Kelly's Review: INFINITY

INFINITY

By Sherrilyn Kenyon

Book 1 in the YA Series, Chronicles of Nick

Published by: St. Martin’s Griffin / 175 Fifth Avenue / New York, NY 10010

First Printing: June 2010

ISBN: 978-0-312-59907-2

Amazon; Barnes and Noble; Goodreads

Concept: “At fourteen, Nic Gautier thinks he knows everything about the world around him. Streetwise, tough, and savvy, Nic and his quick sarcasm are the stuff of legend…until the night when his best friends try to kill him. Saved by a mysterious warrior who has more fighting skills than Chuck Norris, Nic 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 covering 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 Nick 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 chain saw 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 is the first book in the Chronicles of Nick and the first Young Adult novel for an amazing author, Sherrilynn Kenyon. I first was introduced to Nick back in Book 2 of the Dark Hunter series. He was a squire for Kyrian Hunter, around the age of 21 or so as I recall. Maybe 18 or 19? I’m not sure. Anyway, here, in THIS series, we meet Nick as a 14 year old 9^th grader in New Orleans. (So follow me here, that would make this book a Dark Hunter Prequel.) He goes to a private school, something his stripper mother with a heart of gold (cliché much?) insists on for him. She insists on other things too, like no television or telephones and bad clothing. Yup, think flowery Hawaiian shirts. So she sends him off to school where he of course, is used to getting his ass kicked on a constant basis (another cliché). He ends up hanging with the wrong crowd and one night, the wrong crowd leads him into a bad situation. The friends try to mug some tourists but Nick, being our hero, saves the old tourist couple from their clutches. Enter Kyrian. ::inserts TA DA music here:: Kyrian saves Nick (who was beat up badly by his so called friends) and offers him a job (paying $1,000 a week) that Nick cannot refuse.

So, before I forget, I have to insert some of my plot questions at this point. If his mom is a stripper (never mind the bad cliché about having a big heart, wanting to do what’s right for her son, etc.), wouldn’t she have a good street knowledge grip of what wouldn’t get her son’s ass kicked? I’m just not buying that. And any mom worth her salt, would be slapping the sarcasm right off of Nick’s mouth let me tell you. Just some thoughts.

So off Nick goes to Kyrian’s house and in the middle of learning about the Dark Hunter meet Nick world, we are also introduced to a little Zombie action. YAY! I love zombies!!! And hey, everyone knows there aren’t enough underworld critters in SK’s world right? Vampires, daimons, were-critters, dream hunters, I can’t even keep up with them all. So yeah, we needed some zombies too. ::insert sarcasm here:: We also get reintroduced to Acheron and Simi (gosh I love Simi) and Tabitha. There are also some Peltiers from Sanctuary which I haven’t read about yet but have heard about so I can’t really speak intelligently about them. I think it would be a nice introduction/set up for the Dark Hunter series if you were going to read those next after this Young Adult novel. Ms. Kenyon is notorious for introducing characters in her books. I dare you to find a book where she doesn’t introduce someone. I double dog dare you.

Throughout the zombies and Dark Hunters and an over-protective mom, we also learn that there is something dark and mysterious going on about Nick. Don’t ask me what though. I have no idea. Neither does anyone else YET. I assume that comes up later on. We learn just enough to almost get a “hey, that’s what this story is about!” but not quite.

What I liked: I really think it’s awesome to have a male point of view YA novel. Beautiful Creatures was written from a male point of view and I thought it was fascinating. I was hoping that with Nick, it would be a more kick ass male point of view. I’m giving major points for the idea.

I also loved Bubba and some of his “Bubba-isms” that just cracked me up. It kind of reminded me of the movie Zombieland in a way. Bubba rocked.

What I disliked: My first, and major BIG issue. What the hell is “gah?” Who says “gah?” Why can’t you say “God?” Is that some politically uncorrect thing??? If you can drop “f” bombs (this book doesn’t) but, I’m just saying, if you can say the “f” words, why couldn’t you say God? So what the hell is “gah?” Quit using it! It bothers me!

Anyway, this is going to be hard to explain, so hang with me here. Even though this is a prequel book, if you had not read the Dark Hunter books, I don’t think you would be following along with the story points so well. The greek gods are in here without the lengthy explanations and you know, just explaining Simi alone can be difficult. So as a youth reading this book, it might be very hard to follow along with. An adult, AFTER having some Dark Hunter knowledge under their belt, would enjoy this more except, there needs to be more romance because that’s was Ms. Kenyon is about. ROMANCE. Where is it? On top of that, some of the plot points in this story were really hard to follow. For example, the zombies that are over-taking New Orleans, come about because of a special computer game that has the side effect of turning people into flesh-eating book bad guys. I’ll read the rest of the series, only because I am officially obsessed with Ms. Kenyon’s stories, but it won’t be at the top of my list.

My rating: 3 feathers

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