Infinity Son is a book that I read before publishing my Pride month blogpost, but I didn’t get written up in time to include there. Partly, this was because I just didn’t get on very well with the book.

It’s not a bad novel — especially given it’s a YA book and I’m not the target audience — but there were a couple of elements I didn’t like, and one plot point that just hit one of my personal red buttons and left a bad taste in my mouth, but that probably won’t upset most other readers in the same way.

The broad plot is that, in an alternate New York of a world with magic, 2 brothers idolise the Spell Walkers, superheroes born with magic who fight against “specters”, who steal their magic from endangered magical beasts, like the phoenixes from the museum exhibit where Emil works. Then, in a fight on the Subway, Emil seems to use magic…

I was disappointed with the worldbuilding in a similar way as I was with Bright, the 2017 Will Smith urban fantasy Netflix film I reviewed at the time, where the existence of fairies, elves, orcs and centaurs appear to have had absolutely no other impact on reality. In Infinity Son, New York is thoroughly recognisable as our modern Gotham, but with magic and some extra events that happened in our characters’ backplots; the essential balance of the world is otherwise unchanged.

The book is fine; I initially rated the book with 5 stars (out of 5) immediately after reading it. But I withdrew it from the Pride blogpost because I couldn't bring myself to write it up appropriately and I argued with myself about whether to bring it down to 3 or 4. It’s good, but it didn’t sit with me fondly the way so many of the other books did here.

CN: cruelty, abuse and murder of animals, mental health and depression, hostage capture, murder, frequent mention of deaths of parents, uncomfortable sibling dynamics. Also, I just plain didn’t like some of the characters, albeit in ways that are clearly intentional.