GUEST REVIEW: Infinity by Sherrilyn Kenyon

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?

 

Title: Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Format: hardcover, 448 pages
Genre: young adult, paranormal fantasy
Source: personal copy
Published: May 2010 by St. Martin’s Griffin
Buy the book: The Book Depository | Kindle

Reviewed by Minx
First of all I would like to thank Book Vixen for asking me to guest on her blog, I was so excited to do it! *big hug*

Now to the book. As much as I love children’s literature I have often had a ‘thing’ about YA fiction. There are not many books in this genre I have been able to stick with, often finding the teenage angst too much after being surrounded by them all day, BUT even though I have loved the Dark Hunter books for some time, I went into this book with some trepidation and was delighted to find I loved it!

It is true, I did. The question is why? And I think the main answer is my background knowledge of the main character and the Dark Hunter World. The thing with children and children’s fiction is that kids will often accept things on face value; a computer game which transports you to a different dimension, houses killing evil witches and the mysterious room 13 which only shows up at midnight in the creepy hotel in Whitby. They will accept it, run with it and not require huge amounts of back story and character development, I think this is the reason I have found fault with too many YA novels; they haven’t been charming enough for children’s lit and not enough development for me to totally enjoy. I don’t know the real reason, and this is only my opinion, but I found that knowing what was going on in the Dark Hunter world meant I read a story which my own mind embellished. I knew who the mysterious stranger with the double bow was. I knew why he was doing what he was doing; the vignette of him and Artemis give me food for thought. And my list could go on. On top of that you had a likeable smart Alec character and human zombies! What is not to like?

I do wonder though how someone who has no knowledge of the DH world would rate the book. Would not knowing some of the back story have an impact? Possibly, but I think it would make a nice tease to interest you into the other world - the older world of Dark Hunters.

I read this in just over a day, once I started I couldn’t put it down and if I hadn’t have needed to go out in the afternoon, I would have finished it in a day. The story was engaging, the plot multi-layered. It is the story of Nicholas Ambrose Gautier (Go-shay... even if my English brain keeps seeing Go-tee-ay), a 14-year old boy who is bullied at school and gets in with the wrong crowd outside of school. Through one event he meets Kyrian Hunter who gives him a job. Kyrian is a Dark Hunter and Nick is slowly introduced into that world, however, school children are becoming zombies and a mysterious stranger appears and tells Nick that he is more than just a simple human teenager and he needs to unlock his powers. To do this he needs to battle the zombies. Will Nick and his friends survive? Nick is so fun and loveable, for all his smart comments, you want everything for him and his Mom to be fine.

For me this was a thoroughly good read and I will be reading the next one when it comes out. Perhaps it will even turn me into a lover of YA fiction as well as children’s literature! I give Infinity 4 of 5, a great summer read for both you and your teenager, so read it and pass it on!

Minx’s Rating 

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