A review of Fated by Benedict Jacka

Overview:

Fated  Benedict Jacka is a fictional book set in London, England and follows our main character named Alex. In this world, magic exists however, it is fairly underground and has been kept away from the public eye for a long. The main character Alex is a mage and is a diviner, someone who is able to see into the future. Alex has a traumatic past living with a dark mage (I will explain this later), and as such, is a fairly reserved person. He runs his, what I can only describe as magic pawn shop, in peace. He has one friend, a girl named Luna, who has magical issues of her own. But his life is altered when he is requested by one of the higher-ups in the light mages government (I will also explain this later) to help them decipher a puzzle the will lead to a powerful relic. From their he is thrusted back into the life he once lived as a prominent mage and we see the innerworkings of the society this book takes place in.

My opinion (spoilers):

This book was fairly ok, but it did have it's issues. I believe that your enjoyment of the book will hinge on how intrigued you are about a central conflict within the story so before I talk about that I'll talk about the stuff I didn't like. For starters, this book introduces a lot, and I mean, a lot of characters really early on and doesn't do anything really substantial with them. Granted, I looked it up and this book has like 10 sequels so I can understand setting things up for future books but judging this book by it's own merits I really think a good amount of the cast could be cut without any real problems. Second, I didn't really like the characters that much. Most of them felt really bland and, with the exception of the main antagonist cast, dull and shallow to the point where you could summarize their entire personality in one sentence. Again, I can imagine the characters becoming more fleshed out in the sequels but I don't believe this book gives the best foundations. Finally, I felt that the main character Alex could be really demeaning and condescending at times, especially towards the female characters. Now that that's out of the way, I can talk about the main idea of this book. The center of conflict in this book revolves around the moral conflict between two main groups of people, the light mages and the dark mages. The light mages are your standard mages who formed a society to better themselves and become stronger as a group. The dark mages on the other hand, are very individualistic, to the point of each dark mage lives in fear that another one could kill them and take their place at anytime. The dark mages follow a philosophy called the true way. The true way states that power is absolute and that those who have power can do whatever they want. Dark mages can commit all sorts of crimes because they have the power to do so, and more importantly, because the victims don't have the power to stop them. The main character Alex was pretty much a voluntary slave to a dark mage at one point and it is pretty clear that he suffered a lot of abuse from them, something common among dark mages. The dark mages and light mages used to be in a big conflict which ended a log time ago but tensions now are bubbling up in the story. I do like how the author isn't trying t give any sympathy to the dark mages ideas as at least from my perspective, as their act are definitely pretty traumatizing. If you are someone who may get uncomfortable by reading about violence, this book isn't for you.

3/5 not the best start but has the foundation for success later on.

Eli Khuri-Reid