Emerjas

I came out of this book very confused. I read the whole thing today, but I couldn't explain the world of it. It threw out so many terms - Spell Walkers, celestials, specters, various types of magical creatures and items - and I couldn't tell you how they all fit together in the world. There was some huge devastating event called the Blackout that is vaguely referenced multiple times, but I have no idea exactly what it was. I kept expecting things to get fleshed out and explained, but it never happened. Some fantasy books go too far in giving the readers information by subjecting them to info dumps, but this one went the opposite route and threw me into the deep end and then just left me there.

It's hard to like a thing when I have no clue what's going on. Not impossible, but hard. You just have to give me other things to love to focus on instead. Infinity Son did not do that. It did give me a character to hate though. The main characters were Emil and Brighton, brothers who could not be more different. Brighton wanted to be famous and have powers so he could join in the fighting that was happening in their city. Emil hated violence and wanted the fighting to stop. Unfortunately for Emil, he suddenly developed a power that forced him into the fight. And Brighton latched right on, seeing this as his chance to get famous. I hated Brighton. He was the kind of person who acted recklessly, endangering others with his actions, threw tantrums when he didn't get his way, didn't learn from his mistakes, and never took responsibility for his actions. He wasn't a fun character to have as a POV and I was frustrated with how many times people gave into his tantrums.

Emil was better, but there were just too many characters in the book for most of them to get enough focus to be fleshed out. A lot of them blurred together and I was constantly trying to remember who was who on the team. I liked the concept for Emil that he has phoenix powers and the ideas of different types of phoenixes, but it just didn't get enough focus.

It's a shame. I thought for sure I'd like this one.