Magic and mystery awaits in Johnian fantasy author’s new novel

A mage and magic shop owner who can see into the future struggles to explore his dark side, in the new fantasy novel by a former St John’s College student.

Hidden, by Benedict Jacka, is due to be released next month, and marks the fifth and much-anticipated installment in the author’s critically-acclaimed Alex Verus series of novels. This urban fantasy series focuses on a diviner with a dark past, Alex Verus, who runs the magic shop ‘Arcana Emporium’, located in the back streets of Camden Town, London. Alex is a mage who can see into the future, which, as is evident in the novels, can sometimes be more trouble than it’s worth. In Hidden, Alex enters the shadow realm of dark mages to rescue a friend, and has to come to terms with the light and dark side of his own nature.

Jacka has been writing since he was 18 years old, scribbling story ideas in the back of his school exercise books, but it wasn’t until seven years later that he was published. He met his agent, Sophie Hicks from Ed Victor Ltd, while studying Philosophy at St John’s College from where he graduated with a BA in 2003, and after writing three unpublished children’s fantasy novels, he was published for the first time in 2005 with a children’s non-fantasy novel, To Be A Ninja. As well as having various jobs such as an English teacher, civil servant, and even a bouncer in North London, he has always found time to write, and in 2007 a sequel to To Be A Ninja (renamed Ninja: The Beginning) was published - Ninja: The Battle. The first book in the Alex Verus series, Fated, was published in 2012, followed by two more novels in the series in the same year.

The Alex Verus series has been critically received, with SF Site stating that Jacka has “the ability to bring places to life as much as his characters, especially the city of London” and that he “fills his stories with nonstop action and ends his chapters with cliffhangers, so readers can't stop and put the book down”.  

On the series of novels, Jacka says: “I’m very happy with the Alex Verus books and his world. It’s the best work I’ve done, and I’m looking forward to writing more.” Jacka is currently working on the edits for the sixth book, and already has plans in mind for the seventh. He has also written an Encyclopaedia Arcana explaining the settings and background to Alex’s world which can be found on the author’s website.

Hidden is released on 2 September both in the UK and the US. More information can be found on Benedict Jacka’s website: http://benedictjacka.co.uk