THE INFINITE Advent calendar, week 1: Meet the Characters
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
[Note: This post contains MAJOR ENDING SPOILERS for THE OUTSIDE and THE FALLEN! It will also hint at things that happen in THE INFINITE; any suggestions of what happens in the third book will be vague, and about on the level with what you can find in the back cover blurb.]
For the characters of the OUTSIDE series, it's only been a day since we left them. For us as readers, it's been a year and a half! Here's a quick refresher on who's who in THE INFINITE, and what they've been up to most recently.
Dr. Yasira Shien ("Savior")
Yasira is our protagonist. A former prodigy physicist, Yasira is the one whose accidental brushes with Outside caused the Pride of Jai disaster - and the one who saved Jai, through an Outside miracle, when the Plague sent by Dr. Evianna Talirr threatened to destroy it completely. Now she's in possession of enormous powers she barely understands - and on the run from the Gods and angels who would like to destroy both her and her planet.
The trauma of these events has left Yasira exhausted and depressed, and her brushes with Outside have also fragmented her soul, making her plural. Without much guidance from other plurals in how to manage this new state of being, Yasira often struggles with simple decisions as the people in her head argue or get distracted by tangents. She's still determined to protect the people of Jai, though. As the book begins, she's only just finished a second miracle - one which protected simultaneous protests in cities across the planet.
Now the Gods are determined to punish Jai for its acts of rebellion, and Dr. Talirr is back, telling Yasira she'll have to sacrifice herself to make it stop. Yasira knows it can't be that simple - but whatever she can do to stop the Gods for good, she knows it can't just be another miracle like the first two. It will have to be an act so profound that even her own near-infinite powers are stretched to their limit.
Tiv Hunt ("Leader")
Tiv Hunt - whose first name is short for "Productivity" - is Yasira's girlfriend. Having run away from her respectable life to join Yasira's rebellion, Tiv now helps manage Yasira's fractious team of fellow students in their efforts to save the planet. Despite being the only one without Outside abilities, Tiv has become the heart of the group, supporting and organizing the others and mediating their disputes. But as Yasira searches desperately for ways to end the conflict with the Gods, Tiv will find her dual loyalties to Yasira and to the rebellion clashing in ways that she never expected.
The Seven
Each of the rest of the students in Yasira and Tiv's group is a former student of Dr. Talirr's and a former prisoner of Akavi's; and each of them has a fragment of Yasira's power, giving them abilities well beyond those of an ordinary mortal survivor on the surface of Jai. As a team, they use these abilities to help people - primarily by connecting different groups of survivors over long distances and making sure that they have what they need.
Ulutrujcy Unaczysy Jasl ("Grid")
Organized and methodical to a fault, Grid helps keep the Seven organized and works as their secretary. Grid's special power is an ability to sense the ansible network - not the information in it, but the presence and position of anything connected to it. It's only thanks to Grid that angels - who are all connected intimately to each other over the network, and who can sometimes shapeshift - haven't infiltrated the Seven already.
Tahldrim Evitae ("Picket")
A shy geek with a love of old-fashioned war games, Picket has the ability to adjust the levels of Outside contamination in the area around him - turning them horrific and deadly or relatively mild with the flick of a wrist. When protecting the protest, Picket used this ability to harm sentient beings for the first time and was horrified by the results. But despite this, he's going to have to find a way to use his power again - because it's one of the few things on Jai powerful and deadly enough to be used against the Keres.
Neejin Meecnia ("Weaver")
Hyperactive and constantly stimming, Weaver is also a caring soul whose abilities center around healing. With Grid, Picket, and Prophet, she forms one part of the Four - a smaller subgroup within the Seven who were once imprisoned together by the Gods, and who understand each other intuitively as a result, thinking of themselves as four parts of one being.
Exatlia Ecan Altauta ("Prophet")
Exatlia's Outside abilities allow her to constantly see into the future - sometimes multiple futures. The constant, fuzzy, difficult-to-interpret sensory onslaught that she experiences as a result of this leaves her looking vague and distracted. When she does manage to interpret or communicate a sense of what she sees, she's the quiet, firm voice that everyone sits down and listens to.
Splió spi Munu ("Watcher")
The other half of the Seven's reconnaissance team, Splió is an affably cynical man who can use Dr. Talirr's portal technology to remotely view things far away from him in the present and recent past - as long as they're close to the kind of door that the portal technology can latch on to. When he's not working to update the Seven's intel, he's usually taking care of Daeis, his partner.
Daeis Jalonevar ("Keeper")
Formerly a promising physics student like the rest, Daeis is now minimally verbal as a result of the trauma inflicted on them as Akavi's prisoner. They spend most of their time hanging out with the monsters, large and small, that infest Jai's surface. Daeis has an uncanny ability to win the trust of these creatures - maybe even enough to lead them into battle against the Gods.
Luellae Nyrath ("Blur")
Luellae can teleport, delivering goods and information quickly and quietly even to places where the portal network won't reach. Formerly at odds with the rest of the Seven, Luellae has always believed in an armed rebellion against the Gods - as opposed the peaceful approach that Tiv favored. The protest, which combined violent and non-violent approaches depending on each individual group's goals and needs, helped to reconcile Luellae with Tiv and the rest of the group. But now she's been kidnapped by Akavi - maybe as a hostage to use against the rest of the Seven, or maybe as something stranger still.
The Villains
Dr. Evianna Talirr ("Destroyer")
Born with the ability to sense Outside as others couldn't, and mistreated severely as a child for what she saw, Dr. Talirr plans to bring all of human space around to her way of seeing things - whether they like it or not. She's the one who first introduced Yasira and the Seven to the study of Outside, and the one who caused the Plague that decimated Jai. Dr. Talirr's methods are often cruel and reckless, treating human lives like fuel to burn in her quest for revenge, and the Seven can't trust her. But she's promised to help Yasira in her darkest hour - and in an all-out battle of Gods vs Outside-sensing mortals, she might be just what Yasira's side needs.
Akavi Averis
Formerly an Inquisitor of Nemesis, Akavi is a shapeshifting cyborg who's bent on revenge - against Dr. Talirr, who he was originally supposed to hunt down and punish; against Yasira, who thwarted him; against Irimiru, his former Overseer, who threw him under the bus when his plan to catch Dr. Talirr backfired; and against Nemesis Herself, who cast him aside and slated him for termination when he failed. Revenge against a God is a goal so outlandish that even Akavi ought not to think about it - but he's caught a glimpse of how vast Yasira's powers truly are. Now he thinks that maybe - just maybe - she could be the key to achieving his aims.
Elu Ariehmu
Formerly Akavi's assistant in the angelic corps, Elu saved his life and ran away with him when he was scheduled for termination. This may have proved to be a bad choice. With Akavi bent on his schemes as usual and Elu too readily identifiable as an angel to leave the ship, their relationship has turned more toxic than ever. Elu's not ready to leave, but he's about to discover something that will throw everything into question for him - not only his attachment to Akavi, but his whole life and the Gods themselves.
Enga Afonbataw Konum
Formerly Akavi's enforcer in the angelic corps, Enga was the first in line to track him and Elu down and bring them to justice when they fled. Now she's been captured by Akavi and caught in a cat-and-mouse game between him and tbe Overseer Irimiru, each of them trying to use the other for their own ends. Sick of being bound to other angels' demands, Enga is starving to determine her own destiny - and the battle between Jai and the Keres might give her an opportunity for this that she never expected.
And Introducing...
Giselle
Seven hundred years before the events of THE OUTSIDE, Earth is reeling from the effects of climate change and desperately seeking a solution. Giselle is a software engineer working for the R&D department of an unnamed military, and she thinks her team might have a solution - a supercomputer, endowed with a human soul, designed to solve the hardest problems in the world. Giselle pours her increasingly frayed nerves into the development of the team's new creation, NEMESIS-1 - but the result may be more than even she ever bargained for.
Leah
Giselle's wife, dying of a disease, is the first soul to be uploaded into NEMESIS-1. She is a volunteer, brave and devoted to the cause, and the upload goes perfectly at first...
General Walters
Giselle's immediate superior in the R&D department, Walters is a woman of steely strength and unshakable resolve. In the wake of Leah's death, Giselle finds herself turning to Walters more and more for the structure and encouragement she needs. But the moral certainty Walters offers may be a double-edged sword - she has ambitions for this project, and perhaps for humanity itself, that Giselle is only beginning to guess at.
Meanwhile: See THE INFINITE on FanFiAddict’s list of most anticipated titles of 2023 (although for some reason they seem to think I am Ada Palmer…)