Hello October // Brianna Reviews - Fated by Benedict Jacka

 Published: 1st March 2012 
 Publisher: Orbit

 Format: Paperback

 Synopsis: In the heart of Camden you'll find the Arcana Emporium, run by Alex Verus. He won't sell you a wand or mix you a potion, but he might just be able to help. That's if he's not too busy avoiding his would-be apprentice, foiling the Dark, outwitting the Light or investigating a mysterious relic that has just turned up at the British Museum.

If ever there was a case of judging a book by its cover this was it. I had seen the first 3 books of this series in a shop I was working in at the time and every time I saw them I thought the covers were really pretty, eventually I bought the books, but it wasn’t until I got home that I even looked to see what they were about. Given my recent confession about magic you could imagine my dismay at realising they were about magic. I shouldn’t have worried luckily Fated is as good as its cover.

Alex Verus is a mage who runs a magic shop in Camden, London. He’s not really too fond of spending time with other mages and has very few friends (I’m not too fond of the one that is a giant tarantula!)he’s been keeping himself to himself after a bad experience with a dark mage (that might be a bit of an understatement) but his life doesn’t stay free of mages for long as several different mages sought him out for help.

I really, really liked this book. One of my favourite things about this book is Alex’s humour while narrating it’s not often that I chuckle at the actual narration of a book (or not as much as I did with fated) One of my favorite bits might have been his description of Unicorns or maybe his explaination of the mindset of diviners. I also like the way that Alex acknowledges that it took him a long time to figure out what the cube does while I had figured it out well before him.

At first I wasn’t a fan of starbreeze but I quickly fell in love with her and her incredibly short attention span and I loved and honestly was a bit surprised at the fact that she stuck around to help at the end when things started to get a bit hairy.

I’ll be honest Arachne terrifies me no matter how nice she is, and she is kinda amazing but no matter how amazing she is I just can’t shake the fact that she is a giant spider bigger than a car!

And of course I liked Luna ad feel really sorry for her. But I do wonder how Alex manages to be around her so much without accidently touching her in some way, I might just be really clumsy but I’m not sure I could spend that much time with someone without accidently coming into contact with them at some point, never mind staying at least an arm’s length away. It has also occurred to me that if Alex and Luna worked together they might even have all bases covered as Alex can’t predict events that are purely chance, but Luna’s curse can only affect things that are purely chance; I wonder if that was by design or by… chance (sorry).

I only really have two issues with Fated and they are pretty small as issues go. The first is I would like to know more about Alex and his past, I understand why we don’t get more information since it’s from Alex’s POV, but was he always a mage? Are you born a mage or do you become a mage? And how did he escape from Richard?

The other issue I have is that at the end part of the story was resolved that I wasn’t aware needed resolving. At the end it says that Arachne went back to her home, but I wasn’t aware that she had left, I might have just missed it – I was pretty tired while reading some bits as I had stayed up late to read it.

I am definitely going to read the next one – in fact I’ve already started! And since I loved it so much I now have an excuse to buy the other books in the series with their beautiful covers. I sort of hope Sonder shows up again I was just beginning to like him when Fated ended. And I’m really interested to see what happens with Luna’s curse as it seems like she was starting to direct it rather than it just being there.