Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Benedict Jacka's second novel, Cursed, returns to the world of Alex Verus, a non-aligned diviner who runs a magic shop in Camden and does occasional odd jobs for the Council of Light Mages. As title suggests, the book features a pair of curses, one of which comes from a powerful magical artefact and the other which is a familial curse inflicted on the Mancuso many centuries before. As the latest bearer of the curse, Alex' protegee Luna Mancuso is both lucky and unlucky: her curse protects her from bad luck and the ill-intended actions of others in order to keep her alive and healthy as long as possible, but in return it redirects all the misfortune she would have suffered on to those around her causing them to suffer horrible consequences in direct relation to their proximity forcing her to lead a solitary and isolated life for her fear of hurting those she cares about.

The action opens with Alex accompanying a group of mercenaries hired by the Light Council to raid a mysterious warehouse. After a nervous search, nothing is found save the body of a barghest whose cause of death cannot be determined. The following day, Alex is minding his magic shop in Camden when Luna's new friend Martin drops by. Martin is unctuous with Luna and high-handed with Alex, especially when he finds an imbued item — a cursed wish-granting monkey's paw — lying on shelves when it ought to be locked up in Alex' safe. When Martin takes the paw against all advice, it pushes Luna and Alex into a furious row during which Luna, not without cause, accuses Alex of jealousy.

Via the raid on the warehouse and the row in the shop, Jacka draws out a lot of the uncertainties of Alex' and Luna's friendship. Although not officially his apprentice, Alex generally expects Luna to obey his instructions without question because they quite often find themselves in situations where Alex' ability to see the future allows him to pick courses of action that choose between life and death. But in less pressing moments, he treats Luna as friend and sometimes, despite her inability to get close to people without harming them, as a potential girlfriend. And Luna, for all that she has started to gain some control over her curse under Alex' tutelage, is impatient and open to Martin's easy solution — a wish that makes him immune to her curse.

Consequently when a beautiful mage shows up on Alex doorstep in the middle of the night pursued by murderous magical construct, he's more than willing to play the part of the chivalrous hero. The following morning Meredith takes Alex to meet Belthas, her employer, a powerful battle mage and member of the Light Council. Belthas reveals that he has discovered a new form of an ancient ritual, the Harvest, which allows mages to steal the power of magical creatures without losing their sanity in the process, and suggests that Alex' powers of divination might be of great assistance to Meredith in her search for a group of rogue mages who are attempting to employ the new ritual. Alex, who is more than a bit taken with Meredith, agrees and promptly connects the death of the barghest with the new Harvest. With the help of his friend David Sonder, a gifted time mage, Alex returns to the warehouse where Sonder is able use his ability to look into the past to confirm their suspicions.

Meredith the mind mage makes an interesting addition to the cast, largely because the action unfolds from Alex' point of view and his judgement may well be clouded by her mind-altering abilities. So while it's clear to the reader from the very first that she has a larger agenda, not least because Alex isn't his usual defensive self around her, it's not immediately clear what that might be. She's also, from Alex' perspective, somewhat opaque: when he finally sees where she lives, his immediate reaction is that her apartment is all surface and display, with nothing to give away her true nature.

Events become complicated when Meredith insists on dragging Alex back to her flat — they're on the way out to dinner and she wants access to the smarter part of her wardrobe — only for them to be cornered by a Dark fire mage. Recognising their attacker, Alex realises that he knows the man well enough to interpret his brief hesitation as surprise and concludes that the attacks he'd assumed were directed at him might actually have been directed at Meredith — making him wonder just what she has done to attract that sort of attention. As if that wasn't enough, Alex' friendship with Luna comes under yet more strain thanks to Martin and his monkey's paw. Having used his first wish to make himself immune to Luna's curse, Martin has started to succumb to the belief that he can somehow outwit the curse and survive with his wishes intact. When Alex tries to explain that this type of delusional thinking is part of the object's curse and happens to everyone who owns the paw, he fails to convince Martin but succeeds in further alienating.

Martin, too, is both a good character and a useful driving force behind the plot. Unlike Meredith, who spends as much time as possible with Alex, most of Martin's role plays out off stage, implying a general wariness of Alex whilst also suggesting that he and Luna are too busy doing their own thing to worry about spending time with her nagging mentor. Obviously the reader is supposed to dislike Martin from the very outset but, again because of the first person narrative and Alex' obvious jealousy, it's not clear how trustworthy this reaction is.

Somewhat belatedly, Alex realises that his disagreement with Luna may have serious consequences for the rest of his small circle of friends. Now certain that at least two groups of mages have been experimenting with the new harvest ritual, Alex suspects that as soon as each group has ironed out the initial problems with the rite they are going to be in need of a supernatural creature, the larger the better, to drain of magic. As one of the very few mages with genuine friends in the non-human magical community, Alex is appalled to discover that one of his closest friends, Arachne, a giant spider who lives in a burrow on the Heath, may be uniquely vulnerable: not only is she the most powerful supernatural creature in London but he and Luna are the only people she trusts enough to allow past her formidable defences.

Not only does the action shift up into overdrive at this point, but Alex' horrified reaction to harvesting underscores his separation from the rest of the magical community: where the rest of the mages, including the Light Council with all their laws, only seem interested in the actions and plight of other mages to the point of ignoring and exploiting everyone from adepts to magical creatures, Alex stands out as someone capable of strong friendships with those outside the mainstream like Luna and Arachne. He also contrasts with Meredith, the only other non-aligned mage to appear so far, in that although both are concerned primarily with their own survival and and, due to the nature of their powers, relatively physically weak, their wider approach to life is very different — as can probably be inferred from Alex' charmingly shabby shop and Meredith's immaculate and impersonal flat.

As the story rounds out, Luna and Alex bury their differences and decide to make some firm plans for their future. Having seen the harm caused by his ambiguous attitude to his protegee, Alex offers Luna the chance to become his apprentice with all the official duties, rights and responsibilities that involves for both of them, only for Luna to jump at the chance. Fresh from the success of both Fated and Cursed, Alex's growing reputation in the magical community has become sufficiently established for him to be allowed to enrol his new pupil in the official apprenticeship scheme overseen by the Light Council. As part of Luna's admission ceremony, Alex arranges for another apprentice of about the same age, a woman called Anne Walker, to act as sponsor little knowing that she will go on to be one of the central characters in Taken...