Author: Andrew Hastie
The Infinity Engines – Contagion is the last book in the Infinity Engines series. I previously read and blogged about previous parts, part I, part II, part III, part IV, and part V.
The Infinity Engines book series did not end with Contagion in a way that suggests this series could not continue, however, I noted the author has continued writing prequels, which will work perfectly for me, and I have them on my list. The reason I say it will work perfectly is that, even though I loved this book series and enjoyed all time travel narrated beautifully by a creative and imaginative author, I did get tired a bit of the constant issues Caitlyn and Josh are going through so in this last part, The Infinity Engines – Contagion, I enjoyed that these two were less present. I did not enjoy the prominence of Lyra, the whiny seer who wants to lose her abilities until she gets what she wishes for, then whines how she wants it back. I suppose this perfectly portrays the human condition and people never being happy with what they have until they lose it and the author interestingly suggests that people with special abilities are no different. They are humans after all. However, in this installation of the Infinity Engines, I liked the introduction of a new character Fred, a member of the Outlier order (those whose reach is not wide enough so they cannot travel back in time as much as others; Fred can only go over 100 years whereas other orders can go 1000 years or more) and the intro of this Order made me think there might be a continuation of the book series. I also enjoyed Melanie’s character, a scientist from the Frontier (the present) who discovers a plague during a scientific mission in the Antarctic that unleashes a new and super deadly plague on the present/Frontier, which the Order is trying to resolve by doing minimum interventions to history.
Melanie ends up time-travelling with Fred and learning about the Order. She is both shocked and feels unreal when dealing with things but also thrilled to work on a cure with the Order saying that she never worked this fast. This is because whilst she works, things are communicated to the past and issues are resolved. This touch was very interesting.
In this book, the author clearly took inspiration from some scientific writing on melting the Antarctic and warnings that climate change could unleash new viruses as the ice melts, which I thought was imaginative and good to discuss in a book as appealing as time travel. For example, in an article by the British Independent, there is a warning from scientists that ancient zombie viruses are frozen under ice and could be unleashed on humanity with climate change. Some viruses have already been found and there is monitoring being put in place. We might need some sort of Time Order to save us if the current planet destruction continues, and there is nothing to suggest it won’t. There is, sadly, nothing to suggest that time travel that could save us exists either.
There were also interesting observations of vaccine efforts in this book, which may have been inspired by the recent COVID-19 pandemic where people took the vaccine for a new plague, then immediately started to socialize thinking they were super protected only to cause worse damage to the spread of the disease. Again, very interesting.
The Infinity Engine series ends with this book and prequels include the story of Caitlyn’s parents, Rufius and two books tackling historical events and what could have been had it not been for the Order. I look forward to reading these books too once I read some other books that are on my list 😊
Thank you for reading!