It’s been a few years since I read Fated, the first novel in Benedict Jacka’s Alex Verus series. I thoroughly enjoyed that book so I was eager to read his second novel in the series. It took me a bit of time to refamiliarize myself with the characters and the story world created, but Jacka does a great job of bringing readers up to speed like me who had taken some time off before reading the second novel or even for those who did not read the first book in the series. Even in that case, it wouldn’t be too hard to read this and pick up what was going on.
There are a few different storylines going on in this book, and they all converge, even though at the time I was reading them, it didn’t seem as if they would. First, was the discord between Alex and his apprentice, Luna, as they couldn’t seem to develop a good working relationship. The second being Luna’s sort of new boyfriend getting ahold of a Monkey’s Paw, despite Alex warning him against it. The third was an enchantress showing up at Verus’s store while being attacked by a golem, and Alex having to fight off the golem. The story lines converged on different groups of mages developing a method to extract magical abilities by draining them from magical creatures, something that Alex is desperate to stop, given his close relationships with some of these creatures.
