Review: Infinite Ground - Martin MacInnes

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Published: Atlantic Press, Augustus 2016

My Rating: 2/5 stars

This is one of the weirdest book I have ever read... Just not in the way I wanted it to be…

If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me "you have never read anything like this", and after reading I would conclude that I had most definitely read many things like it, I would be a rich woman. Not this time; I ACTUALLY think I have never read anything like this before.

Infinite Ground starts off as a seemingly regular detective novel, with the mysterious disappearance of man, and a retired detective being called in to investigate. However, from this point on the plot (and, from how I interpreted the book, the main character) dive off into a state somewhere between existential philosophy and complete obsessive madness. As Carlos’ disappearance keeps defying “logical” explanation, our protagonists theories move into the realm of reality-defying. A list of his theories (actually included in the novel somewhere) include the likes of:

1. the man that disappears wasn’t Carlos, but an imposter who simply looked identical to him.

2. He was infected by a microbe that didn’t just affect his body, but his mind and psyche.

3. He somehow was absorbed into the jungle; his atoms becoming part of nature again.

And many more such gems…

Our unnamed detective's search takes him through the streets of an unnamed South-American city and into the depths of the jungles beyond. As he explores these theories of how a man might simply dissolve into the world around him, his sense of identity, reality and self, begin to dissolve alongside it.

As fascinating and cool I think that concept is, the book runs into quite some problems in its execution. Writing about a character's decent into madness is probably one of the hardest things to do in fiction, as you have to (somehow!) keep the reader on board in spite of what you're throwing at them. MacInnes manages to do so until about the halfway point. His ideas are incredibly interesting and up until this point, the whacky and reality-questioning theories of our protagonists felt like a smart set-up for something greater. The problem is that that "something greater" never comes; there's no pay-off and the story fizzles out into nothing near the end.

This was however, the book that originally got me interested in MacInnes as an author, as the early signs of his literary talent are very clearly on display. I love the way he crafts sentences and metaphors, and enjoy how the flow of his writing matched the content of the story. If you're looking for evidence of his talents: look no further than In Ascension, where he's clearly honed in even more to his craft.

In its best moments, this book reminded me of Jeff Vandermeer’s Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy with its metaphysical themes of dissolving of the self into nature. Unfortunately, that parallel only hammers home that this is by far the weaker version of that story.

Having read this book once in 2018, I didn’t quite know how I felt about it. Having reread it in 2025, I can say that I liked this as an exercise of ideas and an introduction to a very talented author. As a novel by itself though, I can’t quite recommend it.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.