Tuesday, March 1, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Circus Infinite by Khan Wong

 


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 8, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Circus Infinite is a SciFi novel by author Khan Wong, featuring a universe where a bunch of different species are connected to a single force that unites them, and provides certain members of each with their own special powers when they are on their own worlds.  It's a setup that isn't quite as ideal as it sounds, with various prejudices hindering the unity of all, such as a prejudice against the children of mixed-race parentage.  So naturally this story follows one such hybrid, Jes, a Human/Rijala hybrid on the run from those who would torture him for his special powers, as he discovers a circus made up of many different species and finds a family he never expected.  

This is hardly a unique setup, but the found family story is prominent for a reason, and it works very well here.  The characters are very well done, and the combination of Jes' powerset - not just gravity powers, but also empathic feeling of emotions - with his asexuality causes him mental stresses and difficulties in ways that I haven't seen done before, and it works pretty well.  On the other hand, most of the conflict plotline faced by Jes, featuring a gangster kingpin blackmailing him and more, is a bit generic and is resolved in a way that is a bit too easy and abrupt.  Still, the result is highly enjoyable and different enough to be well worth your time, even if its last act doesn't quite live up to the rest of it.  


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------
Jes didn't have a destination in mind when he stole a ticket granting him access to any world within the 9-star Congress - he just knew he had to get as far away from the Institute as possible, to the last place they would ever think to look for him.  For the Institute has been torturing him for too long to experiment on his strange gravity manipulating powers to let him ever go free.  

And so, guided by his special intuition Jes winds up on a trip to Persephone-9, the pleasure moon known for providing all types of depravity to every species throughout the 9-star congress.  Jess expects it to be largely miserable, with his empathic sense picking up so much lust and sexual desire to overwhelms his sex aversion.  

But what Jess finds instead, led by his intuition and his grandmother's dowsing crystal, is a circus full of various talented species, each with their own unique talents and skills.  And to his surprise they welcome him among them, and he begins to find a home, and even some kind of love there.  But the circus is beholden to the whims of a gangster looking to control the entire moon, and when that gangster learns of Jes' true identity and powers, Jess finds himself forced to make difficult choices to save not just himself, but the family he never knew was possible.....
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The Circus Infinite is in some ways a pretty typical type story - person on the run from a tragic past, with no family or seeming hope of one finds a cast of oddballs of different species/races who take him in, forming a found family and love he never knew he could find, and eventually has to fight for their sake.  And it's very much that, and a pretty good example of that for reasons I'll get into below, but mainly due to its very likable cast of main characters each of whom bring something different to the table and provide Jes with something different that he needs.  And of course a circus or show is a pretty classic place for such a found family to be found.  

But what makes The Circus Infinite really different is Jes' empathic ability - his ability to "sus" out emotions or feelings that others are feeling - and how that affects him personally.  For one, Jes is asexual (but not aromantic), and has a strong aversion to sex....such that even the empathic feeling of sexual desire or lust is really off-putting to him, which naturally makes a lot of situations uncomfortable for him (and he spends most of this book on a moon known for pleasure, complete with sex clubs, so there's no avoiding it).  For another, while knowing the emotions of those he's with can in some ways be helpful, its not the same as reading minds, and so it can just as mislead as physical observations at times....and Jes can't turn it off.  So while his sussing can tell when feelings towards him are friendly or genuine, it can also lead him down some paranoid paths that cause him genuine distress, even when not confronted with the painful feeling of sexual desire. 

And Jes is so easy to care for, as the narrative shows us his own feelings, how others' feelings affect him, and the past that led him up to this point (via flashbacks every few chapters to his life beforehand, which is often depressingly awful).  Up till the story begins, the only love he was shown was by his grandparents, with his parents selling him to the Institute which tortured him for his gravity-manipulating abilities.  If it wasn't for those grandparents he wouldn't believe there was anything worth living for at all as he points out once, and even with that he has a hard time trusting that what the circus and the friends he finds there provide him with is real.  And so he has a hard time figuring out what to do with it all, but in a way that's easy to understand.  And it helps that the rest of the cast, from Asuna-human hybrid Essa, to Bo, a member who is attracted to him and still willing to be with him despite the lack of sex (to Jes' amazement), to Asuna singer and young teenager Esmée, and more, are all really interesting and well done, even if most of their plots also revolve around Jes and aren't really independent of him.  

Alas, the weakest part of The Circus Infinite is how the story wraps things up.  The story uses a typical plotline of having Jes both be on the run from pursuers (who you just know will come back into play) and be targetted by a blackmailing mobster, and things go poorly just as you'd expect from them.  But the way how Jes manages to deal with them, though gratifying, is very abrupt and just feels like it makes their threats for most of the book feel kinda pointless.  This is not to say the book is entirely predictable - there are several characters who a typical plot would reveal to wind up being antagonists betraying Jes.....and instead just turn out to be normal people whose feelings towards Jes are normal - after all, not everyone Jes meets is going to like him or be comfortable with him, or will be someone Jes will feel comfortable with, but that doesn't make them necessarily bad people.  It's a nice touch, even if the larger parts of the book's ending feel like the author had to wrap things up and didn't know how to do it so he rushed it. 

Still, if you're looking for a found family book, especially one with an ace (but not aromantic) protagonist, The Circus Infinite might be very for you.   

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