Blood Like Fate

Blood Like Fate is the concluding book of a fantasy duology set in a near-future Toronto. Voya has become the Matriarch of her family of black witches, much to everyone’s dismay, including her own. She is young and indecisive at a time when magic is mysteriously waning and the black witch community is fracturing into squabbling families. Then Voya sees a vision of everyone’s magic becoming uncontrollable and killing all the witches.

The vision leads her to believe that the problems with everyone’s magic are somehow linked to the genetic experiments being done at NuGene. Voya must learn how to use her own magic, somehow unite the magic families, and learn what’s going on at NuGene. Is her former love Luc really trying to destroy all magic? Voya’s investigations are complicated by NuGene’s human-look-alike AI units. The hidden agendas of the other magic family leaders make it hard to know whom she can trust, but her own family rallies behind her and gives her the confidence she needs to lead a united effort to save the witches.

Like the first novel, Blood Like Magic,
Blood Like Fate presents an engaging cast of diverse family members who constantly argue with and hurt each other but are always there for each other when it counts. Voya’s coming to recognize and appreciate their support is the emotional heart of the novel.

The pacing drags in places as Voya spends more time agonizing about what to do than actually doing anything, but there are enough twists in the plot to keep things interesting. The romance with Luc felt rather belabored and contrived in the first half of the novel when Voya believes he betrayed her but still feels attracted to him, but, once he rescues her, both the action and the romance pick up, and the story hurtles to an interesting and satisfying climax.

The ancestor- and family-based aspects of the magic are compelling and work well with the themes of belonging within a heritage and responsibility to a community.

Blood Like Fate is a satisfying conclusion to an original paranormal fantasy story; it meanders in the middle but lands its ending.