Fated by Benedict Jacka

[purplecat]

I think I'm getting a bit bored of Urban Fantasy I thought to myself about one chapter into Fated, by about chapter 4 I was gripped.

Alex Verus is a mage who specialises in seeing into the future. He has, to a greater or lesser extent, fallen out with the powers that be in the magical world and keeps himself to himself and resolutely doesn't get involved with other wizards - that is until a mysterious artefact turns up in the British Museum and all the seers who are actually paying attention promptly make themselves scarce.

I liked Alex Verus a lot, though it took me a while to warm to him. His brand of magic is low-key, lacks any offensive capability but is hugely powerful if wielded intelligently and mostly Alex is pretty intelligent. Even his mistakes tend, at least, not to be of the irritating variety. However, it has to be said, there is a touch of the angst-ridden teenage heart-throb vampire about him. He has a dangerous and tragic back-story and feels alienated from and betrayed by the forces that control his world and reacts to that fact with a certain amount of petulance. But fundamentally he's a nice guy, he's pretty clear-sighted about some of the unpleasantness about him, and the ruthlessness he himself sometimes needs to deploy as a result. He doesn't waste a lot of time trying to justify himself but focuses instead upon the problems at hand. Given this is the first in a series of books about Alex, I think it bodes well that I found him a strong and likeable protagonist.

I was less certain about the general world-building. I noted about that Alex's ability to see into the future (or more accurately see all the possible futures) was both low-key but extremely powerful. However, the movers and shakers of this magical world were frequently wrong-footed by him and it seemed odd that they should be so unaware of the kinds of tricks a seer could pull. There was a suggestion that Alex's experiences had caused him to develop his ability in unusual directions but not enough was really made of this to convince me that he should be able to surprise experienced wizards quite so often. The book was also very focused on the magical world without the sense of realism which Urban Fantasy often tries to bring into its tales.

That said the plot, which focused on manoeuvring between the factions in the magical community, was well put together and naturally required its strong focus on the magical rather than the mundane aspects of the world. It never seemed totally stupid, nor were its twists and turns over-obvious.


I can't quite make up my mind about this book. I liked both the central character and the plot, but the world they existed in was flimsier and less convincing than I generally like from Urban Fantasy.

Comments

[samjohnsson]

There was just a little much One True Saviour at the end of Fated. I've started reading the next one, and the tone is...something about it rubs me even more wrong. It may be the thinner worldbuilding. Maybe the fact that it was a very dualistic community with some extreme ethical concessions on the part of the "good" guys.

If you like grit, I might recommend Paul Cornell, "London Falling" (the sequel just came out, but I haven't read it yet) - it's incredibly dark, but it feels perfect for dropping a bunch of London mundane cops into the deep end of the urban magic pool, and he's some interesting concepts on how one enters the influence of magic.

Another gritty one is Kate Griffin's "A Madness of Angels" series - her protagonist is very savvy, and she does some very dynamic things with her magic system; her wordchoice and her protagonist are also absolutely fascinating. (Those are not pronoun typos - plow through it, and it will make sense after a bit.)

If you like less grit but all of the worldbuilding, Max Gladstone does some fabulous work in his two books ("Three Parts Dead" is the first). It's very much a parallel Earth - there are no direct correlations to this world. That said, it's very clearly urban lit in a High Magic world, especially "Two Serpents Rise".

Mark del Franco's "Unshapely Things" is interesting in that it's add-the-Fae-to-modern-Boston, but the Arthurian parallels get...clunky.

[purplecat]

Hmm... I didn't get a One True Saviour vibe so much (though if it does turn out Verus is destined I shall be irritated).

I'm not sure I was missing "grit" per se. One of the things I'm less keen on in Aaronovitch's stories is the horror elements. ladyofastolat over on LJ put it very well when she said the stories lacked much of a sense of place. I felt they could just as easily have been set a hundred or two hundred years ago, or in a fantasy world, as in the modern day.

I have a feeling I read a Sherlock AU based on "A Madness of Angels" and really liked it - its certainly ringing a bell and I notice it's on my Amazon Wish List, so that would make sense. I'll admit I've not checked out Paul Cornell's latest - I didn't much take to his two earlier original novels and was slightly put off by the sense he was copying Aaronovitch, but I'll check it out. Not come across Max Gladstone or Mark del Franco - I shall add both to the wish list.

[jesusandrew]

Having read both Cornell's and Aaronovitch's recent urban fantasy novels, I can confirm that they are very different works.

Aaronovitch's series feels like the lighter and fluffier of the two - although there are horror elements, they never really connected with me on an emotional level. My main reservation about them is that I'm uneasy about the way he writes the main female character - I often get the sense that she's being sidelined and find that there is inadequate attention given to the development of her character. A lot of this may well be an artefact of the first person viewpoint, but it still niggles at me. The observation about sense of place is also interesting - he conveys the sense of somebody who knows a lot about London, but I don't feel it in the storytelling.

I've only read the first volume of Cornell's new series. I found it to be much more satisfactory on these points - there's a much stronger sense of a well thought through set of characters from a diverse range of backgrounds anchored firmly in the real world. Where it might fall down for you is the horror element - the horror is a much stronger part of the fabric of events and is described in a much more visceral manner than in Aaronovitch's series. It also bears mentioning that a large part of the first book involves the characters trying to work out the rules of how magic works, which sometimes makes the plot drag - I presume this will be less of an issue with book 2.

[purplecat]

I've read the first two Aaronovitch's and I'm not sure I'd count the "main female character" as a main character at all really. Broadly speaking she's the victim-who-brings-it-all-home in the first and a watcher from the sidelines in the second. Come to think of it, it is odd in some ways because Aaronovitch wrote women well in his Dr Who books, but they are definitely rather thin, I would say in the Rivers of London books I've read.

His books definitely felt a lot more grounded in 21st Century London to me, than Fated did, which I feel could have been placed in any large Western city possibly any time in the last couple of hundred years without it making a great deal of difference.

[fredbassett]

Sounds interesting. Who are the author and publisher? If it's recent, I might be interested in this one for the site.

[purplecat]

The author is Benedict Jacka and the publisher is Orbit. I'm not sure how well it fits into the mystery/crime genre. It's definitely a step further away from it, I would say, than a lot of Urban Fantasy. It's more about navigating the politics of the magical world than solving a mystery (or at least this book was) given its a series the others may fall more into the fantasy-meets-modern-crime format.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I read that series last year, just after reading the Rivers of London books, and felt it suffered a little in comparison, especially in its lack (or so I felt) of a strong sense of place. I never made a real emotional connection with the main character. I did enjoy them well enough to read all the books that were then available, but deep down I never really cared all that much, and I realise now that I've forgotten almost everything about them.

[purplecat]

lack (or so I felt) of a strong sense of place

That's it precisely. I felt rather as if the book could have been set a hundred or two hundred years ago or in any city in the Western world without changing more than a few sentences.