THE INFINITY PARTICLE by WENDY XU
A REVIEW by ALEXA DUNCAN.
Wendy Xu is a rising star within the YA graphic novel community. The author of Mooncakes, which we can’t seem to keep on the shelves here at the library, is back with another gorgeous graphic novel called The Infinity Particle. Combining science fiction, romance, and philosophy, The Infinity Particle follows college student Clementine Chang during her internship at a very prestigious robotics lab on Mars. It is at this lab that she meets Dr. Lin, a robotics expert, and her AI assistant, a humanoid bot named Kye. Clem and Kye are immediately attracted to one another despite Kye’s programming not allowing for such a thing, What follows is an investigation into Kye’s past, unveiling clues and questions about what it means to be human.
This is my first time readying Wendy Xu, and I have to say, I’m very impressed. I loved T
he Infinity Particle. Foremost, the world. It’s very accessible sci-fi. Nothing too bogged down in technical science terms or anything like that. Humans can live on Mars now and there are robots with artificial intelligence everywhere. I really loved how grounded everything felt despite it literally taking place on another planet. The writing is funny and easily accessible. There aren’t tons of words on any given panel that would make it hard to read. As for the characters, I loved both Clem and Kye. Clem struggles with her own issues with abuse while Kye is slowly starting to understand what it means to be human. Their relationship is very sweet, while also being mature enough that it feels like an actual relationship two college aged people would have.
There’s some scientific jargon in here I didn’t totally understand, but I didn’t mind it. It didn’t pull me out of the story so much that I couldn’t get back into it. The art style is very pretty, in shades of light blues and some reddish-beige colors reminiscent of Mars itself. I love how Xu managed to create such a beautiful, believable world and write an interesting story to boot.
You can check out The Infinity Particle at the Oreana Library today!