Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Don't click that back button: you haven't accidentally wandered into an immersion course in French. Nope, today we're visiting New Orleans, where the annual Mardi Gras festival features a slogan that, in English, means "Let the good times roll."

And boy, are they gonna roll.

New Orleans is home to wild parties, delicious food, and—if American Horror Story taught us anything—witches who are as vengeful as they are stylish. It's the perfect, hip setting for a book about a young man discovering he has hidden power. We mean, seriously, after you're done fighting the undead, what you really need is a beignet and some dark coffee to recharge.

Sherrilyn Kenyon's Infinity tells the story of Nick Gautier (that's pronounced "Go-shay," ladies and gents), a fourteen-year-old kid who meets a variety of magical creatures and demons and teams up with them to battle a zombie plague sweeping the French Quarter.

Kenyon published Infinity in 2010 as a spin-off of her super-successful Dark-Hunter series. That series began in 2002, and for the next thirteen years, Kenyon published over 60 novels and manga adaptations of her work. There aren't any witches in Infinity, but the freakishly prolific Kenyon might be one herself. How else can you explain 60 novels in a decade?

The Dark-Hunter series is about servants of Greek gods and goddess living in the modern day to defend humanity against vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural beasties. During their down time, we've gotta warn you, they engage in lots of…let's just say, not-kid-appropriate activities.

But cool down, there, Shmoopers: Infinity is a young adult spin-off—we said the protagonist was fourteen, for Pete's sake—so there are none of those risqué elements here. Instead, Kenyon populates Infinity with more cameos than an episode of Entourage. Fans of her Dark-Hunter series can see a softer side of series mainstays like Acheron, Kyrian, and Simi. Main character Nick himself appears as an adult in Kenyon's Dark-Hunter series.

More people will soon be familiar with Kenyon's Dark-Hunters, because movies and TV shows are in development based both on her main series and the Chronicles of Nick series. It's a weird, wild world on the page, so we can only imagine what it'll be on the big screen.

There are eight books planned in the Chronicles of Nick series, all with titles that start with In-, like Infamous, Inferno, and Incontinent, which takes place far into the future when Nick is in a nursing home with some powers that are a little less than magical.

Psych.

In 1985, Tears for Fears told us an important truth: "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." Almost thirty years later, Lorde covered that song, proving that everyone still wants to rule the world. She should have added a line about how everyone also wants to win the lottery.

Just think: in January 2016, about 371 million lottery tickets were sold for a chance to win a $1.5 billion-with-a-B Powerball jackpot (source). With that kind of money, you could take over the world and have enough dough to spare for a house, a car, and an Oculus Rift.

Nick Gautier starts Infinity as a total zero. His popularity rating is less that whoever is president when you're reading this, and his bank account is in negative numbers. He wants more. Who doesn't?

Even though math teaches us that it's pretty easy to end up with more than zero, reality often proves contrary. When you have nothing, it's awfully hard to get something, which is why people resort to desperate measures like buying an entire sheet of lottery tickets just to get ahead.

Nick's desperation takes him down a path toward gods, demons, and zombies. In this book, it turns out that the odds of getting ahead by supernatural means might be better than your odds of winning the lottery—at least if you're like Nick. Nick is a fiercely determined fighter, and he's out to get what he wants. Because when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.

That doesn't mean Nick will do anything to get ahead; it just means that he's brave about going after what we wants. The important thing is that manages to fight for what he wants without compromising his morals. Nick wants to succeed, and he wants to do it admirably. He's a fictional character worthy of looking up to.

Nick's hard work and strength of character pay off. We won't spoil the ending here, so we'll just say this: Nick might win the lottery and rule the world. Tears for Fears would be proud.