Jenn's Review: Infinity

Summary: At fourteen, Nick Gautier thinks he knows everything about the world around him. Streetwise, tough and savvy, his quick sarcasm is the stuff of legends. . .until the night when his best friends try to kill him. Saved by a mysterious warrior who has more fighting skills than Chuck Norris, Nick is sucked into the realm of the Dark-Hunters: immortal vampire slayers who risk everything to save humanity.

Nick quickly learns that the human world is only a veil for a much larger and more dangerous one: a world where the captain of the football team is a werewolf and the girl he has a crush on goes out at night to stake the undead.

But before he can even learn the rules of this new world, his fellow students are turning into flesh eating zombies. And he’s next on the menu.

As if starting high school isn't hard enough. . .now Nick has to hide his new friends from his mom, his chainsaw from the principal, and keep the zombies and the demon Simi from eating his brains, all without getting grounded or suspended. How in the world is he supposed to do that?

Review: Infinity: Chronicles of Nick is the beginning of a YA series that serves as a prequel to Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter adult series. This is a great "guy" YA book, even for boys that aren't big Readers ~ not that girls won't like it too, but there's a lot of YA out there that boys won't like. I haven't read the Dark Hunter series, but this book this certainly piqued my interest.

The book was action packed from top to bottom. Kenyon is a master storyteller and keeps her reader's pulled in. There are a smattering of really interesting characters and lots of humor. Kenyon even tackles one of my least favorite plot lines, the time loop, and appears to do it well, I say appears to, because the series, thus far, is unfinished (perhaps someone who has read the Dark Hunter series could better say).

Because of all the action, I think it suffered somewhat in plot and character development. Where I think Kathy Reichs's transition to YA succeeds brilliantly, spinning off minor characters that she could develop, this book seems to falter. Kenyon seems to rely on the fact that these characters have already been developed in her adult series... (Giving her the benefit of the doubt that she is not assuming that writing YA means one doesn't need character development). There is a point in the middle of the book where the plot becomes somewhat muddled breaking away from the action with the rapid introduction of lots of new characters. While reading, I was almost resentful of the stoppage in action and the complication of the additional characters to the storyline. I almost feel as though Kenyon tipped more of her hand than needed at this point in the series, and that perhaps some of it could have been saved for later on when it was a bit less confusing. Once the action is resumed, however, we reach satisfying closure with enough loose ends to continue the series.

Fascinating though her characters are, I feel like I didn't really get to know any of them. I'm still not even sure who the good guys are, which is a lot like life ...and it just makes me want to read more! I look forward to the release of Book 2, Invincible, in February of 2011.

Final Take: 3.5/5

This review is brought to you today by the letter B... for Brittney at St. Martin's Griffin. Thanks for the book!