The seventh Dimensional Alliance book, where love and a widening threat raise the stakes. A tribute and a review.
By Threads of Infinity, the seventh book in The Dimensional Alliance, Jenny is back in the thick of the fight, and Bonnie Dillabough adds a thread she had been weaving all along: the heart. Jenny and Burt are madly in love but, as agents of the Alliance, almost never get to see one another, and that ache runs underneath an adventure that’s grown to threaten even Earth.
The Alliance is working to free the enslaved dimensions from the grip of the evil Inseni, dimensional pirates whose reach now extends toward Jenny’s own world. The question driving the book is the one the whole series has been building toward: how can Jenny and her friends save them all?
Romance amid the rescue
The choice to foreground Jenny and Burt’s separated love is a telling one. Bonnie described her books as having adventure, sciency stuff, and a tiny bit of romance, and that proportion is exactly right, the love story is a thread, not the fabric, present enough to give the stakes a human warmth without overwhelming the adventure. Lovers kept apart by duty is an old and reliable engine of feeling, and Bonnie uses it to remind the reader what Jenny is fighting for: the people and the connection she cares about.
In memory
A tribute to Bonnie Dillabough: the friend, mentor, and author behind The Dimensional Alliance, in her own story and mine.
What is the widening threat in Threads of Infinity?
This late in the series, the stakes have expanded from a single inherited mystery to the fate of enslaved dimensions and the safety of Earth itself, the natural escalation of a saga approaching its climax. Bonnie keeps the tone hopeful even as the danger grows, holding to her conviction that flawed, good-hearted people working together can meet a threat larger than any of them. The Alliance itself, a community of allies across dimensions, embodies the belief in connection that ran through all her work.
By the seventh book the shelf itself is an accomplishment. Bonnie didn’t start with a roadmap or a publishing contract or an MFA; she started, as she put it, with grit, heart, and an internet connection. Seven full novels into a series begun at sixty-three, while managing health challenges with a humor that made you forget she was dealing with them, she was writing with complete command of a universe grown from a teenage dream.
There’s a quiet defiance in that productivity, a refusal to accept that the time for big creative work had passed. Jenny fighting through separation and danger to protect the people she loves has a counterpart in the author fighting through every practical reason not to write and doing it anyway, book after book. As the penultimate published volume, Threads of Infinity sets the pieces for the saga’s intended close.
That she kept the warmth and the hope intact this deep into a long series, never letting the darkness of the Inseni overwhelm the light she wrote by, is its own kind of achievement, and its own kind of message from the woman who wrote it, a quiet insistence that hope is a choice a storyteller gets to make, and one Bonnie made on every page she wrote.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Threads of Infinity about?
Threads of Infinity is the seventh book in The Dimensional Alliance, and I found Jenny back in the thick of the fight with the stakes now reaching all the way to Earth. Bonnie Dillabough adds a thread she had been weaving all along, the heart, as Jenny and Burt struggle with being in love while almost never getting to see each other because of their duties as Alliance agents. The Alliance itself works to free enslaved dimensions from the grip of the evil Inseni, dimensional pirates whose reach now extends toward Jenny’s own world. I think the question driving the book is the one the whole series has been building toward, how Jenny and her friends can save them all.
Where does Threads of Infinity fall in the series?
Threads of Infinity is the seventh book in The Dimensional Alliance and the penultimate published volume in the saga. I noticed the stakes escalating naturally at this point, growing from a single inherited mystery to the fate of enslaved dimensions and the safety of Earth itself. Bonnie kept the tone hopeful even as the danger grew, holding to her belief that flawed, good hearted people working together could meet a threat larger than any of them. To me, this book sets the pieces for the saga’s intended close.
How much romance is in The Dimensional Alliance series?
Bonnie Dillabough described her own books as having adventure, sciency stuff, and a tiny bit of romance, and I think that proportion is exactly right. In Threads of Infinity, the love story between Jenny and Burt is present enough to give the stakes a human warmth without overwhelming the adventure. I see the romance as a thread, not the fabric, of the story. Lovers kept apart by duty is an old and reliable engine of feeling, and Bonnie uses it to remind me what Jenny is fighting for, the people and the connection she cares about.
Who are the Inseni in The Dimensional Alliance series?
The Inseni are the dimensional pirates who serve as the villains across The Dimensional Alliance series. In Threads of Infinity, I see their reach extending toward Jenny’s own world, raising the stakes to include the safety of Earth itself. The Alliance works to free the dimensions the Inseni have enslaved, and that fight against them is what drives the whole saga toward its climax. Bonnie kept her stories hopeful even as the Inseni’s threat grew larger, never letting their darkness overwhelm the light she wrote by.
Who was Bonnie Dillabough?
Bonnie Dillabough was a friend, mentor, and the author behind The Dimensional Alliance series, which I reviewed and paid tribute to in this piece. She began writing at sixty-three with, as she put it, grit, heart, and an internet connection, no roadmap, no publishing contract, and no MFA. By the time she wrote Threads of Infinity, her seventh book, she had complete command of a universe grown from a teenage dream, even while managing health challenges with humor that made me forget she was dealing with them. I found in her work a quiet insistence that hope is a choice a storyteller gets to make, one she made on every page she wrote.
Bonnie K.T. Dillabough was a science fiction and fantasy novelist, mentor to aspiring writers, and longtime friend to the Writing King community. She published her first novel, The House on Infinity Loop, two weeks before her 64th birthday, and went on to write the Dimensional Alliance series, eventually planned at fifteen books. She died at her home in Richland, Washington,…
