Verus' comfortable perch quickly collapses as he is drawn into a deadly race between powerful Light and Dark mages to obtain a relic that will tip the balance between the two sides. Both camps know Verus is the key to their success, and they are not shy about heavy-handed recruiting tactics. Can Verus recover the relic, save his friends, and escape with his life intact? It's a future even a skilled diviner would have trouble foreseeing.
Jacka does a great job in Cursed of introducing us to his cast of characters for this series and setting the stage of his alternate England where magic is alive, but unknown to most.
The story is easy to follow, and there is clear foreshadowing of developments to come in later novels while still giving the story a satisfying end to allow Cursed to stand on its own.
Light and Dark magic are regular themes in urban fiction, but Jacka does a good job tweaking these classic divisions to be more grey - giving the story grit and vibrance as you realize magic isn't a solution to all of our problems, just another tool that, like so many tools put in the hands of man, tend to be wielded for personal gain.
- Jonathan Zerulik
Publisher - Ace
Date of Publication - May 29, 2012