Infinity Rises

The Infinity Trilogy #2

by S. Harrison

Finn Blackstone is in trouble. A mission to find out the truth about her mysteriously absent father has morphed into a perilous game of cat and mouse. Now Finn and her friends must navigate a terrifying futuristic landscape filled with machines intent on the group’s annihilation.

As Finn struggles against external forces, she faces an imminent threat as she grapples with her alter ego, Infinity. By accessing her memories, Finn catches a glimpse of Infinity’s capabilities and feels a growing sense of horror at her past. But the more Finn and Infinity interact, the more the game shifts under their feet. In a world where it’s hard to tell your friends from your enemies, Finn’s past rears its ugly head to trip her up in unthinkable ways.

Finn must summon every ounce of strength she has to overpower her adversaries in a bone-rattling roller-coaster ride hurtling her toward an unknown future.

Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopia, Ebooks, Fiction, Audiobook

239 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 5, 2016

About the author

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

S. Harrison is an author from New Zealand, where he often indulges in his love of watching superhero movies and art house films. He frequently escapes to the many islands of the South Pacific, where he is hard at work on his writing. Infinity Lost is his first novel.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really hate authors who use first-person present tense the entire book. It's my new pet peeve. The first book in the series was good enough for me to want to get the second book. However, this was so annoying that I'll think twice before I get the third. It's much more graphically violent than the first book. Most of the book is told via flashback. It takes place over 1-2 days. It starts where the first book left off, then went into flashback mode fairly quickly. The really irritating thing was that the flashback doesn't even come back to the end of the first book! So you leave this book, having gone back in time, the author didn't even bother to get back to where he was. Frustrating!

[Micaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie: I struggled through most of this one. I listened to it while working, so it was background noise mostly. This book was slower than the first one and felt more drawn out than it needed it be. I was beginning to question if I could finish it when the final hour actually picked up in the storyline again. Too many unnecessary battles are used as fluff for me. But the ending was a nice little change of pace. I'm taking a break from this trilogy as I've lost interest and have others on my TBR I want to read/listen to, but I might come back for the 3rd one in the future.

[Felipe Macia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Talk about a disappointing Book 2... Book 1 was fine. It's a teeny bobber type book cashing in on the hysteria of Hunger Games and those terrible Dejected or Departed or whatever books and movies (oh ya Divergent, vom). But it was fine. Book 2 jumps straight in to nonstop action for apparently no real reason, no real explanation, and enhances the "story" by approximately zero percent. Its' just a quasi genetically enhanced mutant girl with split personalities (very tough to tell which is when or when they are mixed...) fighting an endless stream of robots... yawn... The author got really carried away with these robot fights...

Author: "Should I put in a couple robots?"
Editor: "Ya, that'd be cool. Ooh nice fight sequence."
Author: "Ok, sweet thanks, let's do that 1,000 more times, and make our superhero, that we know isn't dead, bc the whole book is a flash back..."
Editor: "Wow wow what's going on?"
Author:"... pretend like shes scared and gonna die and miss her so-called friends... and then fight more robots, get healed, MORE ROBOTS... get healed... run fast, be scared OMGOMGOMGROBOTSROBOTS.... - end scene - "
Editor: "wtf was that?!"
Author: "what a ride. ok send it to the presses!! no editing or story arc proofreading required! I've done this once before, so I think i know what i'm doing"

Anyways, not even worth getting in to. The first story was a cute idea. Then they didn't know where to take the story, and stopped trying, so wrote a bunch of nonsense.

Luckily it takes approximately 1 afternoon to read these, what I thought were for young adults, but actually are not terrifically violent and gory for no real reason, so maybe I'll torture myself through Book 3 just so I have something to complain about.

[Alan Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to finish this book solely so I didn't have to keep seeing it at 70% complete on my Kindle.

It is so bad. I don't know why I gave it 2 stars. My brain hurts from the endless battle scenes with drones and guns and bombs and then some shit about a dome caving in and everyone brutally dying. I honestly didn't even know what was going on. And Infinity's point of view is beyond annoying. It's like being stuck listening to the thoughts of some teenage girl with super powers but she doesn't know how to use her super powers but I guess she actually does know how to use them and then complains about a bunch of stuff and worries about her stupid mortal friends who she didn't like at first but now does like and they want to help her kill some guy for no reason because the author never fucking explains why anyone is doing anything through all 250+ pages of this shitshow.

Save yourself the $$ and time.

[Janet Zehr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of gore and excitement.

I don't know why I continued to read this. It seems to be nothing but blood, gore and totally unbelievable stuff, over and over. I do not understand why Infinity wants to kill the man who is supposed to be her father. But chapter after chapter is filled with desperate fighting with drones who are part of the complex she and her comrades are visiting and now desperately trying to escape.

[SwaySensei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would I/Did I buy it? Yes
Would I read it again? Yes
Would I recommend it to friends? Yes

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much non-stop action and too little plot development made me as battle fatigued as Infinity by the end.

Infinity Lost was pretty entertaining so I thought I’d give Infinity Rises a go, but I was quite disappointed by this second book and I’m not at all tempted by the third. The whole story is told in first person perspective, which I find hard to settle into, and also in a flashback. The main problem I had with this is that by the end of the book, the narrative hasn’t actually caught up to the present. Instead a clumsy chapter bearing no relation to the previous one is inserted. I could only surmise it was to make me remember Jonah, who hadn’t been featured at all this book as “Mr” Delgado had been picked up instead. His character was ridiculously different from the first book - evidently he feels differently about Infinity than he does Finn... perhaps something to do with the death of his son (who is clearly going to be revealed as being Zero in book 3...).

The whole book is one long battle scene with horrific, gratuitously described deaths. Endless drones and battle bots appear and smoosh everyone/everything, sometimes Infinity deals with them with a slightly different amazing flip through the air... it actually became a chore to read.

In my opinion, novels need rise and fall in their pace or you lose appreciation for the narrative. Too much of either means it is unbalanced and it is hard to keep being that excited for a whole novel. In all honesty, I feel like this trilogy is actually only big enough for one book but it was split into three and embellished to make more money.

I don’t know if the author is a male, but I felt like this whole thing was written with a very masculine energy and attention to detail - in terms of weapons, robot names and command sequences. Perhaps this would appeal more to a teenage male audience, but I’m not sure that they would identify with the female protagonist? I don’t know that I do either though - she isn’t very relatable, even when she does mellow and realise she might thing of some of the other kids as friends.

I think I’m going to stop here with this series. I need a little more plot & character development and a few more breathing spaces.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is Book Two of the Infinity Trilogy

Book 1: Infinity Lost 

According to Goodreads, I read this book in May of 2016 and rated it 4/5 stars. This means it was probably pretty good. It took me a few pages of book two to remember what was going on, but I believe I can describe it accurately enough here.

Finn Blackstone goes on a school field trip to Blackstone Technologies, a mega corporation that is owned by her mysterious and absent father. On this field trip she learns a few things about herself and her abnormal childhood. When a company AI goes crazy and starts attacking all the students, Finn and her classmates must work together to try and survive. (Find it on Amazon)

Book 2: Infinity Rises

Book two takes off more than one book after where book one ended. What? Well book two starts with Finn's friends trying to drag her to safety, and then continues as one long flashback. Only you still don't know how they got exactly where they were at the beginning of the book.  

Was it good?

I did not like this book. I remember I really liked the first book, but book two is literally non-stop action. It was really hard to picture a lot of this action, and I am exhausted from reading about the million ways the crazy AI continues to try to kill Infinity and all the soldiers and students around her. She only gets to sit down long enough to mentally heal her broken bones before she gets up and continues running or fighting. There's not a lot of character building aside from Infinity, and the only big change here is that she almost, kind of, begins to care about those students that she is trying to protect. 

I'm sorry guys, but I was disappointed by this. 

For more, hopefully happier, reviews please visit my blog.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

We finish the last book with Infinity taking control of the body she shares with Finn, but this book starts with Finn almost dead, badly injured, and with no memory of what happened. She goes into a trip down memory lane where she recovers more of Infinity's memories and gets a better idea of what's going on. I liked this better than the last one, because we get to know a little bit more about the other side of Finn and everything she is capable of, and also is a very action packed book that I really liked. Again, it ends in a big cliffhanger, but I like where this is going, hopefully we will have some answers in the next book.

So the book starts with Infinity taking control of the body and with the revelation that she has been working with Bit to infiltrate the place. She wants to ditch the others and go look for her father so she can kill him, and then help Bit find the answers she wants, but Bit practically blackmails her into helping her save the others. The AI that controls the place goes crazy and starts trying to kill everyone. They manage to escape, and as they go through many different challenges, she starts feeling, and blames Finn for that. She thinks she needs to be unfeeling to do her job property, and she starts feeling responsibility for the others, and even feel scared, and she thinks she is losing her touch.

After surviving a lot of stuff they are found by a group of soldiers, and she recognizes Captain Delgado, she hides from him, but then he sees her and orders her to go and defeat a bunch of robots that have already killed most of his men, she refuses to keep following his orders and then he fights her and with the help of more of his soldiers he manages to touch her necklace that acts as a command module and reprograms her to follow his orders. Immediately she forgets everything and becomes the killing weapon she used to be and defeats, alone, the robots that already killed three squads. At the end of the attack, she starts recovering, and when she goes back, pretending she is still brainwashed, she is discovered by Captain Delgado, who first tries to kill her and then takes her prisoner. They are taken to some transports that are going to take them out of there, but she knows that if she goes with them, they are going to brainwash her again and erase everything, plus she won't be able to go and kill her father who enslaved her and used her as an assassin, so she escapes with the help of two of her friends, one of them is killed by Delgado. Then, before they can escape the war robots fire at the transports and they fall. Infinity tries to go and find if someone survived, and is attacked, she is in a very bad shape, but she is rescued by a group that call themselves the Saviors, and call her Commander. She arrives in time to see that most of the people in the second transport survived, but she can't find Bit among them. While they are trying to escape one of the buildings start rebuilding and they have to escape since the war machines are coming and then everything goes crazy, and she gets hurt again and switches to Finn again.

So as the memories finish and she wakes up, she finds Jonah in the room with her, the man that she considered her true father, the one she loves above everything, but that she has discovered had lied to her, and messed with her mind constantly all her life, so she is afraid of the situation. The end.

[Carly Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my goodness! I'm practically hyperventilating from the fast pace of this story! It's amazing that when I think about it everything that's being described is all happening within a day and it isn't even over! And the ending! I seriously started thinking NO! NO! NOOOOOOOO! Not him! How did he get there???!!!!???? Please let it be another horrible memory! Please! I'm so glad I already have the 3rd book and can start on it right away! (okay there's an overabundance of exclamation points, but this book deserves every single one of them)

On a slightly more sober note, I keep thinking how absolutely horrible what has been done to Finn/Infinity is. I mean, really thinking about it, like it intrudes on my thoughts when I'm not reading. I want so badly for her to be able to get back at all of the people who have used her and lied to her and in the most fundamental ways twisted her into trusting them. I want her to be able to integrate her selves together and find a better life... jeez, this is a great story!

[Andrea Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Infinity Rises

So, a trilogy is a set of three RELATED things which happen one after the other. There is generally a CONCLUSION of some degree at the end of each one. If nothing else there's some sort of resolution to at least part of the story line. This is the second book in a row which ended in a cliffhanger with zero questions answered and a convoluted timeline not to mention the back and forth between who am I and how did this happen?

I like the story line. I like the characters. I would like to see this "trilogy" edited to remove the literal pages and pages of what I believe is unnecessary description of every detail of every aspect of every sci-fi type "character" or really anything sci-fi at all.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Tale Weirdly Constructed. Can't really say too much about this tale without giving away things from the first book (Infinity Lost), so I'll just say that the tale flashes forward some period of time (no more than hours) and picks up with the group from the end of Lost on the run. Around 1/3 to 1/2 in, we finally go back to finding out what caused them to be on the run, and this perspective stays through the rest of the book. Except we never quite meet up with the beginning of the book, and there are details at the end that seem to be not in sync with similar details at the beginning. Overall a great story, just very weirdly constructed.

[Taylor Chaos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Trilogy started out soo promising. I haven't had a book that was fiction that I had enjoyed in a while, and as far as the 2nd book it was just okay. I immediately stopped being interested in the main character and, and like the "evil" side of her more. I don't think that was the point, but it always bothers me when the main character is outshined by a bad guy. Honestly, this book made me no want the main character to 'win'. I get the whole fighting for control, and blah blah blah, but it honestly kind of took away from the more interesting carnage going on the rest of the plot.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read all three books in this series. #1 and #3 were good this book was pointless. It didn’t move the story along at all. And most of the important things that happen in this book are mentioned in the third book. My advice is to skip it or if you can’t stand that, skim it. It’s not worth a thorough read.

[Sarah TheAromaofBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book kind of felt like filler. It was mostly people running around and killing people, or running around and trying to not get killed by people. The timeline/flashbacks/alternating personalities situation was also a lot more confusing in this book than the first one. Still looking forward to reading the third book and seeing how things wrap up.

[Ian M. Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alarming androids, adventure and anguish as the frantic race for survival continues.

Picking up where book one ended, the fast paced action continues as our heroine (or should that be heroines?) leads the battle for survival against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Moving straight on to book 3.

Highly recommended.

[Christine Kayser · Rating 4 out of 5]

It starts a little slow, but once the action starts, it's full speed ahead right until the end. I'm really enjoying the Finn / Infinity character. However, it was super clear that this is part two of a trilogy. It definitely doesn't stand alone, and there's not a satisfying ending to this story. I still enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to reading the finale in the trilogy.

[Zoe Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even better than the first

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, but this is even better. While the first book focuses on Finn, this one we see a lot more of Infinity and get to know her in great her depth. This was a great, fast paced book that ends in such a way that there is now way you could NOT read the third book. I can’t wait to see what happen next!

[Bryan Jarrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great entertainment!

Very action filled. The author makes likeable characters that you root for and get involved with. Well done.
I enjoyed the first in this series and enjoyed this one more.
:

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Condensed time experience

Reading this book is like watching 24 series: a very detailed traumatic experience, actually in a very short time, but because if the amount of details, need to be read in a longer time

[Jcad6169 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the story and the surprises I. The plot twists. Does get bogged down a little in places, but the story is worth it.

[Melissa Burket · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most Epic Battle

This book is an epic battle from almost the first page. The descriptions of the tech and the geography made it easy to see the battles unfold in your mind.

[Juanita Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took a bit for me ro catch up to the writing style, but in the end, I can't wait to find out how it ends.

[Chris Morrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A

[Malcolm Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

action plus

Nothing else but action. But a great premise. The bionic woman meets a teenage girl and they are one and the same.

[Patsy Weir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suspense and action

Action and adventure on every page. Everything happens so fast its sometimes hard to keep up. Can't wait to read next book.

[xalida suleymanova ✰ 813 · Rating 4 out of 5]

📍7/10📍

[Christine Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great!

Infinity Rises is full of action. We learn so much about Infinity and her experiences during this book. I'm loving all of Finns classmates more and more and I really like the professor. Can't wait to start reading the next book.

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't enjoy this one as much as the first. This one doesn't seem to really go anywhere or move things forward very much. It just felt like an excuse to write a really extended battle scene. In fact almost the entire book is just a battle scene.

[Owen Axelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome book