Fated – S. G. Browne

Fate is a real, his name is Fabio.  It’s his job to determine the fates of most of the human population and it’s a job he is completely sick of.  He’s sick of his humans consistently choosing paths that lead to unfortunate and often early ends, and he’s jealous of Destiny, whose humans are chosen for great deeds.  Many other immortal beings such as, Death, Karma, Lady Luck, Truth, Honesty, all the seven deadly sins, and many more also exist and this setup immediately had me associating the book with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, which I absolutely love.  Unfortunately for me, Fated is a very different beast.

Many characters are introduced throughout Fated, mostly other anthropomorphic personifications of various human traits, but very few make repeat appearances and unfortunately even the main characters are one dimensional.  Browne does very little world-building either, and if you look too closely at what there is it often seems either contradictory or simply not explained deeply enough to understand how it’s all meant to work.

What seems to make or break this book is the humour.  It’s meant to be black humour, and while I did laugh at a few of the jokes, I found the tone and pacing of the book too inconsistent to truly enjoy it.  Looking online however, many people laughed all the way through this book and it was often awarded 5 stars by those that did.

The last thing that needs to be mentioned about Fated is the ending.  It’s weird.  After finishing the book, I suddenly had to re-evaluate the entire story to try to make sense of the ending.  I couldn’t.

Michael L.