Review: Marked by Sarah Fine

Title: Marked
Author: Sarah Fine
Publisher: 47North
Release Date: January 1, 2015


In a broken landscape carved by environmental collapse, Boston paramedic Cacia Ferry risks life and limb on the front lines of a fragile and dangerous city. What most don’t know—including her sexy new partner, Eli Margolis—is that while Cacy works to save lives, she has another job ferrying the dead to the Afterlife. Once humans are “Marked” by Fate, the powerful Ferrys are called to escort the vulnerable souls to either eternal bliss or unending fire and pain.

Unaware of Cacy’s other life, Eli finds himself as mesmerized by his fierce and beautiful partner as he is mistrustful of the influential Ferry clan led by the Charon—who happens to be Cacy’s father. Cacy, in turn, can no longer deny her intense attraction to the mysterious ex-Ranger with a haunted past. But just as their relationship heats up, an apparent hit takes the Charon before his time. Shaken to the core, Cacy pursues the rogue element who has seized the reins of Fate, only to discover that Eli has a devastating secret of his own. Not knowing whom to trust, what will Cacy have to sacrifice to protect Eli—and to make sure humanity’s future is secure?

This was an interesting start to Sarah fine's Servants of Fate series.  First off, I really only read this book because it was a free pre-release with amazon prime.  But pretty instantly I got engrossed in the story and couldn't put it down.  This book is not YA.  Not in the slightest.  But here we go anyway.

 So let me start with what I liked about this book.  While this was a fantasy novel, it was still set like a futuristic, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, dystopian novel.  Interesting indeed.  And I love that so much of the story comes from Greek mythology.  

My main problems with this novel are as follows: the name Ferry.  They ferry the dead to the afterlife? Get it? Ha Ha... Yeah.  I feel like not every name in literature has to mean something.  And many times when names have such obvious meanings, the name just seems stupid.  Or comical (like Dr. Evil).  

The other main problem that I have with this book is the amount of sex in it.  I was very quickly immersed in the story and didn't want to put it down.  So when I got about halfway through the book and found multiple chapters of explicit sex that you might find in a porn novel, I decided to push through it for the sake of the story.  Not to say that books can't have sex.  But this was overdone.  I think there were four (or maybe more) chapters of just sex.  Cut down on the explicitness.  Less description.  I don't need to know every single detail of what someone does in bed.

Those things aside, the world Fine created was really intriguing. 

So what do I think? I am glad I read this book.  It was pretty good.  This book is not YA and I would not recommend it to young readers.  I probably won't read it again.  But I might read the second book in the series when it's released.  I'm not sure yet.