Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

Monday, July 28, 2025--San Antonio

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White is a magical fantasy novel.  It takes place in a empire ruled and powered by an all-powerful god/goddess with supernatural gifts.   There are several provinces with each ruled by a "Blessed" who passes the ruling down to one of his/her children who receive their blessing (their own unique power that manifests usually before adulthood).  At the time of the story, the god ruling the empire, who uses much of his strength to maintain a wall to keep enemies of the empire from overrunning it, is growing old and weak.  The goddess who will take over from him, is bringing all of the children/young adults who have received their blessings on a traditional voyage to a sacred mountain so they can officially be enshrined as the new leaders of their individual provinces.  But there are problems in this land.  It is expensive to keep it safe from its enemies.  Some provinces are richer than others.  Some of the blesseds are considered to be lesser than others.  Some have ambitions to change the system.  And murders start occurring on the voyage.  The protagonist is from the lowest of the low provinces.  He hates the whole system and makes no attempt to hide it.  He is also humorous, so he is not taken seriously.  He is pudgy.  And he is gay and in love with one of the other blesseds who is ignoring him and has become engaged with a female.  But he is also curious and intelligent.  As the murders stack up, he and two others among the lower cast blesseds team up to try to figure out what is going on--who is doing this and why.  It's a fun premise.  The statements and thoughts of the protagonist are often laugh-out-loud funny.  The love story is one that the reader wants to succeed.  But the structure of the story has problems.  Maybe that is because it supposedly started on TikTok--brief entries that became so popular it was turned into a book.  I was enjoying reading the book throughout; it was after I had finished that I started realizing its weaknesses.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5 overall with a rating of 4 out of 5 for the pleasure of it having such a funny and interesting main character.