Zodiac Academy: Cursed Fates — Zodiac Academy Book 5

Where the Series Earns Its ‘Dark’

Zodiac Academy: Cursed Fates is the fifth book in the series, and it is the point at which the ‘dark’ in dark romantasy stops being marketing. As the prophecy circling the Vega twins comes into sharper focus, betrayals shake the alliances they have painstakingly built, and the long-deferred battle for Solaria draws close. The emotional register shifts decisively: where earlier books deployed darkness in service of romantic friction, here the consequences are the kind that cannot be undone.

This is the installment that begins the series’ final movement, taking the story out of its middle phase and into the push toward conclusion. The pace accelerates sharply after the comparatively deliberate Shadow Princess, and the sense that events are outrunning the characters’ control fuels the book’s intensity. Peckham and Valenti spend the emotional capital they have accumulated across four books, weaponizing reader investment in characters who now face real and lasting harm — and they end on the kind of cliffhanger engineered to make the next book feel impossible to delay.

The Turn Toward Darkness

Cursed Fates marks the point in the Zodiac Academy series where the ‘dark’ designation in the genre label becomes something more than marketing. The earlier books deployed darkness in service of the enemies-to-lovers tensions and academy politics — the Heirs were antagonists, the trials were brutal, but the emotional register was ultimately one of romantic friction with a high-stakes backdrop. Book five changes this. The consequences that begin to land here are the kind that cannot be undone, and the emotional toll on characters who have been carefully established across four previous volumes is genuinely significant.

Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti are skilled manipulators of reader expectation, which is a compliment in series fiction. They have spent four books building investment in characters who now find themselves in situations where investment can be weaponised. The prophecy that has been circling the Vega twins’ story since the opening of the series — vague enough to sustain multiple interpretations, specific enough to create dread — begins to come into focus with a clarity that reframes what has come before. Readers who remember small details from books one and two will find that their patience is rewarded.

The Plot Acceleration

One of the structural functions of a fifth book in an eight-book series is to begin the final movement — to take the story from its middle phase into the push toward conclusion. Cursed Fates performs this function with urgency. The pace accelerates significantly after the comparative deliberateness of Shadow Princess, and the sense that events are moving faster than the characters can control contributes to the book’s emotional intensity. This acceleration is not achieved at the cost of character depth; the emotional beats remain carefully handled. But the plot engine is running harder, and the momentum carries into the final pages.

The Cliffhanger and Its Function

The ending of Cursed Fates is precisely the kind of cliffhanger that defines the indie romance/fantasy hybrid — designed not merely to leave plot threads open but to make the continuation feel psychologically necessary. The authors understand the mechanics of reader retention across a long series. Ending a book in a way that makes the next one feel impossible to delay is a skill, and one that the Zodiac Academy series deploys more effectively than most series fiction in its genre. The investment readers bring to book five is sufficient that the ending hits at the level the authors intend.

Peckham and Valenti as Co-Authors

One of the less-discussed aspects of the Zodiac Academy series is that it is genuinely co-authored — not merely co-branded, but written by two people working together across every book in a series of this length and complexity. Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti have developed a working relationship over multiple series, and the stylistic consistency of the Zodiac Academy books across eight volumes suggests a collaboration that has achieved genuine synthesis. For a series built on emotional intimacy with its characters, that consistency is not a minor achievement: readers who invest in Tory and Darcy Vega across eight books need to feel that they are in the same story from beginning to end, and they are.

The Kindle Unlimited Model

Part of what makes the Zodiac Academy phenomenon worth understanding is the publishing model behind it. Peckham and Valenti built the series independently, primarily through Kindle Unlimited, where a subscription readership rewards exactly the qualities the series possesses: long page counts, propulsive cliffhangers, and a steady release cadence that keeps readers turning to the next volume. By book five, Cursed Fates, that model has shaped the storytelling itself — the brutal cliffhanger and the relentless escalation are not just narrative choices but a recognition of how the books are consumed, in marathon binges by readers who can move to the next installment instantly. Far from cheapening the work, this alignment between form and platform is one reason the series feels so confident: the authors are writing for an audience whose reading behavior they understand intimately, and they calibrate the emotional rhythm accordingly. Cursed Fates is a case study in how the economics of indie serialized fiction can produce genuinely effective storytelling rather than merely padding, and in how a darker, riskier installment can thrive when the next book is only a tap away.

The Verdict

Cursed Fates is where the series earns its dark descriptor in full: the emotional stakes are brutally high, the plot moves faster than any previous installment, and the prophecy snaps into focus in ways that reframe everything before it. The betrayals land hard precisely because the characters are so well established, and the cliffhanger ending is the kind that sends readers straight to book six. It is genuinely dark and absolutely not a starting point, but for invested readers it is among the series’ most gripping entries.

Our rating: 4.6/5 — The series earns its ‘dark’ label in full: brutal emotional stakes, the fastest pacing yet, a prophecy that reframes everything, and a cliffhanger that demands immediate continuation.