The Circus Infinite

Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon. Here, everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job. When the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes’ head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him, or face vivisection.

With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But when the boss sets the circus up to take the fall for his about-to-get-busted narcotics operation, Jes and his friends decide to bring the mobster down together. And if Jes can also avoid going back to being the prize subject of a scientist who can’t wait to dissect him? Even better.

I’ve been in a weird place so book reviews have been hard for me BUT!! I’m back with a review of The Circus Infinite. Because it’s my stop on the book tour! I’ve also got a post up on Instagram about it today. Thank you Angry Robot Books for the review copy and for including me on this book tour!

At a glance, here are some of the awesome things that this book has:

• the words “panromantic asexual” ON PAGE
• gravity powers??? making things float but also crushing things whoa
• a cute AF circus found family made up of people of different alien species
• great discussions of asexuality and racism (as it applies to alien races/species)
• queer characters!! all over!!

I read this book in one single day because the world and by the family that the characters make together just really sucked me in. Those two things are two of the great strengths of the book. Reading about the different circus acts made me desperate for an actual Circus Infinite show in real life. Please I just want to see all of these highly skilled people dance and sing and do acrobatics!! And not only are the things they do amazing, but they are amazing people as well.

Our main character, Jes, has just escaped an institute where doctors performed experiments on him. He was sold off by his parents, and so hasn’t really had anyone stable in his life. No friends, very little family (only his grandparents). But these circus folks take him in and love him, and show him what it means to have friends and family. It made my heart so warm!!! They stick with him through thick and thin, because as they tell him, that’s what friends do. I wish we had gotten to know some of the side characters a bit more. I love them, but I did want to learn more of their backstories and see them more fleshed out.

Just a warning though, this book isn’t all warm and fuzzies. I feel like those happy scenes are equally balanced with some pretty grim scenes. Jes’ flashbacks to his time in the institute are awful, and he has lots of lingering trauma from that. During the book, the big bad mob boss also blackmails him into doing some pretty terrible things.. The tone switches did throw me off a little bit – I think there could have been some smoothing over to make the transitions better. BUT! I overall liked the contrast. It helped accentuate Jes’ struggle with breaking away from what people wanted him to be, and to live the life he wanted.

I really enjoyed this book, and am looking forward to more from Khan Wong! Get your copy of The Circus Infinite when it releases on March 8th!

Goodreads user Rafaella has kindly written down some content warnings in their Goodreads review (find it here) and I will copy the content warnings so you can all see them:

CW // TW: graphic and gruesome violence, blood, sex, conversion therapy, torture, hospital/institutions, experimentation on living people, people treated as objects, death, murder, consensual drug use, non consensual drug use, abuse, shitty garbage awful parents, blackmail, bullying, racism, slurs, self hate, challenged internalized acephobia (and resolved, imo)