Sorrow and Starlight: Zodiac Academy 8

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and sexual content.

Sorrow and Starlight is set in a world where fate is an omnipresent force that governs the characters’ lives. Fae are pawns in a grand, cosmic design, where the alignment of the stars and ancient prophecies create inescapable destinies imposed upon them. However, authors Peckham and Valenti do not present fate here as wholly unchangeable. Instead, they deliberately show a pushback against this fatalistic outlook, with several characters fighting back, especially Tory and Gabriel.

For Tory, fate is the ultimate antagonist—a force to fight back against and rewrite. In her first chapter, when faced with a future without Darius, she thinks,

I was done being a pawn that the stars could tug and pull whichever way they pleased. The call of fate meant nothing to me if this was the life they’d chosen for me. I refused it as harshly as I refused them, and they were soon going to learn how hot my fire could burn in vengeance (33).

Tory becomes an embodiment of vengeance, and the main target of her rage is the indifferent celestial forces and fate itself. She rebels by forging alliances with the Nymphs in defiance of tradition, and she actively seeks out forbidden magic to bring Darius back.