INFAMOUS (Chronicles of Nick YA #3) by Sherrilyn Kenyon-A New Release Review by Marcie

Infamous By Sherrilyn Kenyon

Infamous is book 3 in The Chronicles of Nick. This is a YA series by Kenyon that follows Nick through his teenage years. If you are a fan of her Dark Hunters, then this series is a must read. Having read all the Dark Hunter books so far, and now reading Nick’s series there are times I feel like a ping pong ball. My mind keeps jumping back and forth between to the two series. I know how things have played out in the Dark Hunters, and am trying to wrap my mind around the events that are playing out in Nick’s teenage world, and how they will affect his present and future. I won’t lie to you and say at times I don’t get frustrated reading this series cause I do, but it’s not because I don’t like what I’m reading, it’s because I can’t figure out where she’s going with a certain storyline, or how something will play out when I know what’s already happened in the Dark Hunter series. Don’t worry people, it’s all good, it really is. It’s all part of the fun that Kenyon creates in her books with her wonderful characters and storylines. To me this is a sign of a great author because her writing keeps me coming back for more. Okay onto my review. 😉

The prologue of the book begins with Ambrose telling Nick more about their life. He explains how he’s able to come back in time to try and aid Nick so that he won’t make the same mistakes Ambrose has made. Nick is well aware now that he was born to be an instrument of evil. He can’t fathom that since he has never done anything evil and is against anyone causing evil or hurt to anyone. This part of Nick is in thanks to his mother and the human half of his DNA. Thanks to his mother and her upbringing we see that there is hope for Nick in the future and hopefully may be able to over come the darker side of his DNA. Enter Nick’s father Adarian. He’s the elder Malachai and evil to the core. If there was ever a father more deserving of Father of the Year, it would be him. Yes I’m being sacarstic, it’s so thick you can cut it with a knife. 😉 Adarian wants Nick dead before he comes into his full powers, or else Adarian will die at the hands of his son. Since the Malachai thrives on anger, evil intent, despair, etc he’s been quite content to live in a jail cell hiding from his enemies, namely Noir, all well biding his time to take out his son and consume his powers.

As the story begins chaos once again has erupted on the school grounds. Seriously, if I were attending that school, I think I’d be dousing myself in holy water and wearing crucifixes at all times. LOL!!! Someone has it out for the students in the school and has set up a website that is posting doctored pictures and false information about fellow classmates. At the time of this attack no one, not even Nick, Kody or Caleb realize it’s due to demon possession. Nick, Kody, and Caleb with the help of their friends Bubba and Mark over at the Triple B are working at finding out who this person is. Along the way however, trouble just seems to follow Nick in one form or another, literally. At one point Nick is being severely beaten by a fellow classmate who’s been possessed by a lower class demon and left for dead. Thankfully Kody is able to track him down and get him medical aid. Well Nick is unconscious he has no protection against his demon DNA and winds up visiting the one place Ambrose warns him about, Azmodea in the Nether Realm. At first this is a funny scene as Nick meets another demon Asmodeus, but it quickly turns dangerous for him. He learns where he is and hasn’t a clue as to how he got there. It’s during this little jaunt into Azmodea and a visit with Thorn that we witness Nick begin to tap into his Malachai powers, and see just how powerful he can be. At one point Nick lights up like a human torch and manages to fry some demonspawn. With the help of Thorn, Caleb and Asmodeus in the Nether Realm and Kody back in the human realm she manages to wake Nick up in time and bring him out of the Nether Realm. Later on in another unconscious trip to the Nether Realm we get to see Nick in all his Malachia glory, from his true form to his unlimited powers. It’s during this scene where Kenyon gives us hope for Nick’s future in his actions towards Kody. The scene had me sitting on the edge of my seat wondering what Nick would do, all well begging him to do the right thing.

Even though this book takes us down a darker path as Nick’s Malachai powers keep growing there are many bright spots along the way. We get to see more of Nick’s relationships with Kody, Caleb, his mother Cherise, Ash and Kryrian. There are many emotional moments with Nick and his mom and we get to see what Cherise went through well pregnant with Nick and then his birth. Their relationship and mother/ son bond is unbreakable and very touching. If it wasn’t for his mother there wouldn’t be any hope for Nick at all. Another bright spot in the book is meeting Bubba’s mother and getting more insight into his background and relationship with Nick. Bubba’s mom also played a vital role in Nick’s earlier life that we didn’t know about before. It’s these relationships and ties to humanity that I feel will all be beneficial to Nick if he’s to stay on the good path and beat his father and his Malachai heritage.

All in all this was an excellent book for both new readers and old(those who have read the Dark Hunter series) There are little snipits of information along the way that allow us faithful Kenyon minions to see where she is beginning to overlap the two series and bring certain storylines together. At one point I had a major AHA moment, but this moment didn’t come about right away. It was through a discussion I was having with a fellow Kenyon fan and the light bulb went off. Like I said earlier there are times I feel like a ping pong ball wondering how is she going to do that, can she rewrite that portion of the Nick’s life, etc. She keeps me guessing and wanting to read on. I know I’ve just finished Infamous, but I want to read Inferno now, I want the story to keep going.

READING ORDER for The Chronicles of Nick by Sherrilyn Kenyon

1.  Infinity
2.  Invincible
3.  Infamous (March 2012)
4.  Inferno (March 2013)

Reviewed by Marcie

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INFAMOUS by Sherrilyn Kenyon-Prologue and Excerpt

INFAMOUS by Sherrilyn Kenyon

INFAMOUS by Sherrilyn Kenyon-A prologue.

Prologue

It wasn’t every day you learned that you were the son of a ferocious demon and that your destiny was to end the world. Or that the guy you thought was your whacked-out uncle was actually you from the future trying to prevent not only your death, but that of basically everyone else…

Literally.

All in all, being that he was only fourteen years old, Nick Gautier was handling it pretty well.

Yeah, not really. Stunned into complete silence, which very seldom happened, Nick couldn’t breathe as brutal reality sucker-punched him. Hard. Mercilessly.

Right where it hurt most. Well, not physically there. But mentally it felt like his gonads had been stomped straight into the ground. His head swam from nausea.

Trying to get a handle on everything, he clutched at the broken stones on the stoop where he sat outside his new apartment building on Bourbon Street. Ambrose—the future him—stood to his left, towering over him with a pitiless sneer.

How was it possible that he was Ambrose?

Or more to the point, Ambrose was what he would become…

How could he, an average kid roaming the backstreets of New Orleans, be the ultimate evil? He didn’t feel particularly evil. Most days, he didn’t feel anything except stressed out by school, or tired of his mom nagging at him about everything from the clothes he wore, to the length of his hair, to how late he stayed up. Some days, it felt like she was looking for a reason to be ticked off at him.

Boy, if she knew this about him, he’d never hear the end of it. She’d probably ground him until he was at least three or four thousand years old. Yeah, it sounded ludicrous even to him, until he looked at Ambrose standing all bad ass and tough at his left.

Ambrose is me from the future….

He glanced around the section of Bourbon Street where his new apartment was located. Everything looked the same. The broken sidewalks that made up the French Quarter. The cars parked in a line on both sides of the street. The row of shotgun houses that led to stores and restaurants…

But nothing was the same.

Most of all, he would never be the same again.

I am a demon.

“No, no, no,” Nick repeated as he tried to come up with some other explanation. One that made a little more sense and that didn’t leave him as a tool for the darkest forces in the universe.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t one. Not that any of this made sense. It was all pretty farcical when you thought about it.

Him. Nicholas Ambrosius Gautier—smart-mouthed, streetwise kid. Typical teenager. Gaming guru. Anime and manga obsessed otaku. Socially awkward around any girl his age.

Total evil.

Dang, his principal had been right all along….

He really was demonspawn. Too bad Peters had gotten eaten by zombies before he found out the real truth of Nick’s parentage. Old fart would have been proud to be proven right.

Nick really was destined for a life of total destruction.

Even though he wanted to, he couldn’t deny it. Ambrose had the same exact blue eyes and dark brown hair he had. The same sneer that he often wore when things ticked him off—the one that got him grounded every time his mom saw it. More than that, Ambrose had the identical scar on his palm that Nick had been given when Xenon cut his hand for blood. A scar that hadn’t been on Ambrose’s hand the last time he’d seen him.

I’m in a flippin’ Twilight Zone episode.

He had to be. Nothing else made sense.

So where was his voice-over, telling the audience how he’d screwed up and taken a wrong turn down some suburban street or some such crud? C’mon, Rod Serling. Don’t let me down. I need you to come in and tell me that I’m in a nightmare. Tell me about this new dimension of sight and sound.

But there was no reprieve. Not from this skewed reality.

And not from the fact that he was the hated and hunted son of a demon…

“I’m evil.” He tried to accept that and still he couldn’t. If it were true, how could he go to Mass all the time with his mom? Shouldn’t he burst into flames when holy water touched him? Feel a burning sensation or something when he took communion? For that matter, he’d been an altar boy for years.

But he’d never once experienced the slightest bit of discomfort from any of that. The worst thing that had ever happened to him in church was when the priest had fallen asleep during his last confession—which said it all about how boring his life had been prior to all of this.

Yeah, okay, and then there was the time when he’d tripped going down the center aisle and spilled incense all over the place. But that hadn’t been a result of his birthright, unless you counted clumsiness and the fact his thrift store shoes had been too big for his feet.

“I am evil,” Nick repeated one more time.

Ambrose shifted his weight to one leg as his dark scowl intensified. “No, Nick. We’re evil. We were bred to be soldiers for the darkest of powers.” He said that so lackadaisically—Like, Hey, the sun’s shining. Look, the neighbor’s dog is in your trash again. Dude, you’re wearing one ugly shirt.

Oh, and by the way, you’re a demon in human form.

Yeah…

Much like the tacky Hawaiian shirt Nick was wearing, it just didn’t fit.

“Then why are you trying to help me?” he asked Ambrose.

Ambrose snorted. “I ask myself that every day, and I have no answer. Part of me wants to tell you to just embrace your birthright and go with it. To let the evil have its way and carry you to the Nether Realm for your enemies to use as they see fit. God knows, fighting it never gave me any peace or comfort. Not once. Just a giant sized ulcer. You want the honest truth? Caring about others has made my entire life suck from beginning to end. When you don’t care about anyone or anything, nothing can hurt you. When you do…”

Your enemies had you by your stones. He’d already learned that lesson.

Still…

“You haven’t answered my question.”

Ambrose sighed. “Because I don’t have an answer, kid. Contrary to what you think, we’re all mice lost in a maze. No one really knows what they’re doing. You go left for whatever reason, but you don’t know if it’s the right direction or not until you’re either electrocuted or you get the cheese. By the time you find out which it is, it’s too late to turn back. You’re either dead or you’re fed. There’s no third option.”

“I have to say then, that I prefer fed over dead.”

Ambrose laughed bitterly. “So do I. Some days, anyway.” He glanced skyward as if looking for divine guidance of some kind. “I seriously hope I’m not about to make another mistake.” He rubbed his hand against his forehead as if he had a pain there, then leveled a piercing stare at Nick. “Fine. I’ll tell you the truth. All of it. For better or worse. Let’s put the cards on the table and see how we screw things up this time, shall we?”

Nick wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. But either way, he wanted to know exactly what was going on and what he was up against.

Ambrose faced him. “This isn’t my first rodeo, but it is most definitely the last. You, Nick, are the only hope I have of getting it right. I’ve tried three times before this and each one was worse on the outcome than the last. When I started tampering with our lives, I had more humanity in me. I’ve all but lost it now. My last attempt burned out something inside me, and I’ll be honest, it scares me. And I don’t scare. Ever. Not after everything I’ve been through. But the degree to which I don’t care anymore—about anything—is a frightful thing. At times, I want it all to end. Because when it does, my pain will stop and I’ll have some degree of peace. Finally. It’ll seriously suck for everyone else. But like I said, I’m to the point where I really don’t care anymore. I’m holding on to my humanity by the thinnest thread imaginable, and any day now, I expect it to break. God help us all when it does.”

A chill went down Nick’s spine.

http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/stories/2012/01/infamous-excerpt#more

CLICK HERE FOR CHAPTER TWO: INFAMOUS by Sherrilyn Kenyon

 

 

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INFAMOUS-The Chronicles of Nick

 Infamous:  Release Date: March 13, 2012

The 3rd instalment in  Sherrilyn Kenyon’s -The Chronicles of Nick Young Adult series.

The world has fallen in love with Nick Gautier and the Dark-Hunters. Now Nick’s saga continues in the next eagerly anticipated volume…INFAMOUS

Go to school. Get good grades. Stay out of trouble. That’s the mandate for most kids. But Nick Gautier isn’t the average teenager. He’s a boy with a destiny not even he fully understands. And his first mandate is to stay alive while everyone, even his own father, tries to kill him.

He’s learned to annihilate zombies and raise the dead, divination and clairvoyance, so why is learning to drive such a difficulty? But that isn’t the primary skill he has to master. Survival is.

And in order to survive, his next lesson makes all the others pale in comparison. He is on the brink of becoming either the greatest hero mankind has ever known.

Or he’ll be the one who ends the world. With enemies new and old gathering forces, he will have to call on every part of himself to fight or he’ll lose everyone he cares about.

Even himself.

http://www.sherrilynkenyon.com/book/infamous/

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