Invincible by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Invincible by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Buy Invincible by Sherrilyn Kenyon at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Teens
Reviewer: Robert James
Summary: Sadly, the follow-up to the very enjoyable Infinity falls flat for me. Dark Hunters fans may find it more accessible than I did, though.
Buy? No	Borrow? Maybe
Pages: 420	Date: March 2012
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9780312603274
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Mild spoilers for book 1 of the Chronicles of Nick, Infinity by Sherrilyn Kenyon, lie below.

With Nick Gautier having survived the onslaught of zombies, and finding out that most of the people he knows are supernatural, he’s left wondering what to do now. He hasn’t got long to decide, though – because his new coach is putting pressure on him to steal some special items, and boys of his age are turning up dead. Will he be next? Not if he can help it! Can Nick avoid being murdered, deal with his coach, and work out just who he can trust?

Having found the first book in Kenyon's Chronicles of Nick totally implausible, incredibly hard to follow, but outrageously good fun, I was really looking forward to this one. Sadly, I feel rather let down. I did mention when reviewing Infinity that Kenyon's writing style was never going to win any awards for literary merit, but the amount of action in that book more than made up for it. Here, there seems to be significantly less going on - even the fight scenes, in the most part, are on the perfunctory side - and it feels like the author is becoming lazy. I'm far from being a literary snob, but when I read about a character being described as pwning another one it annoyed me to the point where I felt like throwing the book across the room. In fairness to Kenyon, I never got the feeling she was writing down to her teen audience in the first in the series - but it's hard to get away from that thought here with the choice of language, which reads like an adult author's idea of what teens want to read rather than someone confident in writing for young adult readers.

I'm also becoming increasingly confused due to my lack of knowledge of the adult series the books are linked to, The Dark Hunters. (At least, I'm assuming that's why I'm confused!) Strange characters keep popping up, dire future happenings are suggested, and I imagine if I was an existing fan of Kenyon's I'd feel rather more involved. Again, though, I found the first book just as befuddling but could forgive it because of the pacy plot. With less happening here, it's harder to overlook that flaw.

In fairness to Kenyon, it's not all bad news. While I'm not keen on her narration, her dialogue is frequently excellent, especially when Nick and his boss Kyrian are speaking. I also genuinely care about Nick, who's sarcastic, bad-tempered, but very easy to like because of his loyalty to his friends and his mother. The ending is an intriguing one which lifts the book a bit, as well. Given how much I enjoyed the first one, I'm not quite ready to give up on the series yet - but the third will have to be something of a step up to keep me on board.

For a more enjoyable and action-packed paranormal tale, I really liked The Dark Divine by Bree Despain.

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