Void Fate is a dark fantasy novel with a
dystopian thriller twist.
What would you do if you’d gone to sleep
and woken up to find everyone bar you and four of your friends were gone? Just
vanished. And not just that, but sound seems to have gone too. Not to mention no
sign of animals anywhere. There has been a rush of people disappearing recently
and a suspected serial killer on the loose—is this part of it? As Aram,
Michael, Daniel, Arthur, and Harris try to find out what has happened to them and
the rest of the planet, they will find themselves trapped in a world that makes
no sense. Why is the town surrounded by a dome? Why does the landscape change
every now and again? Who are the cloud-like demons that chase you down and kill
you? And most importantly, will they remain sane enough to find their way out?
The story grabbed me quickly as I envisaged
a stale and leftover world like The Langoliers but trapped like they were in
Under the Dome. The author has spun a tale on a number of levels, where not
only is the basic issue of where they are and what they will do about it addressed,
but he covers what happens when humans are put in extreme situations and what
they will do to survive. So here you have a group of friends who by all means,
having known each other as long as they had, should be very close and trusting
of each other and having each other’s backs. However, as we progress through
the story, we find out how fear and mistrust cause them to commit deeds they
would never normally do. Or is that to
do with the madness the new world is forcing on them? The author has very
cleverly weaved in what they suspect to be happening with the disappearance of
the bodies and it’s a novel take on an alternative world.
However, I did find the pacing very slow in
this. Considering that they knew they were trapped somewhere and had to do
something early on to get out there was quite a bit of space left in the book
for events to happen. A lot of the time it was just them moving from one
location to the next, and while I understand it was to avoid being detected,
the moving just seemed to be the same thing happening over and over told a
little differently. So you’d have something interesting happen and then a move,
then something interesting happen and then a move. It felt like it took too
long to get to the point. I never really connected with the characters, even
though the short chapters and POV jumps helped the reader to understand the
situation from all angles. Or maybe it was because of the quick jumps that you
never really got to stay in a character’s head long enough to properly feel
their emotions. The dome angle was never explored, which I felt strange and the
introduction of secondary characters certainly made your trust waiver from one
camp to the next.
There were some punctuation and grammar mistakes throughout but nothing major
that would stop your flow of reading.
I would definitely recommend this book but
note that there is profanity and a scene of abuse.
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