Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey ****

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don’t know about you, but I do this thing where if I hear about a book that sounds interesting, I log onto my library’s website and place a hold. Since I live in a fairly populous city, and the publishing industry has a crazy system for lending ebooks, that means I often have a long wait ahead of me.

So long, in fact, that generally, I have no memory of placing the hold when I get the email letting me know my book is ready. So so long, in fact, that often I don’t recall why I put a particular book on hold. I think of these books as little presents from past me.

Infinity Gate showed up on my Kindle several weeks ago, and there it sat. I didn’t recall anything about it, and I didn’t feel like reading it.

I resisted reading it for a long time. There wasn’t a particular reason for this resistance – I just didn’t want to read it. I didn’t even know what it was about. To illustrate how little I knew, I thought M.R. Carey was a woman (he’s not), and this was their first book (it really isn’t!).

I finally broke down and read it so I could download other library books to my Kindle.

Once I started reading Infinity Gate, I realized I was a fool for not starting sooner. This is a good old-fashioned, multiverse-spanning sci-fi romp with AI, power armor, clueless individuals, and a variety of aliens that aren’t really aliens. Plus, a moon-sized computer, an AI army, and a petty bureaucrat trying to get back what he thinks is his rightful place in the world.

The idea of a “space empire” composed entirely of alternate versions of Earth is an idea that seems so obvious, but I don’t recall reading anything like it before (I’m sure there are many examples, but this was my first exposure to this idea!).

It is a lot of fun, and if you like wide canvas space opera, I think you’ll enjoy this.

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