I read sci-fi/fantasy book The Infinity Courts — here’s what I thought
“If we’re kind to a hundred people and cruel to one, can we really be considered kind?”
The Infinity Courts is about a teenage girl named Nami who is murdered and sent to the afterlife, a place called Infinity. Infinity’s ruler is a powerful A.I. queen named Ophelia. On Earth, humans use Ophelia as a virtual assistant, but in Infinity, she is on a mission to eradicate humans from the afterlife. It is up to Nami and other humans to defeat Ophelia and save humanity.
The premise of the book is fascinating. Modern A.I. technologies such as Siri, Alexa, and Cortana seem to be the model for Ophelia. There is a sense that technology is just a few steps away from what Bowman imagines in The Infinity Courts.
The book raises questions about morality, technology, humanity, and justice. Bowman describes the genre as a mashup between sci-fi and fantasy. Although the genre-bending book is a bold choice, she is successful in executing it through skillful world-building and well-developed concepts.
That being said, the book relies heavily on popular YA tropes. Some readers may love the structure this gives the book. Other readers may find the tropes too distracting to fully enjoy the story. For anyone currently deciding whether this is a book to add to their reading list, this is something to be aware of.
While it wasn’t a book that kept me awake at night wanting to read more, it was worth the read. Cover to cover, it took me four days to finish.
One element that I thought was working well was Nami’s characterization. She feels realistic and authentic. I like that she has very human struggles that most people can probably relate to. Nami is an empathetic character, and though she always means well, she doesn’t always do the right thing. The mistakes she makes along her journey add to her likeability.
Parts of the book are repetitive. At 470 pages, The Infinity Courts is a sizeable novel. Reading the story, I felt that much of the inner dialogue could have been trimmed. Many of the moral dilemmas Nami has are repeated several times throughout the story. Bowman may have done this intentionally to show how important these questions are to Nami, but this slows the pace of the story and makes it hard to continue reading at times.
The Infinity Courts is the first book in a series. The second book is The Genesis Wars, which came out on April 19th, 2022. I haven’t decided if I will be reading it or not yet. I enjoyed the concept of The Infinity Courts, but I’m not sure if it kept me interested enough to want to keep reading.
My Rating: 3.5/5
Trigger warnings: death, violence, slavery, mentions of torture
