Fated is a wonderfully light, easily addictive, urban fantasy, which introduces us to a cleverly constructed magical world with its hierarchy of mages.

One of the interesting aspects of this story was that our protagonist, Alex, actually spent a fair amount of the story as gender neutral, which is a fascinating idea.  I don’t tend to pay too much attention to descriptions at the best of time, being quite happy to let my imagination fill in a characters’ physical characteristics, but I am used to being aware of a gender.  With Alex it was quite feasible that the gender could go either way, as there were no stereotypical elements for the first half of the book, and although I do admit my bias towards female lead urban fantasy perhaps being the reason for my assumption that Alex was indeed female. But in genre it isn't uncommon to have gender neutral authors, why not gender neutral characters?

Moving on from that idea, I quite liked the level of world building in Fated. Although the setting is modern London, so we don't have a whole new universe and its rules to come to terms with, there is a world of magic, that although is obviously set apart from our world, it feels as though the two very rarely intersect.

Although the way magical interactions work is well developed, the characters themselves are pretty shallow, but this is perhaps not unexpected in a story so light.

There isn’t really the need to develop an emotional bond with the characters to enjoy the story; the pacing is such that the heart will stay in the mouth for quite a decent amount of time.

One of the quite clever aspects to this story is the idea that the main character is a "divination" Mage. Alex can see the future, ALL the futures. This is his gift, and it's rather well done.  How do you create a suspenseful action scene when the main character can see all the possible futures and choose the best path? You make the action happen with such a pace that he doesn't have time to stop and catch his breath.

The back-story is hinted and threaded through the main plot, and although we don't necessarily get a full blow by blow, we certainly get enough of an understanding of Alex’s background, and to the world which he came from; and some of the aspects are pretty dark. It's these elements, which involve implied and actual violence and/or torture that move this book firmly into the adult genre.

Overall, Fated is a great introduction to what looks to be a light, addictive series.  It has been compared to Jim Butcher, and the comparison is not unjust, if you enjoy Jim Butcher you really will want to give Fated by Benedict Jacka a go.