Fate

Despite its cover art, this is not a Red Riding Hood retelling, but rather a fantasy quest novel with a delightfully strong feminist slant. Our heroine, Asher, is living under a double oppression firstly within an occupied country and secondly from social conventions with have reduced women's roles in her society to either mothers or decorations. Asher's railing against both subjugations makes for a good story with a lot of oh-so-true observations on British society too. I did feel that Corran was a bit heavy handed with her philosophical arguments at times, and Asher's initial refusal to learn from her mistakes was exasperating although very believable. What I did like though was the way we saw her grow into her potential as her quest progressed.

I'm not a big reader of fantasy stories - which is the main reason why it took me so long to get started on this one. I did feel that Fate's main narrative went pretty much where I expected to, albeit in an interesting way, and I didn't like the city names - Fate, Omen, Venture, and especially the misspelled Kepesake. What's with that?! I did like Corran's writing style and could empathise with her characters. Perhaps the physical settings and world-building could have done with a little more refinement because I felt some were overdescribed with others not benefiting from enough attention. This could be my lack of fantasy-reading experience showing though with me not picking up on genre standards or tropes. Overall though, Fate is a fun adventure novel and I have no regrets about spending time in Asher's world. I'm not sure that I would pick up another of Corran's fantasy stories, but I have added her mental health memoir to my TBR.