Book Review: The End of Infinity

Before you read on, please note that this is book #3 in the Jack Blank trilogy by Matt Myklusch. His first book I read and reviewed can be found here, and the second, here.

If you have never read any of the books in this trilogy, please read this review at your own risk, because I shall be discussing characters and other whatnot that could spoil your Imagine Nation journey. Thank you for your consideration.

The End of Infinity
Matt Myklusch
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, perhaps a touch of Dystopian
Star Rating (out of five): 4.7

Summary:

All his life, people have told Jack Blank what his future holds. He hasn’t always liked what they’ve had to say, but there have been times when he’s wondered if they were right.

As the Imagine Nation’s final battle with the Rüstov draws near, Jack’s future is almost upon him. He and his friends will each need their unique powers and abilities to help stop the Rüstov and win the war. But are they prepared to use those powers against the most terrifying and dangerous enemy of all—the one inside of Jack?

The time has come for Jack to choose his path and discover for himself if he will become the hero that the Imagine Nation—and the world—needs him to be, or the cause of its total destruction.

Thoughts:

Wow. I mean, just...wow. If an author is able to make you want to punch a few pillows and kick the neighbor's ferret over a plot twist, you know that they are excellent writers.

There was hardly a gap in time between book 2's ending and book 3's beginning, and this gave me a bit  of a turn trying to figure it out at first. Of course, there's been a monster gap in time from when I read the other two books and this one. For the life of me, throughout this entire book I could not remember who Midknight was, and why he was there. I only knew he was fighting with the good guys.

Which brings me to this topic. Many authors sit and explain things, paragraph after paragraph, dumping info on us, making our heads spin. Myklusch, on the other hand, is an expert at HIDING things from the reader. He gives his main character, Jack, an awesome idea to defeat so-and-so, but he never tells us what it is until about five chapters later, when it comes into play brilliantly. The author is so good and knowing what his readers want to happen, and then doing the opposite while he plays behind-the-scenes and twists things even more.

Myklusch's plot twists were insane. It averaged at a plot twist per chapter. How he came up with all these ideas, I'll never know. He was able to incorporate almost every single character that I came to know through his books. And he was able to incorporate them into the story without it seeming like he was trying to hard, and still give the book suspense and mystery. There were several times where I wanted to just feed the book to my dog because the plot twist made me so upset. (I don't think my dog's mouth would've fit around it, though.)

As much as I adore this series, I do think Myklusch's editor ought to have been a smidge more careful. I saw typos here and there (like when he said "a" instead of "as"), there was one time where he had three punctuation marks in a row (It was: ?!!), and there was yet another time when he wrote that Jazen did something instead of saying Midknight did it. It would've been impossible for Jazen to be flying a fighter jet and playing chicken when he was inside of a building. If you weren't paying close attention, this could've been quite a nasty confusion zone, or you might've just skimmed over it.

This book also had it's fair share of humor by using both dialogue and observations. I quite enjoy things that are funny, so this fit the bill.

Matt gives his readers challenging vocabulary. He stuck words in there that forced me to hunt down a dictionary and flip through the pages. I was glad of the challenge. His diversity of words kept things from being monotonous.

The first two books almost led up to this one. Yes, those both had their own plots, and yes, they are needed to read the third. But this book was definitely the one that said whether the city would be saved, or become the Rüstov's new territory. There were so many battle scenes, and I for one was holding my breath during them (nearly keeled over during that particularly heart-wrenching scene).

If Matt decides to write more books in the future, I'll be first in line to snag a copy. That's how good these books are.

PICK UP The Accidental Hero (also known as Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation) TODAY! ...as in right now. Go!