Review: Infinity Train – Book 2 “The Parasite Car/The Lucky Cat Car”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
While working through the next car (and adding to the increasingly confusing mythos regarding mirror people), MT and Jesse find that Alan Dracula has been possessed by a “symbiotic parasite” named Perry. While Perry seems to help them through cars at first, it becomes clear that Alan is trying to get him out of his system, which MT and Jesse figure out and eventually succeed in doing. This also gets Jesse’s number down to 11.
Next, the three enter a carnival type car full of games to compete in for prizes, among them being one run by The Cat from last book who MT remembers from being with Tulip. She offers them the prize of exiting the car, which they’ll be competing with against another passenger as well as each other. Jess and the other passenger get preferential treatment to win due to needing to get off anyway, meaning MT gets the short end, but Jesse surprises her by saying that he wants her to come with him when he leaves. This even brings his number down to 4, indicating that it would be the right move. Things seem to go well until Alan Dracula ends up as a prize they must secure to move forward, but that gives the other passenger enough time to win…only she uses her win to bring in other kids, supposedly using this as a chance to help them survive. She then takes MT, Jesse, and Alan back to her “base”, revealing that her number is all the way up her arm.
OUR TAKE
Well, one of these episodes was certainly more important than the other! I mean, the parasite episode wasn’t exactly filler, considering it followed along the same theme that the last few have with Jesse, particularly being when you should be able to tell when a friend isn’t acting like themselves even when it might be beneficial to you in the short term, but it DEFINITELY doesn’t hold a candle to the second half, which has a much more layered message on top of a TON of fun cameos and call backs to the previous book, not the least of which being the return of The Cat, who was a pretty big trouble maker (not that I need to remind anyone who is watching this as they’ve no doubt watched that previous story. It was only a few months ago, after all).
The dynamic of the current cast seems to be melding pretty well, which is a testament to how organic the writing in this series can be, but I also can’t help but notice that Jesse’s number is going down a LOT faster than Tulip’s did around this time. This likely has something to do with why these new passenger characters have come in, seemingly a group that is just as determined to help him as MT, and likely with better resources to do so. THAT, and I also notice that the plot descriptions of each episode seem to stop mentioning Jesse after the seventh episode, which airs tonight. Maybe that that means, with his number low and his problems more or less resolved, that Jess will be exiting the story earlier than expected to focus on MT for the remainder.
This isn’t without merit, as it sounds like MT’s problems of running away from Tulip and being her own person are more complicated to resolve. We do learn this time that, should Tulip die, MT will be forced to make a choice about becoming a different person OR becoming a fleck, which she has despised as an option. That’s kind of the fun of this sort of release schedule, as it doesn’t give us much time to reflect (haha) or speculate before the season is over. Though in its own way, that’s part of the fun and novelty of it that’s different from either the weekly release schedule or the more recent binge model. With only two nights and four episodes to go, we’ll know soon enough what the fates of these characters will be.
