Cursed by Benedict Jacka

Dark rituals drag London mage Alex Verus into the center of a conspiracy in this thrilling novel from the national bestselling author of Marked. Since his second sight made him infamous for defeating powerful dark mages, Alex Verus has been keeping his head down. But now he's discovered the resurgence of a forbidden ritual. Someone is harvesting the life-force of magical creatures—destroying them in the process. And draining humans is next on the agenda. Hired to investigate, Alex discovers not everyone on the Council wants him delving any deeper. Struggling to distinguish ally from enemy, he finds himself the target of those who would risk their own sanity for power. Alex still has the advantage of seeing the future—but he might not have a future for much longer.

Continues to be an amazing series. Couldn't Ask for more.

Cursed
Benedict Jacka

CAWPILE SCORE
C-8
A-8
W-7
P-8
I-8
L-8
E-10
TOTAL-/10

CAWPILECharactersWe get to see the character relationship between Alex and Luna grow and change, Sadly the death of the ship between the two of them. Martin the character we wish would die. Even though we don't see a ton of his character, we can totally relate him to people we know who think they know better or are smarter. He needed to die which he did, so its all good.Have to wonder slightly about whether the Monkey paw is actually evil, or just its nature and it can't fight against it, but it seems to take pleasure in the killingLight mages living up to Alex's estimation so far except for Taliseid. Belthas unabashedly wanting more power.Stupid Enchantress.AtmosphereStill London still felt realistic.WritingSolid writing, but nothing crazily different from the first book.PlotI liked that it felt like there were 2 plots going on a once. The Magic creature draining and the Monkey's Paw, and that they interacted and caused conflicting issues. The betrayals that you see coming and the ones you don't. Stupid MartinInvestmentVery invested, hard to put the book down.LogicThe Magic system is very consistent within world. The actions that people take make sense to their character, especially luna who just wants to be able to be around people.EnjoymentThese books are just so so good.Misc
I will be talking about it on Libromancy https://libromancy.podbean.com/ on 6/19/26