in search of her past, and in search of the truth.While I love the deadly, menacing world where Gabry lives, I was not so enamored with Gabry herself. I found her so shallow and immature, and I could not relate to her. Even after the disastrous outing beyond the Barrier, a willful act that destroys most of her generation of teens from Vista, she tells herself that she wouldn't change a thing about that night, because then she and Catcher would never have brushed their together. Wait? What?! Most of her friends are either killed or turned into zombies, or are going to be banished from the village, and that's okay, because why? She and her crush, Catcher, brushed lips together. They don't even share a proper toe-curling kiss! No, they brush lips, and that life-altering experience was worth the cost of several lives, including her best friend forever, Cira. This made no sense to me, and made me dislike Gabry intensely.When The Dead-Tossed Waves centered on Gabry and friends race to elude the undead and the Recruiters, I enjoyed this book. As long as Gabry was reacting to all of the near-death situations she is constantly confronted with, I thought this was a tense, exciting read. As soon as Gabry started her endless internal monologues, I was jarred out of the story and wished she would just. Stop. Talking! to herself. I think that I felt this way because she established herself to me as a self-possessed, self-involved, and selfish woman who always put her own desires ahead of everyone else's. When her mother makes confessions about her past, Gabry rejects her, condemning her for lying to her. This bothered me because Mary's whole life revolved around making a safe, secure home for Gabry, which was something that she didn't really have when she was a girl. For Gabry to abruptly turn her back on her mother, to let her venture off into the Forest by herself, I just couldn't forgive her for that. Gabry had already crossed the Barrier several times by herself, which was strictly forbidden, yet she was willing to let Mary go alone. She was too scared to go with the woman who loved her and raised her, but she was willing to put herself in harm's way if a cute boy was waiting for her? That just didn't say much about Gabry's strength of character, and since I didn't respect her, I had a hard time liking her. She does come around by the end of the book, but it was a little too late for me.That said, I did enjoy aspects of the book. I just didn't not like the protagonist. I'm disappointed that I didn't enjoy The Dead-Tossed Waves more, and I am hoping that The Dark and Hallow Places will be more up my alley.Grade: C+

This book is set some years after the first in the series - "The Forest of Hands and Teeth". At the end of that book the heroine Mary reached the sea after her journey through the forest behind the fences which separate the people from the zombies. This story sees Mary as the custodian of the lighthouse by the sea and the mother of Gabry who is now a teenager herself. At the start of this book Gabry joins with other young people to climb the fence and explore a disused theme park. After a devastating event she finds herself alienated from her companions and in danger of exile but she wishes to keep a promise made to a friend and so she continually goes past the fences and then, with others, makes her way into the forest following her mother's footsteps in reverse.This story is eventful enough and even seeks to fill in some gaps left from the previous book (although this is mostly achieved by finding a diary which is a bit contrived) but the problem, for me, is the character of Gabry herself. She is amazingly whiny and deceitful. All her companions are caught but she doesn't own up to what she has done. She knows it is dangerous to keep going past the fences but she keeps doing it - and having to be rescued at the expense of other people. She seems to have no regard for her mother's feelings, or anyone else's for that matter. I wish I could have liked Gabry more because my dislike of her prevented me from identifying with her or understanding what she was doing and why.This is a strange sequel to the first book in that it doesn't follow Mary's story on but only gives us glimpses of what life might have been like for her since her arrival by the sea - you do, however, really need to have read the first book to understand this one. I thought some of the ideas were interesting, especially the cult that equates zombieism with eternal life, but these ideas weren't fully developed because we were following Gabry's story. The book is curiously unfinished and I am assuming that Gabry's story continues in that book - maybe some of the issues that are left hanging here will be resolved and Gabry might have grown up a bit !

I read "The Dead Tossed Waves", and ended up really liking it. The plot is a lot more organised than the plot in TFOHAT, as I felt that there was a lot more thought put into the pacing and the timeline. As in the first novel, the zombies - or "Mudo" - in this book are still my favourite part. The whole story about The Return is very interesting, and I honestly felt really connected with the story because the zombies were so realistic.The love triangle aspect of the story is another similarity to the previous novel. Gabry struggles with her feelings for her childhood friend, Catcher, and her new, mysterious friend Elias, and a lot of the novel is based around these three people, and Gabry trying to figure out which one she should give up. I didn't think there was much need for a love triangle in this book. A lot of authors seem to love the triangles at the moment, and I admit, sometimes they can be very interesting. However, I do not think that this love triangle did anything for the overall story. Catcher could just have easily been a good friend to Gabry, rather than a love interest.I loved Gabry as a character. She was a lot more easy to connect with than her mother, Mary, as she is quite rightly frightened of the world outside the walls of her town. She shows fear of the Mudo and I find this to be one of her greater qualities. She's scared, and yet she still ventures out of the town to look after her friend and to find her mother.I also really liked Elias, who was an interesting asset to the story. However, I did not particularly like Catcher. His own story was interesting, and the twist was a nice touch but when teamed with Gabry's, I did not find him interesting at all, and very two dimensional.Mary was the same, selfish little girl that she was in the first book. So much for my expectations of her growing up after the demise of her friends and family!Overall, I did like this book and the ending was a great lead up to the next book in the series "The Dark and Hollow Places"

I read (and mostly enjoyed) The Forest of Hands and Teeth, finding it a pretty original take on the well-worn zombie genre. It's sequel - The Dead-Tossed Waves - is more of the same, except that Ryan's desire to cash in on the Twilight phenomenon is much more obvious. Both books are essentially coming-of-age/romance novels set in a zombie-infested world, with teenage girls narrating both stories. The emphasis is on the girls' emotional reflections on the world around them and the romantic entanglements they have with their fellow survivors, so it's a long way from your typical gore-filled zombie fare. The real problem with The Dead-Tossed Waves is the narrator - Gabry - and her Stephanie Myer-esque unfulfilled longing for every male she meets. She's selfish and whiney and seems to change her mind between two particular boys literally from one page to the next; make your mind up love! I'm guessing that I'm not the novel's target demographic, which is presumably teenage girls, who will probably have more empathy with Gabry and have loved Twilight and The Hunger Games. It's not a bad book, just a bit blatant in it's attempts to cash in on this market.

Whilst the first novel in the series was an original, highly well written piece of zombie fiction, the Dead Tossed Waves failed to grab me in any meaningful way. I soldiered through to the end because of the high regard in which I hold 'The Forest of Hands and Teeth' but won't be reading any further in the trilogy. The originality has largely gone and it's starting to read an awful lot like a Stephanie Meyer fan-fiction. Still, I should add that the writer is definitely a talent - should she come out with another series within the science fiction genre I'd be sure to give it a go, but I'm sad to say that in this trilogy at least, the Dead tossed Waves is the end of the road for me.

I love these books, I love the idea of breakers and hibernation, I only dislike how savage it is, the people fall in love and then they're torn apart! In a hopeless world I'd like it a little happier, if all they have is love and survival, why doesn't the love ever last? Awesome books though, at least download the sample because it's definitely worth a read, I'll be lost when I've read the next book.