Review: Fated by S.G. Browne

Fated
by S.G. Browne
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: NAL Trade
Available: November 2nd 2010
Genre: Comedy, Fiction
Source: Publisher
Reviewed by: Catherine

Rule #1: Don’t get involved.

Over the past few thousand years, Fabio has come to hate his job. As Fate, he’s in charge of assigning the fortunes and misfortunes that befall most of the human race—the 83% who keep screwing things up. And with the steady rise in population since the first Neanderthal set himself on fire, he can’t exactly take a vacation.
Frustrated with his endless parade of drug addicts and career politicians, it doesn’t help watching Destiny guide her people to Nobel Peace Prizes and Super Bowl MVPs. To make matters worse, he has a five hundred year old feud with Death, and his best friends are Sloth and Gluttony. And worst of all? He’s just fallen in love with a human.
Sara Griffen might be on Destiny’s path, but Fabio keeps bumping into her—by accident at first, and then on purpose. Getting involved with her breaks Rule #1, and about ten others, setting off some cosmic-sized repercussions that could strip him of his immortality–or lead to a fate worse than death.

Fated is a dark, irreverent comedy about fate, destiny, and the karmic consequences of getting involved with humans.

It takes a lot to get me to DNF a book. I have a compulsion to keep reading. I can’t help but think the book might redeem itself in the end. But, sometimes, I stumble across a book that is so incredibly irritating and frustrating that I just can’t keep reading. In my whole life, the number of books that I have DNF’ed can still be counted on one hand. So, needless to say, I’m not very pleased to add another to the list. Unfortunately, this book irritated me to the point that I couldn’t not be frustrated with everything.

I chose this book on the assumption that it would be in the same line as Christopher Moore. I didn’t expect them to be exact copies, but I thought they’d have a similar style. I was wrong. They couldn’t be more different. For one, Christopher Moore is actually funny. I didn’t see a lot of humor here. Just a bunch of whiny people making grand pronouncements about how lame humanity is.

The main character, Fate (or Fabio as he’s nicknamed), whines about how lame humans are constantly. They rarely live up to their potential, they have mindless existences, blah, blah, blah. By page 4 I was already getting the vibe that it was not my kind of story. It seemed way too preachy, and I cannot stand “message” books that bash ad nauseam. There’ll be multiple quoted examples so you know what I mean.

Pg. 1:

The mall is one of the best places to go to see human nature at its best. Or worst, depending on how you want to look at it. Men and women, teenagers and children, shopping, eating, gossiping, filling up the vacuum of their lives with retail therapy and empty calories.

Pg. 2:

In the United States, there are twice as many shopping centers as there are high schools, and the shopping mall has replaced the church as the temple of cultural worship. In a society that encourages its citizens to measure their worth by financial success and material possessions, American humans spend more of their income on shoes, watches, and jewelry than they do on higher educations. Sure, it keeps Greed and Envy busy, but it makes my existence a living hell. Back when humans were still in their hunter-gatherer phase, existence was all about survival, fulfilling the basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter, so it’s not like there were a lot of options for better living. Food wasn’t prepared by Martha Stewart. Clothing didn’t come with a Calvin Klein logo. And shelters didn’t require Ralph Lauren curtains with a matching duvet. The thing about humans is that they’re addicted to products. Habitual consumers. Indulgence abusers. Gratification automatons. Programmed to need and want and buy. MP3 players. Xboxes. Playstation 3s. TiVo. Surround sound. High-definition flat-screen TVs. A thousand cable channels with movies and music and pay-per-view. Distracted by their desires, overwhelmed by their needs and wants, they’ll never remain on their assigned paths. Their optimal futures. Their most beneficial fates.

Pg. 4:

Not every human being has some kind of sexual hang-up or disorder or desire waiting to be realized. But most Americans do. This probably has something to do with the fact that the United States demonizes sex and represses sexual energy. Personally, I prefer the Italian and French. To them, sex is just a part of their culture.

Taken in small doses, these observations can be amusing. But there were no small doses here. All Fabio ever did was whine about how lame humans are and how much his job sucks. Beyond that he didn’t have much of a personality. And silly me, I actually like my characters to have some depth.

A huge premise of the book centered around Fate being a bad thing for humans. People who were going to be somebody important or have something good happen to them had destinies, not fates. The author explains this by throwing in some common sayings like “a fate worse than death” or “his fate was sealed” and saying that negative things are the only thing associated with Fate and the positive things are all associated with Destiny. But that is not how I associate Fate and Destiny so I found the whole premise rather perplexing.

But that wasn’t a big thing. It was really the whiny, self absorbed, hypocritical characters that I had to read about that really bugged me. I mean, really! How can you bash on people with Fates for making bad choices and screwing up their Fates when you don’t actually do anything with your life beyond bitching about said humans? Fabio’s head was just not a fun place for me to hang out in. Example:

Pg. 67

Some of the places are a little seedy and can occasionally get rowdy, like this one, but I understand why human men enjoy going to strips clubs. Beautiful women dressed in not much, walking up to you and sitting in your lap, smelling yummy. Not to mention the private rooms and pole dancing and naked flesh in Technicolor abundance. True, the strippers are being paid to be nice and flirtatious and desirous, but technically, when you go out on a date with a woman, you’re paying for it, too. And unless you’re Greed or Frugality or a tightfisted bastard who insists on going Dutch, you’re going to spend about as much money on a date as you are at a strip club. Of course, if you and your date don’t connect for whatever reason, you’re stuck on the date for at least a couple of hours until it ends. You can’t just walk out after paying the cover charge and say, “Thanks a lot.” And when the evening finally does come to an end, chances are your date won’t rub up against you, give you a lap dance, and brush her breasts against your face and say, “Oops.”

One last thing about the actual style of the writing. One, it’s written in First Person present tense. It was really hard for me to get into. Just a warning if you don’t enjoy that style. Two, the author had a compulsion to repeat patterns to his writing again and again and again. The author constantly listed examples in three’s—and did this every few pages—and constantly said stuff like “the thing about so-and-so is that he’s such-and-such.” That happened every single time that a character was talked about. I was getting an eye twitch!

I made it to page 111 and I was done. I just couldn’t last long after Fabio’s love interest was (honest to God) turned on when he admitted to out and out stalking her for weeks. Blech!

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