At fourteen, Nick Gautier thinks he knows everything about the world around him. Streetwise, tough and savvy, Nick 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, 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 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 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?
--Infinity: Chronicles of Nick by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Copyright ©2010 by Sherrilyn Kenyon, published by St. Martin’s Press
My Review
I have to admit, when I first started reading this novel, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve loved Nick practically since the beginning of the Dark Hunters series and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know all the details of Nick’s teen years. I felt I knew enough and I like a little mystery in my men. But when I realized the series would also give me more background on some of the Dark Hunter characters, I decided to give it a go.
Nick is your average 14 year old high schooler…if your average high schooler is from the wrong side of the tracks, being raised by a single mother, dad’s in prison—where he can stay, thank you very much—going to an expensive private school on a scholarship where he risks getting beaten up and/or insulted in some form or another practically on a daily basis.
But life at this average high school is about to become decidedly un-average when a student is attacked on school grounds by a zombie. Nick’s life is changed when his eyes are opened to a world he never knew existed in his own back yard.
And…um…I’m not sure what else to say. Yeah, a whole lot of things happen. Nick finds out that the zombies his friends Bubba and Mark were always talking about are real, there are vampires and werewolves running around the city and the people he always thought were just a little bit crazy turned out to be completely sane. And he needs to trust them, otherwise he just might go a little insane himself.
I was all set to tear into a huge, deep gaping chasm of a mistake in this story when Kenyon managed to redeem herself toward the end of Chapter 13. You see, I’ve read all the stories in Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series and I know when Nick meets Simi for the first time and how that meeting impacts their futures. Now in Infinity, Nick’s meeting her for the first time at age 14. How can he meet her for the first time in his late 20s if he meets her at 14? Big, huge, deep gaping chasm of a mistake…right? But, as I said, Kenyon redeems herself, and very nicely too, and explains away the error, because it’s not an error. Get it? No? Read the book and you will. Pay special attention to Ambrose’s words in Chapter 13.
Infinity: Chronicle of Nick was written for the Young Adult audience, so if you’re expecting the same, ahem, action as in the Dark Hunter novels, you’ll be disappointed. Nick’s a teenager, and while he notices girls, nothing more happens than a quick little kiss. Just one. But it’s a fun story and a great introduction to the life of one of the most interesting of all the Dark Hunter characters.
I give this story THREE STARS.
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