Interesting new fantasy novel from Adam Silvera.

I’m a bit torn how I feel about this one. I enjoyed the story but I wish there was just a bit more to it.

There isn’t a whole load of word building, you have to work a lot of it out yourself and while this isn’t difficult I think it would have been nice to get a more rounded view of this word where Phoenix’s exist alongside Hydras, I mean there’s a whole boat load of mythology you can dive into there but it’s not all doom and gloom.

The book is split between two main POV’s you have twin brothers Emil and Brighton. Both born into a world where magic exists, there are celestials who are born with powers and practice ‘gleam craft’ and with any natural power you have people who aren’t born with but try to take said power. This is where our magical creatures come in, taking the blood of these and consuming it (sometimes with other rare materials) will imbue you with the powers of that creature. So like a hydra, if you have those powers and someone cuts off your arm, two will grow back etc. These people are called Specters. A vigilante group called the Spell Walkers formed to take them all down.

There’s a war going on between ‘normal’ people and celestials because of an event called the blackout which isn’t explained a huge amount, only that there’s huge animosity and campaigns against anyone with powers.

Celestials are born with powers but they can still manifest up until you’re 18. The brothers both hold out hope that at the appearance of a constellation called the crowned dreamer that their powers will come in on their 18th birthday. This doesn’t happen. They come across some guys selling potions to give you the feeling of powers and end up getting jumped on the subway, Emil while defending Brighton, manifests powers like a phoenix but these aren’t celestial powers they are specters. After a brief trip to the hospital, a shocking revelation, Emil flees only to encounter what he thinks is someone from the Spell Walkers, but it’s a specter. A fight breaks out and Emil and his family get taken into hiding by the Spell Walkers. There he learns the truth about himself and what his future will hold.

Out of the two brothers, I prefer Emil. I love that he is gay and isn’t just for the sake of the story. It’s refreshing and it was lovely to read and see his relationships form. Also props for discussing body issues that men have, it’s not something you see often in books and it is needed.

While I like Emil, by the end of the book I hated Brighton. He’s so selfish and power hungry. He films everything and does this to feel part of the world he craves to be welcomed to if he had powers. He is insanely jealous of Emil and often I struggled to get through his chapters. He felt a bit one dimension but with the ending, I have hopes that he will be more rounded perhaps.

I liked the other celestials, Atlas and Eva especially. Even Ness the specter but I do wish we saw more of these characters than their blind vengeance plan for the blackout.

Anyway! I did enjoy the book and it was easy to read. Love that it’s a gay fantasy story with mythical creatures and given the end, it has left it lovely and open for a sequel. A smidge more world building and you would have had me hooked!

It’s an interesting world, with shocking revelations, age-old wars, mythical creatures, magic, death and rebirth.

<b>I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in return for an honest review</b>

I so wanted to love this book. I was so excited to get an arc. I'd never read any Adam Silvera before as I'm not a huge contemporary fan but this was hyped fantasy so I had to give it a go.

But the only thing worth hyping is that it's an own voices lgbtqa+ fantasy with a diverse cast that's being hyped up.

First things first, it's a superhero novel with fantasy creatures. It doesn't really feel like urban fantasy and there's not much wield building. I'd love to read more on how all these magical creatures are living in the world. I want to find out more then they're just being hunted down for powers. Power is essentially the main theme of this book and it was just meh. The action was too quick, the pointless scenes too slow and if I'm honest I didn't care for most of the characters. Especially not Maribelle or Brighton. They were just obsessed over something each and far too angry with it.

There's also a death of a baby magical creature which broke me even if it went by quickly like nothing.

I did like Emil and Ness though. And I know I enjoyed it at moments I just can't really remember when now.

I usually try to leave a review on a positive spin so I'll say that I'll at least try the second book.

2.75 This is my first Adam Silvera book since he normally writes contemporary which isn't really my thing, however I love fantasy with LGBTQ+ characters so I thought I'd give this a go. Unfortunately this a bit of a disappointment to me, the premise was interesting, loved the creatures especially the phoenixes but it was a bit too superhero for me. Emil is a sympathetic character and I enjoyed his POV in the beginning but as the story went on he seemed less complex and more of a "too good for this world" character. He is kind hearted and trusting to a fault, don't get me wrong I do like a sweet cinnamon roll but I just found myself rolling my eyes when he was talking to people and boy did these teenagers love to talk about their feelings and sad back stories. I get it teenagers should be more open with their feelings and everyone needs to look after their mental health but it gets old in a fantasy book when you just want some action and everyone won't stop talking. The dialogue didn't feel that natural, they didn't really talk like teens but I suppose they had to mature quicker than most teenagers. I didn't find any of the side characters particularly unique, they all kind of blended together and the love interest has potential but their interactions with Emil were lukewarm and seemed forced. I found his brother Brighton an intriguing if arrogant character, on one hand their relationship is tight and on the other hand there is definitely tension and when Emil gets powers there is a lot of resentment as well. I'll be interested to see how Brighton's character develops. There was quite a bit of action and life or death situations but because I didn't feel anything for the characters I found it hard to care about who made it. Overall this didn't resonate with me but if you are a big fan of the author you might appreciate it more than I did.

This was my first book from Adam Silvera and have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it! All of the characters were well developed and really liked the relationships they had with each other. I had such a good time reading this book and will definitely look out for Silvera’s books in the future!

This book was such a surprise to me, i enjoyed it far more than i thought thought i would having only read contemporary novels from Adam Silvera.
This is an action packed story with really interesting, well developed characters.
I really enjoyed this and I hope Silvera writes more fantasy in the future!

This is the first Adam Silvera book I've read, and I did enjoy it, although with a few reservations. I liked the overall story and the relationships between the characters, particularly Emil and Brighton and their mum. I thought Silvera provided the right amount of information about the way magic works in his universe to help you connect without being expositiony. However, I would have liked more world building - the plot had so much forward momentum that at times I felt it was moving too quickly and I would have enjoyed some slower scenes with the characters just moving through the world to provide more context. This also impacted on the character development, as I didn't feel like any of the characters became truly 3D. My favourite was probably Ness as his character arc was definitely the most developed. I'm sure this can be rectified in future installments, though, and I am curious to see where the story goes next.

I really wanted to love this book, and it had great potential. I enjoyed the plot, but the writing style just didn't work for me sadly

I love Adam Silvera’s contemporary novels but unfortunately this one just wasn’t for me. The world building was minimal which made the story seem complicated and hard to understand, because of that, I just couldn’t get connected or invested in these characters.

IN SUMMARY: An amateurish first draft of a book, INFINITY SON drags itself through juvenile writing and lifeless characters in a poorly-built world.

Yikes. I had never read an Adam Silvera book before INFINITY SON... and safe to say I'll probably not read anything else by him again.

How can I describe how shallow this novel felt? How lifeless? Even though it's set in contemporary New York, there's no attempt to slowly draw you into the magical elements of this alternate world. So many terms are dropped around so fast that you aren't given any breathing room to digest the information. I still can't tell my Spell Walkers and Halo Knights and Blood Casters and reincarnations and phoenix breeds from one and the other. It expects you to know everything as it blazes along, no thought to the poor reader who has no idea what's going on. I suspect Silvera is so used to writing contemporary that actually having to weave fantasy elements into the real world escaped him, but it's no excuse for such awful world-building.

Likewise, character introductions are not given the time they deserve, and as such the myriad of superheroes meld together to form a faceless, forgettable cast. I can't stress enough how poor the characters were. There! Are! So! Many! And half of them are unnecessary, including the POVs. I'll be the first to say that all of these characters had roles in some way or another, but they could have been easily cut or condensed into other characters so that the cast I'm being forced to care about isn't so egregiously large.

That's INFINITY SON's biggest problem. Because the cast are given no development time aside from shallow "here's my tragic past" moments, I don't care about a single one of them. I don't care when one is betrayed. I don't shed a single tear when one dies. In fact, the only thing INFINITY SON does right is diversity, having a cast from all backgrounds, but Being Gay isn't a personality trait. If I don't care about the characters, I don't care what they're fighting for, and ultimately I don't care about the book.

Brighton, in particular, is The Worst, even though the book tries to force empathy for him several times. In the beginning, he's reckless to the point of endangering his friends and family all for the sake of getting those sweet, sweet views, and entirely lacks common sense (because you know, I want to film this war between magical people who will not hesitate to kill me, and who cares if I'm a burden to the Good Guys who are forced to protect me, right? ). He's horrible, but not in a way that's unlikeable, because even the unlikeable protagonist has some trait of theirs that makes me want to root for them. Brighton has absolutely nothing going for him and, worse, he doesn't learn squat by the end of the book. He's still shallow. He still lacks common sense. He's still reckless. He's still madly obsessed with YouTube and views. I rolled my eyes multiple times at his utter foolishness.

Where do I also begin with the awful writing? The hollow attempts to be hip and cool as it drops cringe references to modern culture left and right? It will date the book in a matter of months. The amount of enthusiastic Internet references, like to Instagram and viral videos and YouTube and Tumblr and even freakin' Lyft... there's a way it can be done so that it doesn't seem like that the only thing that matters in the world, but here, it entirely overshadows the fantasy aspects. Heck, there's more focus on Brighton's vlog's view count than there is the freakin' magical creatures! You know, the phoenix on the cover? The thing that defines this book as fantasy???

Aside from that, the writing itself is so juvenile and not what I'd expect from an established author. The metaphor usage is so jarring; it could be an intense scene with the weirdest comparisons that immediately break immersion.

What also annoyed me is the constant summarising of EVERYTHING. Take this one scene that has Emil and co. fighting a bunch of bad guys. As his cohorts are knocked aside, Emil must take charge. Instead of:

-In no time, the fire is spreading. I brave through the gray and gold flames. Iris is running behind me, and Atlas flies above.
"Atlas, get Brighton and Prudencia out of here!" I shout.
The higher I get up the steps, the more my rib cage aches.

It goes:

-In no time, the fire is spreading. I brave through the gray and gold flames. Iris is running behind me, and Altas flies above. I shout for Atlas to get Brighton and Prudencia out of here. I can't believe I'm out here giving instructions, but time is wasting. The higher I get up the steps, the more my rib cage aches.

As a composition technique, summarising should be used for scenes that need to be mentioned but are not important overall in the narrative arc, and I'd say that Emil taking charge for the first time since becoming a Good Guy is extremely important to his development.

This sort of writing is all over the book, and it's no wonder that the characters feel like hollow, lifeless plot devices when they're not afforded opportunities to become characters. This type of writing also kills the pacing, as it speeds through moments that shape a character in the reader's eyes.

Let's not forget the tendency to create suspense... only for it to be solved two pages later with summary. Sigh.

There's no distinguishing trait between the voices in this book aside from the slang dropped in every other paragraph.

-The Blood Casters have got me straight scared with how still they are.

Compare this writing to Angie Thomas. Thomas absolutely nails a voice who uses slang all the time, but here I just want to shrivel with every 'straight up [blank]', '[blank] as hell', 'legit', 'go off' and 'no lie'. There's just something here that makes it cringe rather than tied to any of the POV's voices.

Finally I want to talk about the use of the Chosen One trope. I love this trope to heck and back, but in this instance it was twisted into silliness. If you're going to lampshade about how Emil is the Chosen One personified "just like in those comics" you have to at least subvert the trope and my expectations somehow, otherwise it comes off as campy. Of course, Emil and co. getting powers when they most needed it was just so convenient for the plot.

No, unfortunately, INFINITY SON is beleaguered with terrible writing, terrible world-building, and terrible characters. Like I said in my summary, this reads like a first draft that needs a huge structural edit. Not something I'll be able to buy in a few months.

WILL I READ ON? No.

I've been an Adam Silvera fan for years, ever since reading More Happy Than Not. I have loved all of his books in the past and he is one of my instant buy authors. When he announced a YA fantasy series about brotherhood, phoenixes and gay teens, I was so excited, and even more so when that beautiful cover was revealed! And I was super hyped to receive an Advanced Reader Copy as getting the chance to read Infinity Son early was a dream. Regretfully, now that I've turned the last page, I have to confirm what I knew after perhaps 50 pages in. Infinity Son just wasn't for me.

Infinity Son is essentially about two brothers, Emil and Brighton, who live in New York and look up to the Spell Walkers, a group of vigilante, natural born celestials who protect the city against specters, the bad guys that gain their powers by killing rare magical creatures. Brighton dreams of being a celestial, but Emil just wants to live in a life of little violence and to help look after phoenixes. But when the brothers get caught up in a fight with a few specters, Emil discovers he has powers. Everything turns upside down as Emil finds out who he really is, how he is meant to be one of the Spell Walkers that Brighton always wanted to be.

Now, let me just say this first of all. I realised this book wasn't for me early on in my reading experience and that is largely because the book is most certainly directed at much younger readers. I'm 28, so it's pretty obvious I'll have a completely different reading experience than anyone a decade or more younger than me. In saying that, however, I read a lot of Young Adult, much more than Adult Fiction, and I normally thoroughly enjoy books aimed at young readers. Whatever the case, I definitely think that audiences who are in their teens will get a lot more out of Infinity Son that I did. I sure hope so!

Regardless of the age thing, there are a couple of things that got in the way of my enjoyment of this book. One is that the pacing throughout the story just fell through. I wasn't invested in the story as much as I wanted to be because it was too fast paced, with simplified plot points and action sequences that lacked in detail. There were a number of revelations that ended up feeling anti-climatic because they were glossed over so quickly. That leads me into the other main reason why I was left underwhelmed with this book and that is that the characters felt underdeveloped for me. I never felt as though I really reached a point where I understood most of the characters or truly cared about them. Brighton's character was particularly uninteresting to me, though that may simply be because I just couldn't understand his obsession with becoming Internet Famous, though I appreciated Adam Silvera's choice to explore the toxicity of being obsessed by social networking platforms as a theme throughout the book. Unfortunately, I was just left at the end of the book not really caring enough about most of the characters. I'm a big fan of character-focused stories, so it's disappointing for me to have ended up feeling this way about these characters as I really wanted to love them all.

My thoughts about this book are not all doom and gloom. I did like Emil Rey for the most part. His character was the most developed of all, and I loved his obsession with Phoenixes and the way he dealt with his own personal beliefs and sense of self when his world turned upside down. I also thought Ness was an interesting character and if I ever do read the sequel, I'll look forward to seeing how he develops, especially in his relationship with Emil. I also enjoyed the urban fantasy setting, the political conflicts between the celestials, the enforcers and the Blood Casters, and was especially interested in the inclusion of alchemy and various magical creatures. Really, what book isn't made better when it has phoenixes in it?

While I wasn't personally won over by this book in whole, I really hope lots of readers enjoy it especially because Adam Silvera deserves a lot of praise for writing his dream fantasy series lead by a gay main character. I hope Infinity Son will thrill many.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with a copy for review.

I have never been so excited to receive an ARC as I was to receive an ARC for Infinity Son, my most anticipated upcoming release. I've read every one of Adam Silvera's novels and I have never been disappointed, he has such beautiful writing that pulls you totally into the world he weaves and makes you feel so connected to the characters that it feels as though you are a part of the story yourself.

Infinity Son follows a group of celestials (known as the Spell Walkers) who possess natural powers that manifested at some point in their lives as they face off against a group of specters, people who crave power so deeply that they violently take the powers from magical creatures for themselves. The twin brothers at the center of the novel, Emil and Brighton, who have always admired the Spell Walkers and longed to discover they too possess power, are thrown deeply into this chaos after their own run-in with a specter.

This is Adam Silvera's first fantasy novel and I hope it is the first of many because he writes fantasy so well. It is a totally unique story, that feels like it perfectly blends the typical aspects of a fantasy novel with elements of superheroes and vigilantes and modernity. The world building introduces the reader to the different parts of this world and the events that have taken place beforehand without being overwhelming or confusing. I never felt like I didn't understand what was happening. It embraces the modern world and social media plays a huge roll throughout the novel, something that is often ignored in fantasy.

It does all of this whilst still feeling very character focused, something that I always love about Adam Silvera's writing style. There are a lot of central characters in this book, but each one is well developed and distinctive. He did a brilliant job of introducing them all, portraying their personalities and feelings, giving some background details about them, working in their relationships with the other characters, and so much more. I cannot wait to see them again and learn more about them all in the sequel. 

It is the book I have always dreamed about. A fantasy with powers, magical creatures, wands, unexpected plot twists, and more. A fantasy that understands the importance of family and friendship in connection with independence. A fantasy full of queer characters who fully embrace their sexuality and no one is ever questioned. 

It is everything and I can't wait for it to come out so everyone can experience this book too.

This is an urban fantasy with a magic system that never really makes any sense. Everything has tons of confusing and interchangeable names for things that aren't even explained either. Things are just dropped and we're just supposed to go, ah yes wands, specters, celestial, what? If the characters and the world-building weren't bad enough, this plot is yikes. While it had a lot of action, it was all so uninteresting and there kept being random twists that would come out of nowhere to be shocking but were just annoying. Plus out of nowhere there was random POV switches of people we didn't even know. I found the main characters social media use interesting but didn't enjoy the writing style or plot of this book.

Emil and Brighton are brothers who idolise a vigilante group known as Spell Walkers. Spell Walkers are attempting to rid the world of beings known as Spectres who are cruelly stealing the lives of endangered creatures to absorb their power. When Emil suddenly manifests powers of his own he his forced into the action he wanted to avoid, whilst Brighton is jealous that Emil could become the Spell Walker Brighton always dreamed of being.

There are some fun ideas within this novel, not least of all the phoenixes – I loved reading about the different types and I felt like this was probably the largest piece of world building and development within the novel. Unfortunately that was precisely the problem – there was no world building.

The beginning of the story very much feels like the middle of it – the characters are hardly introduced, lots of terms (Blood Caster, Spell Walker, Spectre, Celestial, Gleamcraft) are used frequently with no explanation (I still have no idea what a Celestial even is) and they feel out of place within the world. Equally, a terrible Blackout is supposed to have occurred but, short of being told it was the worst thing to ever happen, we know nothing else about it to contextualise it or use it to visualise the setting. I think the intention here was for there to be a truly magical fantasy setting in which the various magical items, like wands for instance, would seamlessly fit into the story. But that isn’t the case, in fact many of these things (especially the wands!) feel really out of place and were quite jarring additions. Gleamcraft for instance was just a fancy way of saying magic – this might work in a high fantasy novel, but not in a half-contemporary-half-fantasy hybrid novel set in a normal place.

I really can’t tell you very much about the world aside from the terms used, because it was completely underdeveloped. Equally the characters felt really superficial, with both Emil and Brighton’s narrative voices blending into one and neither of their voices was likeable – when you have to check which perspective you’re reading from multiple times during a chapter you know something is amiss! On the bright side, Silvera injects an especially diverse cast of characters within this novel, which I really loved, and the cast is huge which could be interesting in later books in the series. Typically such a large cast would be tricky to keep track of but this was portrayed well, particularly because a number of the characters stood out because of their abilities.

This is my first Adam Silvera book and I am so disappointed I didn’t start with one of his contemporary novels because his venture into fantasy writing was difficult to follow and, really, it felt like a contemporary author was trying out fantasy for size. I won’t be carrying on with this series.

ARC provided free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Silvera’s evident love of the fantasy genre is laid out for us in his intro, and is splashed all over the pages of this foray into the genre.
The story itself has some interesting elements. Definitely loving the phoenixes and the details linked to the idea of rebirth. There’s hints of some intriguing developments between the characters of Emil and Mirabelle, and Brighton’s story looks as if it’ll pick up and get a whole lot more interesting in the future. This was a quick read but it was not, unfortunately for me, the hit I was expecting and there’s a few reasons for this.
The main reason I found this not wholly successful was the lack of time taken to establish the world in which it was set. We were plunged straight in, and little was explained in a way that would have made sense to me. Some of the answers were given later, but there was a lot assumed about the world of the narrative and I really wanted more detail so I could understand how this situation had come about.
The next difficulty I had was with the characterisation. It took a while to feel any sense of difference between the characters of Emil and Brighton, and simply hammering the point home that one is obsessed by social media isn’t enough to do this. To suddenly find myself with another viewpoint - which wasn’t really set-up - also made it wobble slightly as I tried to keep track of who was doing what (though this may say more about me).
For some readers, the love interest that develops partway through will definitely get them excited. The feelings Emil has for Ness are hard to ignore, but they are really superficial (guess we have to start somewhere). The initial scene where their feelings were apparent felt like some kind of wish-fulfilment exercise, and Silvera’s comments about his reaction to Cassandra Clare’s series does explain this a little. It seemed they might be able to get into a more nuanced relationship but the events in the narrative make this difficult. No matter how he dresses it up (and perhaps his explanations will make people swoon over his resolve to hurt the one he loves to prevent someone else doing worse) I can’t quite get my head around the way Ness treats Emil. When you look at it in a more detached way it seems horribly abusive and not the basis for a good relationship. Granted, it’s early stages so perhaps this will develop in a slightly different way.
So, all in all, this was a story where someone got to revel in their love for a genre but I can’t help but feel things would be better if the style was a little less exaggerated, world-building was established and we weren’t in some whirlwind attempt to cram excitement onto every page to guarantee people reading on. Sometimes, less is more.
Due for release in early 2020, so it’ll be interesting to see how/if it changes by then. However, I’m really grateful to NetGalley for letting me read this so early in exchange for my honest thoughts.

This book is the start of something so very special. It is literary alchemy at its finest. Bringing in multi character first person narrative allows you to instantly engage with the characters and invest in their story. The world building is on point from the very start. Much like Heroes, The Boys and Hancock, Infinity Son keeps it within a world we recognise. However, we’re imbedded into a world we know with an unknown addition. It creates an imbalance that will keep you on your toes. Finally, the story is really well crafted, one that allows for a somewhat fulfilling ending while ensuring you will be begging for the sequel the second that last page is read.