Fated

[sawyl]

In the mood for some solid urban fantasy over the Christmas period, I settled in Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus novels starting with Fated. Although they're not terribly demanding and Alex feels a little under-realised in the first book, they're solid escapist fun with a first-person hero who relies on intelligence rather than brute force to get himself out of trouble.

The book begins when diviner and shopkeeper Alex Verus is approached with a job offer: the Council would like him to help them investigate a Precursor relic. Alex refuses out of hand but his curiosity is piqued when a trio of Dark mages start trying to target him. Sneaking in to the British Museum one night under cover of his mist cloak, he sees his three would-be abductors — Cinder, Khazad, and a masked woman called Deleo — get themselves caught up in a serious fight with the Council's Light mages. Realising the precariousness of his situation, Alex and his protegee Luna Mancuso attend a ball in Canary Wharf where a powerful member of the Council makes Alex an offer he can't refuse.

The opening chapters of Fated contain an awful lot of world building, most of it added by Alex as a series of asides to explain his situation or the behaviours of those around him. This we learn that the mages are divided into two main blocks, with a handful of non-aligned mages like Alex floating around the edges. The Light and Dark blocs align with law and chaos rather than good and evil: the Light mages have the Council and offer protection to the weaker members of their community, while the Dark mages believe in intense individualism and might makes right. Neither group is particular interested in the interests of anyone who isn't a mage and adepts — essentially mages who can only perform one spell — as non-entities, even by the Light Council.

Magic itself falls into different categories, with each mage having a particular proficiency. Elemental magic seems to be particularly common and gives impressive offensive and defensive capabilities, along with other less obvious options such as the ability to create a gate from one place to another. Others such as life magic, death magic, or time magic seem to be less common, while Luna's chance magic — part of a curse that causes any bad luck or misfortune that affects her to be directed out to those around her — and Alex' divination skills are vanishingly rare.

Working with a young historian called David Sonder, Alex begins investigating what is now believed to be the tomb of powerful Light general killed during the Dark Wars that established the Council. Just as Alex realises what the key to the reliquary might be, he is abducted by his regular trio of pursuers and promptly rescued by a polished and charming but extremely dangerous Dark mage called Morden. Interested in the relic for the same reason as the Council — it is rumoured to contain a powerful artefact called a fateweaver — Morden suggests that Alex and Deleo come up with a way to bury their differences and work together and in exchange he will allow them to live; although his offer isn't as generous as it seems, given that in true Dark mage fashion he expects that his apprentice Onyx will attempt to kill them as soon as they are no longer necessary to the mission.

Alex' period of imprisonment introduces an interesting new element in the shape of a somewhat dangerous shared dream space called Elsewhere. Alex initially uses it to get in contact with Luna, who has a key role to play in his plan to survive both Morden and the Council, but once their conversation Elsewhere forces him to re-live painful events from his past. Thus we learn that Alex, an outcast at school, was recruited by a charismatic Dark mage called Richard Drahk who promised to help him make the most of his power. But Alex, as diviner, found himself the weakest of Richard's four apprentices — fire mages Tobruk and Shireen, and water mage Rachel — making him the most frequent victim of Tobruk's sadistic games. Slowly coming to doubt Richard's actives, Alex engaged in petty acts of rebellion and rule-breaking before finally transgressing sufficiently for Richard to imprison him — something which, ironically, gave him the time and opportunity to build up his unusual range of divination skills.

The interlude in Morden's house also gives Alex an opportunity to expound on how divination works. Essentially it gives the diviner the ability to trace out potential futures as fast as they can think, allowing them to see the consequences of actions without actually having to carry any of them out simply by narrowing down the option that leads to the outcome they desire. This gives Alex a way to bipass tedious tasks like password cracking simply by concentrating on the future where he gets past a barrier or to explore a place in perfect secrecy merely by imagining what might happen if he carried out a comprehensive search. He can also, if he is close enough, eavesdrop unseen by tracing out futures where he gets close enough to the speakers to here a few words of what they're saying before getting caught and repeating the process over and over until can hear the conversation. These abilities go a long way to making up for his lack of physical magic and allow him to bluff or out-think most of his opponents because, as he says, intelligence is a force multiplier.

All things considered Fated is a solid start to the series and if Alex is a little undrawn at first, the other characters generally make up for it. Luna and Arachne — a giant magical spider who lives in a burrow on Hampstead Heath! — provide excellent support and Morden, while not the principal villain of the piece, is an fine foil for Alex. Sonder and Onyx go on to become series regulars, the former as a reliable sidekick and researcher, while the latter tries to kill Alex on almost every occasion unless Morden is around to restrain him. Deleo and Cinder, too, are solid supporting characters with a convincing backstory: Deleo is clearly suffering from some sort of psychosis and Cinder, who clearly cares for her a great deal, isn't actually a bad guy for all his ruthlessness when carrying out one of Deleo's plans and even enters into an respectful semi-friendship with Alex in the later books.

Onwards to the next book!