Inferno: Chronicles of Nick

Written by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Narrated by Holter Graham

In Inferno, the fourth novel in the bestselling Chronicles of Nick series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon, the heat is on, and a new threat to humanity has risen . . .

Nick has his driver's license and he's not afraid to use it. But turning sixteen isn't what he thought it would be. While other boys his age are worried about prom dates and applying for college, Nick is neck deep in enemies out to stop him from living another day. No longer sure if he can trust anyone, his only ally seems to be the one person he's been told will ultimately kill him.

But life spent serving the undead is anything except ordinary. And those out to get him have summoned an ancient force so powerful even the gods fear it. As Nick learns to command and control the elements, the one he must master in order to combat his latest foe is the one most likely to destroy him. As the old proverb goes, fire knows nothing of mercy, and if Nick is to survive this latest round, he will have to sacrifice a part of himself. However, the best sacrifice is seldom the sanest move. Sometimes it's the one that leaves your enemies confused.

And sometimes, you have to trust your enemy to save your friends. But what do you do when that enemy is you?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Apr 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781427229595

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Sherrilyn Kenyon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several series, including the Bureau of American Defense novels BAD Attitude, Phantom in the Night, Whispered Lies, and Silent Truth and the Belador series that includes Blood Trinity, Alterant, and The Curse. Since her first book debuted in 1993 while she was still in college, she has placed more than eighty novels on the New York Times list in all formats and genres, including manga and graphic novels, and has more than 70 million books in print worldwide. She lives with her family near Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her website at SherrilynKenyon.com.

Reviews for Inferno

[Daniel W · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved this 4th installment of Chronicles of Nick. Nick is learning more about those around him and himself. Love the shout outs to the Dark Hunter series.

[BlakeShelton · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

best book ever

[xofelf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Okay... I want the next one now. Like right now. I gotta know how this plays out D:

[mrnattania72 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So, this is the series that never seems to end. How many enemies or once enemies , now ally, can this kid create. And without even trying. It’s killing me

[ltl1red · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

OMG! This book, the fifth in the series is defiantly one you can't put down. As Nick fights his destiny you think you know exactly whats going to happen but the end has a huge twist and turn and goes to a totally unexpected place. I was like what happened! I had to go back and reread the last chapter to be sure I read it right!

The series has a good story but also has an underlying lesson on bullying that in the fifth book really hits the mark.This is a good read for adults and youth alike. It can be especially beneficial for High School students to read and discuss in a book club.

[elizabeth1929-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Omg, it is sooooo good!!!!!!
I seriously hope that in illusion, nick will be changed back to his usual tall self...

[texasbooklover7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4.5 stars. Best if the series.

[lrhubble · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Contemporary, Paranormal, New Orleans Nick now has his driver’s license and he will use it though turning sixteen isn’t quite what he thought it would be. Most boys his age are thinking about and worrying over prom dates and college applications. Nick is neck deep in enemies that are more than happy to make sure he doesn’t make it through another day. He is no longer sure just who he can trust or if he can trust anyone. His one ally seems to be the one person who he was told would ultimately kill him. Life is anything except ordinary when it is spent serving the undead. Now his enemies have summoned an ancient force that is powerful enough to have the gods in fear of it. As Nick learns to control and command the elements he must master the one that will help him combat his latest foe and it is also the one that is most likely to destroy him. As the old saying goes fire shows no mercy. If Nick can survive this latest round he will ultimately have to sacrifice a part of himself. Sometimes though the best sacrifice isn’t the sanest move. Sometimes it is the one that confuses your enemies the most. Sometimes you have to trust the enemy to save those most important to you though what you are supposed to do when the enemy is yourself is anyone’s guess.This is proving to be a fun series that gets better with each book read. It will also have readers eagerly wanting to read the next book. Seeing how Nick grows with each book and how he bumbles his way to saving the day makes for a book that is very difficult to put down once the reader starts it. The situations get more complicated and yet how Nick gets out of each one will have the readers at the very least chuckling because only Nick seems able to get into so much trouble trying to do the right thing. This is proving to be a series for the keeper shelf. It is also a series that just seems to get better and better. It is fun to revisit earlier versions of the Dark Hunters and see how time has changed them.

[teamdewey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One thing I really like about this series is how the next book picks up right where the last one left off. So if you are reading them it is almost like there is no stop in the books. That being said that means they also end sometimes making you want the next book... RIGHT NOW.

[ahnya-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Things heat up and everything is still coming at Nick. Caleb is becoming my favorite character. I really enjoyed her messages of self worth, and believing in yourself through out the whole book. I love this series. I can't believe I have to wait until April for the next one.

[aoibhealfae · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Inferno is the fourth book from the Chronicles of Nick about an alternate version of teenage Nick Gautier and the trial and tribulation of being a future Malachai. In this series. The future alternate version of him, the Dark-Hunter/Malachai Nick Gautier or Ambrose, is trying to set things right in this dimension so that he won’t become a demonic Malachai and fulfilling the prophecy of him as a destroyer of the world. At the start of this volume, Ambrose found himself changing into his demonic self and thus the events of this novel mirrored what the future might be for Nick.

Inferno is one of the April’s release I’ve been waiting to read but I was quite disappointed by this volume. Set after the events from the last book, Nick found out that Nekoda was sent to kill him and he broke up with her due after feeling betrayed by her. However, life as Nick doesn’t go much smoother as he was still being targeted by various being in the universe that want to see him dead including his Malachai father, Adarian.

Despite being a lengthy novel, I find the pacing of this book diminished from the previous novel. Instead, it was filled with forebodings, old and new characters and minor plots which made the novel quite confusing to be exact. Since I have read majority of the Dark-Hunter series which made the book somewhat less confusing to begin with, I still find that Kenyon is trying to cram everything in this book. The saving grace of this book was probably the fact that I learn about Nick more easily than his character appearing randomly in the swath of Dark Hunter series.

One of the most obvious things in this book that Kenyon tried to do was making it accessible to teenagers by giving the old awkward years motivational issues as character development. I had my issues being social pariah at five schools in my life and at some moments in university but I find this does get repetitive, This is coming from me, a woman who read Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series most of the time in highschool and university which have paranormal storyline and random smut in it. I just felt kinda put out with the whole chicken soup thing since I think she did just fine by making kick ass female characters pairing up with brooding dark hunters and trying to turn the guy into lovable someone for the rest of his life. That is inspirational for me.

Truthfully, reading the dark hunters series make my life alot easier in my late teenage life. But reading the whole, uplifting inspirational quotes and paragraphs after paragraphs of them is making it hard for me personally to enjoy the book. It bulk up most of the book which can be frustrating.

I have dark moments in my teenage life… I don’t advertise it constantly but once in awhile, I would talk about it. My Anti-Bully letter is simple. It would be in the middle of one page with the words “Frak off”. Thats it. Short and sweet. I am twenty four years old now but I have loads of story that stick on me now. Take the recent ten years or so… during highschool, I have one sexually confused guy who wanted to be a girl started to harass me for not being a girly girl then some group of boys started to harass me for money and for a kiss and spread bad rumours of me being pregnant. If I want to go back in time, I would have just told everyone to fuck off because I am not going to change things just because they think I should be. Thats what I appreciate readers to learn from me… about being better about the way you are and not dwell on things they try to do because bullies seek easy targets to release their own dissatisfaction in life. Now I learn to empathise with them.

These experience is not something I try to dwell on in my life. I probably would remain miserable like that if I dwell a lot by making the issue consume my entire life. But it make me think about humanity in other people even more. Which is one of the skills in life I rather not part with. As for the bullies, they probably have their own issues of their own that they blame you for not having them and they’re too immature to see the world you way.

Take the psychopathic bully in Chronicles of Nick which never seem to stop harassing Nick in four books. Now, I just felt he stayed being that way because the author tried to give a character to hate at Nick’s school. Which is sad really. I like it better if the author choose to explore more with her side characters instead of enforcing Nick. Which is again, getting repetitive.

But then in my case, I move out of the school after several years in that hellhole and came back being the sarcastic bitch I am today. Because like hell I am going to suffer that way again. This is a public service advisement about the bullying issue which I try to sum up from the majority content of this novel.

On the other hand, I was a bit worried about the whole mother and son relationship this book have. Cherise Gautier does really have a great parenting problem. I am starting to see that her characterization will never change in the subsequent years of the series. There’s the constant joke about her being a nasty chihuahua about Nick’s safety and it does get tiring and one dimensional. Another reason why I felt this book failed in its minor character developments besides the major characters in this book. Thats why I point out the ‘motivational issue’ that this book try to bring as a stark flaw as it ate a lot of pages that should have reserved on other developments instead of being overtly ‘educative’. I like those kind of stuff in fiction but I like it better if it was more subtle than the whole ‘in your face’ thing. Its just not effective for me.

Now, the worldbuilding. As I said, it was compacted with the whole mythology which is fine but then I was a bit dissatisfied when some of the things in the end especially when some of the plots that was crucial in this book or from the last book was left hanging until the next Nick book. Considering the author announced that there’s going to be a Dark-Hunter tv series and Chronicle of Nick movie series, it’s safe to say the wait is quite bearable now to wait a year for the fifth book but then again, I still felt a lot of disappointment with this novel.

But the one thing I like about this book was the foreshadowing of the future book in Dark-Hunter series which is the September 2013 release of ‘Styxx’, which is a sort of continuation of ‘Acheron’. Now its just a couple more months of waiting. Again.

I have a love-hate situation with SK books but this volume does felt like an intermediary to the next book which is a concept I hate in any series. This is why I like Dark Hunter series more as it is moderately satisfactory as it have a mixture of closed end storylines with open ended ones. Plus, this book’s cliffhanger is exactly like the last book of Mari Mancusi’s Vampire Academy series. Tabula rasa is bad in the business. I could feel it.

[tivonut · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2 1/2
OK, maybe I liked it a little, still the preachyness and epilogue killed it for me.

The good-- the humor, some of our favorite characters are back and we get a view of the friendship better of Ash and Nick.

The bad--
-we get several sermons, one on bullying, one from Ash on you making who you are, one in Caleb's mind on how he feels about Nick, and then Nick keeps putting himself down.

-The epilogue was out in left field. They save the mom. His dad gives his life up. They get away from the multiple baddies. Then at the end he wishes he had a normal life and epilogue, he is thrown into a normal life where his mom made different choices, Nick has a dad, Caleb has a family, Ash is a teenager at the school?, Stone seems to be a friend, they all seem to be shorter and still school pariah. He looks different(different dad). The alternate time line was just wrong in too many ways.

-There were just too many players trying to get at Nick and the storyline never coalesces into a smooth understanding. Nick gets taken away from one baddie trying to kill him by another baddie trying to kill him, girl is trying to help Grimm turn him to free brother, Hell comes up and saves him but takes him to hell, someone takes both Dad and Mom and puts them in a holding cell, by another after Nick. Argh! This was not like the other books where we had a specific bad happening that needed to be stopped. There was nothing specific and you really know it wasn't the end when they do free the mother.

So not as good as the other books but still has some humor. The humor and character insights make it worth reading if you intend to continue the series.

[bookswithbite · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have been following The Chronicles Of Nick series for years now. Every year, I anxiously await the next book which I can never seem to get enough of.Plot: Back in Nick’s shoes, things are stirring up pretty up quickly. Drama with Nick fighting his dark side, with girls, and of course drama with friends. I really enjoyed the progression of the story. With each chapter Nick is learning more about himself and the destiny that sits on his shoulders. The struggle between good and evil, makes the reader anticipate Nick’s every move.Love: At first, I re-guarded it as childish love. But man oh man, did it turn a different way. I won’t say much but know that there is much more that what the reader thinks. I’m hoping they can reconcile but with teens and emotions, you never know what will happen.Family: I adore Nick’s mom. She totally reminds me on myself cause I am very protective of my son and kiss him every chance I get. No matter how big my baby boy gets, he will always be MY baby boy. Nick’s mom learns that he is growing up and does her best to let go and let him make choices. I totally admired her ability to know her child well and of course be there for him, no matter what.Inferno definitely heats up every single moment. With the future racing toward Nick fast, Nick must over come his fears. He learns hard lessons and learns who his real friends are. Keeping the action fierce and characters well written, Inferno is awesome!

[literaladdiction · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Our Review, by LITERAL ADDICTION's Pack Alpha - Michelle L. Olson:This series is like chocolate - even though I know I shouldn't, one page, one chapter, is never enough - I can't stop until the entire book is gone & I feel guilty for not doing the things I should, yet utterly sated & happy for having indulged.:)Every book of this series gets better & more intense. This may have been my favorite yet... Nick explores what happens when he leans more towards the darker side of his nature in this installment and it's not pretty - loved ones are put at risk (yet again), he gets in a huge bind (what's new, right!?), demons are possessing people close to him, Death (a.k.a Grim) is manipulating things to go his way and working with some other unsavory folk, love is tenuous at best, some huge revelations are made about several big players, and Nick's world is turned upside down. And then there was the epilogue... just wow! I cannot wait to see where Sherrilyn goes with this. I did not see that coming and am dying to see how it plays out.In a word: Utterly fantastic!! An easy 5 Skull read for me and I think that everyone should read these books. They may be classified as Young Adult, but they read like a gritty Urban Fantasy and are must reads for all Dark-Hunter fans.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not as much a fan of this series as most of the other dark hunter novels, but still it kept me reading, curious to know what's going to happen next and the end, the end took the rug from under my feet and made me want the next book in the series now, or sooner.The letter to bullies should be made compulsary reading and I read it more than twice, it struck a deep resonant chord in me.Nick is trying hard to survive school, to work out who he can trust and to find a way of surviving the supernatural stuff that seems to want him dead, or worse, and yes there is worse!It did keep me reading, I did want to know what was happening to the characters and the timeline did hurt my head, along with the changes done when Nick made certain choices, I'm not sure what's going to happen here and what Nick is going to do with his life but I'm finding it an interesting trip.

[vampiregirl76 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just turned 16 and has his drivers license in hand. This should be a time of fun and easy freedom with thoughts of girls and prom. But he was born Nick Gautier. He is the son of the Malachai and has a future that is death and destruction. Nick's just learned that is girlfriend has been sent to kill him and his enemies are closing in on him once again. Nick would gladly take some easy fun any day instead of current problems.Excellent read! This is the 4th installment in the series and by far one of the best. Inferno is fast, intense and the stakes are raised. No spoilers here but I will say to Dark-Hunter fans that the Prologue will get you right in the heart. As ever, I was blown away by the story and especially the ending, I didn't see that coming. I can't wait to get the next book to see how Nick is gonna get out of this one. If you haven't picked this series up, definitely do so.

[laneliterati · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another stellar "Chronicles of Nick" entry - though the timeline makes my head hurt ;)