Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey – Review

Published: March 28, 2023

Publisher: Orbit Books

Series: Pandominion #1

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 544 (Paperback)

My Rating: 4 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
From the author of the bestselling The Girl With All the Gifts comes a brilliant new genre-defying story of humanity’s expansion across millions of dimensions, and the AI technology that might see it all come to an end. Perfect for readers of The Space Between Worlds and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The Pandominion is a political and trading alliance consisting of roughly a million worlds.

But they’re really all the same world – Earth – in many different dimensions. And when an AI threat arises that could destroy everything the Pandominion has built, they’ll eradicate it by whatever means necessary—no matter the cost to human life.

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Books by M.R. Carey are almost guaranteed to be good but weird. I was really excited to see exactly what kind of fun spin he was going to put on the multiverse and I wasn’t disappointed.

The story starts off with Dr. Hadiz Tambuwal, who has been working on a project that somewhat inadvertently leads to the discovery of the multiverse. Unfortunately, by the time she discovers what can be done using this technology, it’s too late for Dr. Tambuwal’s Earth. Rather than hopelessly trying to save a world that’s already crumbled, she just steps into the next one that’s most similar to hers where her city of Lagos, Nigeria still stands. While her Earth has been degraded by pollution, war, and societal collapse the one she moves to is not quite so far along on that downward spiral. 

Here is where we are introduced to Essien Nkanika, a man who has escaped slavery only to alternate between working at a landfill sorting trash and sex work. Here is where he encounters Hadiz Tambuwal and where his life will be forever changed.

And then, most fascinating of all, is Watchmaster Vemmet. The Watchmaster lives in the Pandominion – a consortium of worlds who share trade, resources, and a military across the multiverse. Vemmet massively errs when he fails to report the detection of Hadiz’s steps between worlds and is sent with a pair of Cielo soldiers to deal with the task. This event leads to a great deal of changes for both Vemmet, the soldier Moon Sostenti, Essien, and Hadiz Tambuwal. 

And lest I leave out my favorite POV character, we also have Topaz Tourmaline FiveHills who goes by Paz. She’s a rabbit humanoid who lives in the city of Canoplex, which is in the same location that Lagos is on Hadiz and Essien’s worlds. She’s very young (school age) and I found her POV chapters to be the ones I was most fond of because hers is really a coming of age story at its heart. She wants friends and when Dulcie, a new student, arrives they quickly become BFFs. Dulice, however, has a secret and Paz finds her life quickly spiraling out of control as well.

In many ways, this book reminds me of The Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, which I remember fondly from years ago. The concept of ‘stepping’ into the next world over is not a new one, but M.R. Carey takes it to the next level. I like the exploration of a multiverse spanning consortium and the vast mechanisms required to make it function. The different evolutionary histories on the various worlds that led to humanoids descended from canids, lagomorphs, felines, etc. were also delightful and made me think “Redwall, but make it Warhammer 40K”. I admit, I loved the parts with Essien as he was transformed into a Cielo because I am 100% a sucker for all things supersoldier. Especially if they get cool augments and it has serious “War is Hell” energy, which this has in spades. 

Infinity Gate is an ambitious and strange beginning to a series that I will be curiously following. I didn’t totally fall in love with this book, but it intrigued me and I’m planning to add the second book to my TBR when it’s released. I honestly would have preferred more of the Pandominion than what I got from this book, but there was a lot of build up to something even bigger. Can’t wait to see where this story takes us next!