Author: Kevin Hearne

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Candle and Crow by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Candle and Crow by Kevin HearneCandle & Crow (Ink & Sigil, #3) by Kevin Hearne
Narrator: Luke Daniels
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ink & Sigil #3
Pages: 352
Length: 11 hours and 4 minutes
Published by Del Rey, Random House Audio on October 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles comes the final book in the Ink & Sigil series, as an ink-slinging wizard pursues the answer to a very personal mystery: Who cast a pair of curses on his head?
Al MacBharrais has a most unusual job: He’s a practitioner of ink-and-sigil magic, tasked with keeping order among the gods and monsters that dwell hidden in the human world. But there’s one supernatural mystery he’s never been able to solve: Years ago, someone cast twin curses on him that killed off his apprentices and drove away loved ones who heard him speak, leaving him bereft and isolated.
But he’s not quite alone: As Al works to solve this mystery, his friends draw him into their own eccentric dramas. Buck Foi the hobgoblin has been pondering his own legacy—and has a plan for a daring shenanigan that will make him the most celebrated hobgoblin of all. Nadia, goth queen and battle seer, is creating her own cult around a god who loves whisky and cheese.
And the Morrigan, a former Irish death goddess, has decided she wants not only to live as an ordinary woman but also to face the most perilous challenge of the mortal world: online dating.
Meanwhile, Al crosses paths with old friends and new—including some beloved Druids and their very good dogs—in his globe-trotting quest to solve the mystery of his curses. But he’s pulled in so many different directions by his colleagues, a suspicious detective, and the whims of destructive gods that Al begins to wonder: Will he ever find time to write his own happy ending?

My Review:

When we first met sigil agent Al MacBharrais back in Ink & Sigil, standing in the apartment of his seventh and latest apprentice – along with the corpse of said apprentice AND a caged HOBGOBLIN – we’re instantly aware of several things. Al’s world is just a bit bigger than the one we think we know, he has an absolutely fascinating line of work, and he’s in deep shit.

Or shite, as Al would say. It’s the same substance either way and no one wants to be standing in it as deeply as Al is already standing. And the story has barely begun!

It began in Ink & Sigil with Al hunting down the beings who were trafficking in beings from the fae planes – like the hobgoblin Buck Foi. It middled with an ‘adventure’ in Australia in Paper & Blood, and it ends here, back in Al’s native Glasgow in Candle & Crow, as Al’s mission to end the careers of as many traffickers as possible – no matter what species of sentient being they might be trafficking – ties itself up with Al’s personal quest to learn who cursed him AND why so that he can finally train up an apprentice to mastery and retire before the myriad dangers of his fascinating line of work catch up with him – fatally.

Candle & Crow perches right on that crossroads between “crying because it’s over” and “smiling because it happened.” I’m going to miss Al and his friends, but this was absolutely the right end for this series and I’m happy that I got to see it – and that Al’s office manager, Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite finally got to see the awesome shite that she came to see.

Escape Rating A: First of all – and last of all – Candle & Crow is an ending. Not just to the Ink & Sigil series, but by extension to the whole, entire Iron Druid Chronicles from which it sprang. Consider this a ginormous hint not to start here. It’s not necessary to start all the way back with the first book in the Iron Druid Chronicles, Hounded, and it’s absolutely not essential to have finished that series – because I haven’t and I still loved Al and his crew.

But you do need to start Al’s story with Ink & Sigil. And if you like urban fantasy, it is absolutely worth reading the whole glorious adventure.

I actually read this twice, or rather I read it once and had it read to me once. The first time I read it I was sitting in the train station in Al’s native Glasgow, waiting for the train back to London and eventually home after the close of the Glasgow WorldCon. It was the perfect place to read this story, with the one caveat that it made me regret not having taken the time to visit the Glasgow Necropolis, if only to see how close the book’s description of the tomb of Isabella Ure Elder is to the real thing. (Based on the photo at right, the answer is VERY – admittedly without the “dreich” weather experienced both in the story and, honestly, for much of our trip.).

In the series of mad dashes, long waits, and exhaustion at the end of a glorious trip, I didn’t have the opportunity to write this review before the details flew – or more likely slept – their way out of my head. But Al’s story has been marvelous every step of the way, so I picked up the audiobook and listened to it all again. And loved it again.

However, I have to say that, although the story is obviously the same, listening to Candle & Crow is a MUCH different experience than reading it. (I also wonder whether the author wrote this book, or perhaps the whole damn series, at least in part, just to mess with his audiobook narrator Luke Daniels.)

About that story…some stories start out as a whole, then the layers get peeled back until it’s much bigger on the inside than it looked like from the outside. Candle & Crow goes the other way.

Initially it reads as a loose pile of unrelated threads. There’s Al’s continuing investigation into the curses that have done their damndest to wreck his life. Then there’s the problem that hobgoblin Buck Foi is drinking to keep himself from thinking about. On top of that there’s Al’s attempts to help the police by providing them with evidence of human trafficking – only for the local police to decide that Al only has such information because he’s one of the traffickers and harass him repeatedly over that mistaken assumption.

(This is the point where I need to comment that, as much as I enjoyed most of the narration, the voice used for Detective Inspector Munro would have worked equally well for Dolores Umbridge of Harry Potter infamy. That character grates, the voice used for her grated to the point that chalk on a blackboard would have been an improvement – and possibly at a lower and more tolerable pitch as well. Getting down off my soapbox now. Hem-hem.)

On top of the issues that directly involved Al, there’s also the Morrigan’s desire to step away from her identity as “chooser of the slain” so she can fall in love, Al’s accountant Nadia and her search for a demi-godly purpose that turns to the founding of a new and potentially dangerous religion, and the ever-present question of exactly what sort of deity or superbeing Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite might be when she’s not being Al’s receptionist and just how dangerous the shite she has been waiting around in Glasgow to see might be for Al and his friends.

Al has a LOT on his mind at all times. That discovering the ‘nine ways to Nancy’ turns out to be the perfect metaphor for tying all of the many threads of Al’s story into a neat bow of a perfect ending for the series made for a fantastic conclusion to a marvelous series.

#AudioBookReview: The Hermit Next Door by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: The Hermit Next Door by Kevin HearneThe Hermit Next Door by Kevin Hearne
Narrator: Annalee Scott
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, urban fantasy
Pages: 96
Length: 2 hours and 43 minutes
Published by Audible Audio, Subterranean Press on June 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Kevin Hearne, author of the acclaimed Iron Druid Chronicles, returns with an otherworldly new novella!
 
Newly widowed and trying to cope with her grief, Winnie Mae Chisholm moves from Tennessee with her teenage son, Pax, to Oregon, hoping the change will let them both heal and move on. She’s warned when buying their new home that the next door neighbor, Mr. Fisher, is a famous recluse and no one has seen him in years, but that’s fine with her—she’s looking for quiet.
 
She’s not going to get it, however, because when Pax meets the neighbor, he discovers that the reason Mr. Fisher hides from the world is that he isn’t actually from this world. He’s been stranded for decades and he’s trying to get home, and he could really use some help.
 
Abruptly part of the best-kept secret on the planet, Winnie Mae and Pax have to protect Mr. Fisher from a nosy neighbor who would ruin his work and doom him to die among aliens, but they also have to ask How far would they go to escape their grief? Would another world be far enough?

My Review:

I picked this back up after starting it before we left on vacation because I really wanted to review a book I read while we were away – and I will – but Kevin Hearne’s Candle & Crow won’t be out until October 1 and it’s just too soon to post that now – no matter how much I want to.

But I was still in the mood for his style, and, well, even the audiobook for The Hermit Next Door is blissfully short. I’m also still a bit jet-lagged, and the result is the review you are about to read.

The idea of this story has been done before – that the recluse next door is either really creepy, from REALLY far away or a bit of both. What made this a bit different was the way that Winnie Mae Chisholm and her son Pax came to this little bend in the Willamette River and not just what they found there.

The story begins as an escape – and Winnie Mae and Pax just keep right on escaping – getting themselves farther away than the ever imagined from the tragic death of Winnie Mae’s husband and Pax’s dad, Benny Chisholm, back home in Tennessee.

Too many memories, and too many grief casseroles drove them out of their former home. The settlement money from the accident and the sale of their previous house got them to Oregon.

At first, nobody’s happy. Winnie Mae because happiness is the last thing she expects to find again, and Pax because he’s still grieving, he wasn’t given any choice in the matter, and he’s a teenager. Which of those three things is at the biggest weight on his heart and soul changes every day but they’re all part of it, all the time, and the situation isn’t looking like it’s going to get any better any time soon.

Because grief doesn’t – and neither does being a teenager.

The house is lovely, the river is quiet and peaceful, and the neighbors are, honestly, a lot. Winnie Mae can identify the types, knows just what she has to do to give her invasive, intrusive, gossipy across the street neighbor just enough and no more to not think she and Pax are TOO weird while still getting them to leave the Chisholms as alone as the woman’s nature is capable of managing.

But the situation changes entirely and completely – actually, all the situations take a sharp left turn into the weird, wacky and wonderful – when Pax meets their reclusive next-door-neighbor Mr. Fisher.

Who is, quite literally, out of this world. And wants to get back home – if he can just get a little bit of help from Pax and his very reluctant, somewhat creeped out, not quite totally losing her shit, depressed and disaster-projecting and spiraling mother, Winnie Mae.

A woman who, in spite of having lost pretty much all of her faith in things ever getting better ever again is going to have to take an absolutely ginormous leap of faith over the chasm of her disbelief in order to keep her son safe and maybe, just maybe, find a bit of peace and even happiness in a place she never once imagined she could even imagine.

Escape Rating B: I finished this book with a lot more mixed feelings than I expected. I thought I would just love it (spoiler: I did love Candle & Crow). In the end, I did like The Hermit Next Door, but I middled in directions I just didn’t expect to go.

Your reading and listening mileage may both vary.

The idea of Mr. Fisher and his journey reminded me a LOT of Simon R. Green’s Ishmael Jones series, and that was not a place I expected to be at all. Ishmael Jones is more creepy horror adjacent mixed with twisted country house mystery, while Mr. Fisher is more like an E.T. who needs to phone home, but they both start from the same place, a being from another world who is stranded on this Earth and is having a difficult time going home and has to make some equally difficult decisions about dealing with that particular dilemma.

Howsomever, Ishmael Jones at least looks human. Mr. Fisher is a giant otter from an Earth that took a different evolutionary path down the “trousers of time”.

One of the things that I personally found a bit off-putting was that the narrator for the audiobook, Annalee Scott, sounds an awful lot like Khristine Hvam, the narrator for the Junkyard Cats series. And that was a bit of a mind-screw, as Shining Smith in the Junkyard Cats series kicks ass and takes names with wild abandon and lots of gunfire, while Winnie Mae Chisholm goes into panicked disaster spirals at every turn. The characters are just VERY far apart but the similarity in the narrators’ voices made my mind try to equate them which simply isn’t possible. At all. Ever. In ANY way.

Very much on my other hand – or ear – I did love the SFnal ending. I was fully expecting it, but that doesn’t mean it still wasn’t fun. I’ll admit that I particularly liked the idea that the nosey neighbor might have gotten exactly what she deserved. She certainly had the option to save herself, but I can’t help but get a bit of glee out of the thought that she probably couldn’t resist doing what she was explicitly told not to. We’ll never know but a girl can dream.

What made the story work in the end was that Winnie Mae and Pax find happiness in a way that they were not expecting – and in a way that doesn’t attempt to pass over or by the depths of the grief that sent them on this journey in the first place.

There were also a couple of references to some interesting SFnal stories that shouldn’t have gotten near this one but did anyway in surprising and delightful ways. There’s just a touch of John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society that I was not expecting at all, as well as a hint of Edward Ashton’s Fourth Consort that goes in a completely different direction from The Hermit Next Door but has some unexpected but fascinating similarities along its way.

Review: Paper and Blood by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Paper and Blood by Kevin HearnePaper & Blood (Ink & Sigil, #2) by Kevin Hearne
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ink & Sigil #2
Pages: 304
Published by Del Rey Books on August 10, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Kevin Hearne returns to the world of the Iron Druid Chronicles in book two of a spin-off series about an eccentric master of rare magic solving an uncanny mystery in Scotland.
There’s only one Al MacBharrais: Though other Scotsmen may have dramatic mustaches and a taste for fancy cocktails, Al also has a unique talent. He’s a master of ink and sigil magic. In his gifted hands, paper and pen can work wondrous spells.
But Al isn’t quite alone: He is part of a global network of sigil agents who use their powers to protect the world from mischievous gods and strange monsters. So when a fellow agent disappears under sinister circumstances in Australia, Al leaves behind the cozy pubs and cafes of Glasgow and travels to the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria to solve the mystery.
The trail to his colleague begins to pile up with bodies at alarming speed, so Al is grateful his friends have come to help—especially Nadia, his accountant who moonlights as a pit fighter. Together with a whisky-loving hobgoblin known as Buck Foi and the ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan, along with his dogs, Oberon and Starbuck, Al and Nadia will face down the wildest wonders Australia—and the supernatural world—can throw at them, and confront a legendary monster not seen in centuries.

My Review:

The alphabet – any alphabet – is magic. Just think about it for a minute. Alphabets, whatever they might look like, represent the ability to communicate across not just space but across time. If you’ve ever taken Latin, you remember Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, with its famous opening about “Gaul is a whole divided into three parts,” except in the original Latin. Which Caesar may have dictated instead of penned himself, but still, the idea that we can read the words of a person who lived and died not merely centuries but millennia before we were all born is, honestly, magic.

And that’s the kind of magic that lies at the heart of the Ink & Sigil series. Al MacBharrais isn’t a wizard or a sorcerer or a Druid (more on that later) but he can do magic. With ink and paper and a special kind of alphabet called sigils. With the appropriate training and lots and lots of practice, Al can write letters that perform magic. Like a magical version of Doctor Who’s famous psychic paper. Or a magic that can temporarily give him the strength and stamina that he left behind in the sands of time long ago.

Not unconscionably long, just normally long. Al is in his early 60s, and while his mind may be as sharp as ever, it’s been a very hard-knock life as the normal aches and pains of 60+ years of living all too frequently remind him. But when he gets a call from the distressed apprentice of one of his fellow sigil agents, those aches and pains do not keep him from riding to the rescue.

Even if that rescue turns out to be in Australia. It may be a long way from Al’s printing and bookbinding business in Glasgow, but he’s the only remaining agent without a wife, family or apprentice depending upon him to come home at the end of the day. Or the case. Or the encounter with an ancient monster who is literally shitting demons in a creek.

Along with a deity who is holding his two colleagues hostage. Not to get to Al, but to make sure that someone reaches out and gets the Iron Druid along on what seems to be a rescue operation.

Only to discover that it’s a whole lot bigger and worse than that. But then, so are the gang of friends that Al brings along to one very weird fight.

Escape Rating A: If you love urban fantasy, but have wondered why you haven’t seen much of it recently, the Ink & Sigil series will remind you of the best of that genre. And if you haven’t read much of it, but you like the kind of story where there’s a detective, amateur or professional, a crime, whether mundane or magical, a whole lot of beings that popularly go bump in the night and the snark quotient turned up to 11, well then, this series has the potential to definitely be your jam.

It certainly is mine.

Al MacBharrais is a departure for an urban fantasy protagonist, as he is not young, or immortal, or unaging or actually either a magic user or a magical being himself. Not that he isn’t accompanied by beings who fit one or more of the above classifications.

It’s that combination of Al’s ordinariness with the extraordinary nature of the people he works with and the trouble they get into that make this series so much fun. It’s a view of our world through another perspective but one that is still grounded in our own. While his friend, associate and contracted servant, the hobgoblin Buck Foi, is there to provide comic relief and to give any authority figure – even a deity – a poke in the ego with a sharp stick whenever he feels it’s necessary. Which is often.

The story in this one follows multiple parallel tracks. Al is in Australia to rescue his colleagues, with the help of their apprentice. Al’s rather unusual friends are there to help, to guard his back, to have some fun, and, in the person of “Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite” to see some really weird shit. But it also gives Al the opportunity to observe his friends operating outside of their normal sphere, bringing Al to the realization that the Gladys he has been employing as his receptionist is clearly something else or something more, altogether. Along with, but certainly not limited to, being Canadian.

And then there’s the bigger story, that when Al figures out just how big a mess his friends are in, he asks for help from one of the magical heavy-hitters, the Iron Druid formerly known as Atticus O’Sullivan, along with his dogs Oberon and Starbuck. Al thinks he’s getting help with his problem, only for it to turn out that, in the end, it’s Atticus, now calling himself Connor, who needs Al’s help solving his.

That’s where things get interesting, also a bit, not exactly problematic but certainly at least deeper.

There’s never been any question that the Ink & Sigil series takes place in the same universe as the author’s Iron Druid Chronicles, it says so right there on the label. In the first book, also titled Ink & Sigil, there’s a lovely little side story about the evening that Al and Atticus met up in Rome and had a nice dinner together. It was a lovely little story, it set the time period for the new series nicely, but didn’t require that the reader have previously read the Iron Druid Chronicles to get into Ink & Sigil – it just made the story extra nice if you already had.

Now, with Paper & Blood, you really need to have read Ink & Sigil to get the full flavor of what’s going on in this second book. But with Atticus/Connor as an important secondary character, it will make a lot of readers feel like they need to have read at least some of the Iron Druid Chronicles to get everything that’s happening – and especially why it’s happening – in this book. I’ve read the first six books of that series (start with Hounded, it’s awesome) and intend to go back and finish, so I didn’t feel too lost when he became such a big part of this story, although it did make me itch to have read the ending of that series because it’s clearly part of the backstory for this. As much as I LOVED seeing Oberon again, I can’t help but imagine that anyone who hadn’t read at least some of the Iron Druid series would flounder a bit here. I hope I’m wrong.

So, this story provided a whole lot of closure for the Iron Druid Chronicles, provided Al with a lot more fascinating information about his friends and associates, engendered a whole lot of chuckles and a bit of outright laughter courtesy of Buck Foi, AND left me eagerly awaiting the next book in this series whenever it appears.

But I’m also holding my breath for the next book in The Seven Kennings, this author’s epic fantasy series, which seems to be titled A Curse of Krakens and is coming out a year from now. Obviously, this is a writer I really, really like and don’t care what I get next as long as I get something!

Review: Ink and Sigil by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Ink and Sigil by Kevin HearneInk & Sigil (Ink & Sigil, #1) by Kevin Hearne
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: urban fantasy
Series: Ink & Sigil #1
Pages: 336
Published by Del Rey Books on August 25, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Al MacBharrais is both blessed and cursed. He is blessed with an extraordinary white moustache, an appreciation for craft cocktails – and a most unique magical talent. He can cast spells with magically enchanted ink and he uses his gifts to protect our world from rogue minions of various pantheons, especially the Fae.
But he is also cursed. Anyone who hears his voice will begin to feel an inexplicable hatred for Al, so he can only communicate through the written word or speech apps. And his apprentices keep dying in peculiar freak accidents. As his personal life crumbles around him, he devotes his life to his work, all the while trying to crack the secret of his curse.
But when his latest apprentice, Gordie, turns up dead in his Glasgow flat, Al discovers evidence that Gordie was living a secret life of crime. Now Al is forced to play detective – while avoiding actual detectives who are wondering why death seems to always follow Al. Investigating his apprentice’s death will take him through Scotland’s magical underworld, and he’ll need the help of a mischievous hobgoblin if he’s to survive.

My Review:

I’ve read – actually mostly listened to – enough of the Iron Druid Chronicles to know that I love the series. Since I’m 2/3rds of the way through I figured I knew enough about the world created in the series to be able to get into Ink & Sigil. Al Mac Bharrais’ adventures take place in the same version of our world as Atticus O’Sullivan, but from a much different perspective.

Ink & Sigil is a sequel that isn’t a sequel, it’s more like a consequence. Which is an interesting way of launching a series. Also an effective way for new readers to get aboard this marvelous train. So you don’t have to have read the Iron Druid Chronicles to get into Ink & Sigil, but a taste for one will probably result in a yen for the other.

Al is a fascinating protagonist for an urban fantasy series. Most urban fantasy series are headed by either the young and the energetic, or the extremely old, seriously immortal, and fascinatingly unaging.

Al is none of the above. He’s 63, he’s getting creaky, and he’s all too mortal. (I would love to see Al meet Marley Jacob from A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark. They’d have a lot to talk about when it comes to kicking paranormal ass when you’re 60-something.)

Al isn’t exactly a wizard, and he’s certainly not a druid like Atticus. He is actually a kind of paper-pusher for the paranormal. His power is literally in paper – and especially in ink. He draws symbols of power with special ink on special paper, and that power affects whoever sees the symbols he has drawn.

Among many other useful things, he’s created his own version of the “psychic paper” that Doctor Who uses. The one that seems to be a universal high-ranking ID for wherever the Doctor wants to get into that he shouldn’t. In Al’s case, the paper just opens the mind of the person who sees it so that Al can plant the suggestion that he belongs wherever it is that he has just entered that he isn’t supposed to.

Like the apartment of his just-deceased apprentice. Gordie seems to have died of natural causes – depending on how one feels about raisins in one’s scones. Al has arrived in the middle of the police investigation into Gordie’s death to clean house of all of the fascinating, esoteric and sometimes illegal substances that sigil agents like Al and Gordie use to do their work.

Al expects to leave with a bag of inks and ingredients. What he finds in Gordie’s secret workroom changes his focus – as well as his opinion of the late and now entirely unlamented Gordie. Because Gordie was practicing things he hadn’t learned yet, and seems to have been breaking all the rules while doing so. And he had imprisoned a hobgoblin in a cage – a hobgoblin from one of the fae planes that he intended to sell to someone nefarious in this plane.

Which is illegal, immoral, and constitutes trafficking of the nasty kind that either leads to slavery or lab experimentation of the mad scientist variety.

Putting Al on the hunt for a mad scientist and at least one corrupt fae deity selling out her own kind for either fun or profit. That she’s selling them to the CIA adds a whole ‘nother level of crazy complexity to a case that is almost but not quite too much for Al and his friends to handle.

Making it a fantastic start to this series!

Escape Rating A+: I fell straight into this book and just didn’t want to leave. Possibly ever. This is one of those books that I just want to shove at everyone I know and hold them down until they read it.

In that vein, I really, truly don’t think you have to have read ANY of the Iron Druid Chronicles to get into Ink & Sigil. Not that you shouldn’t read them, they’re awesome. Howsomever, while these are set in the same world, Atticus is not a character in this series – so far – except for the scene where those of us who have read the Iron Druid Chronicles discover how Al ran into Atticus that one time and they had a nice dinner together. It doesn’t affect the plot of Ink & Sigil, it’s just a lovely scene IF you’ve met Atticus before and it’s still a lovely scene if you haven’t.

What one does need to buy into in order to get into Ink & Sigil is the concept that lies behind, or underneath, both the Iron Druid Chronicles and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. The idea that the old cliche about humanity creating gods in their own image is the actual, literal truth. That belief creates the god rather than the god’s deeds creating the belief.

One of the things that I found marvelous was the character of Al MacBharrais, and just how much he and his companions play with just how many classic tropes from urban fantasy and even from the mystery detective genre from which it partially sprang.

Al is so different from the standard run of urban fantasy protagonists. I have a hard time saying Al is old because he’s the same age that I am, but he’s certainly no spring chicken. He’s led an already long and fairly hard-knock life. He can no longer serve as his own muscle – except in what is inevitably a very painful pinch – but he still needs an enforcer. Like Nero Wolfe needed Archie Goodwin. Or any other case where the “real” detective is no longer quite spry for one reason or another and needs someone to occasionally punch the bad beings where it hurts.

That Al’s version of Archie is a female battle-seer who does double duty as his printing firm’s manager and accountant sets all sorts of tropes on their tiny little heads. She’s great at both cooking the books and conking out their enemies. Also, Nadia’s wizard van is absolutely to die for. She’s also more than able and willing to help a few people – or things, or beings – die when they really, really need to.

The other really fun character in this one is Buck Foi the hobgoblin. The one that Al found in a cage in his dead apprentice’s apartment. When Al opens that cage he also opens up the whole case, and it’s Buck who tags along to help him close it. Because Buck needs the fae trafficking ring shut down in order to remove the price on his head. Buck is the comic relief, but it’s comic relief with one hell of an edge. (Buck reminds me a bit of P.B. from Laura Anne Gilman’s Retrievers series, which was also an awesome urban fantasy. I digress.)

But underneath the paranormal scene-setting, and Buck’s constant scene-stealing, the story is ripped from the headlines. Al’s case is to uncover a fae-trafficking ring, and it’s every bit as nasty as human-trafficking. It also seems to work in a surprisingly similar fashion. And it has to be stopped – and not just because the CIA (really, the actual CIA) is chasing after Al and his friends to silence them.

That Al manages to use some of his not-so-otherworldly connections to help the police shut down a couple of human-trafficking rings adds some real-world drama to this otherworldly story without being heavy-handed about the message. This stuff is evil and needs to be stopped. Period.

Shutting down this one, particular operation still leaves Al with plenty to do in subsequent books in the series. He still has to find out who dropped two seriously awful curses into his life, before those curses wipe out this cohort of his friends and colleagues. So he can keep Nadia and Buck around. So that he can finally manage to train an apprentice to mastery. So that he can talk to the librarian he’s been in love with for years and not have the curse make her hate him and the sound of his voice. As it did with his son.

So there is plenty for Al to be going on with in future books in this series. Hopefully soon!

Review: A Blight of Blackwings by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A++ Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Blight of Blackwings by Kevin HearneA Blight of Blackwings (Seven Kennings, #2) by Kevin Hearne
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Seven Kennings #2
Pages: 512
Published by Orbit on February 6, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling creator of The Iron Druid Chronicles comes the highly anticipated sequel to A Plague of Giants: A world-breaking war--an invasion of giant warriors--that inspires a movement to fight back.

SOLDIER AND AVENGER Daryck is from a city that was devastated by the war with the Bone Giants, and now he and a band of warriors seek revenge against the giants for the loved ones they lost. But will vengeance be enough to salve their grief?

DREAMER AND LEADER Hanima is part of a new generation with extraordinary magical talents: She can speak to fantastical animals. But when this gift becomes a threat to the powers-that-be, Hanima becomes the leader of a movement to use this magic to bring power to the people.

SISTER AND SEEKER Koesha is the captain of an all-female crew on a perilous voyage to explore unknown waters. Though Koesha's crew is seeking a path around the globe, Koesha is also looking for her sister, lost at sea two years ago. But what lies beyond the edges of the map is far more dangerous than storms and sea monsters. . . .

In this sequel to A Plague of Giants, these characters and more will become the voices of a new generation bringing hope and revolution to a war-torn world.

My Review:

Like the character Dervan in this story, I became so caught up in the tale as it unfolded that I wanted spoilers! Or at least I wanted Fintan the Bard to get on with it a whole lot faster. Which meant that as much as I love the audio version of this story, I switched to the book at about the ⅓ point just so I could find out what happened next. And next after that. And after that. And so on right until barreling through to the end, even knowing that this story as a whole is not done yet.

Dammit.

Just as in the first book in the series, the extremely awesome and utterly marvelous A Plague of Giants, the story that we are reading is mostly the story itself being told by Fintan the Bard to the crowd camped on Survivors’ Field in Pelemyn. The people who survived the events of the first part of the story and fetched up in Pelemyn as refugees from the multiple crises that have afflicted Teldwyn.

Not just one but two plagues of giants.

The title of this entry in the series is a tad more subtle. The book A Plague of Giants contained actual plagues of giants, after all. But the blight of blackwings referred to this time is not a literal plague of the same sort.

Instead, a blight of blackwings feels like it’s the equivalent of “a murder of crows,” or “an unkindness of ravens.” Or possibly both, as the blackwings of Teldwyn occupy the same niche as crows and ravens do. They are carrion birds. They eat the dead, and they feast after a battle.

They also hover over trouble in the hopes that said trouble will result in some dead for them to eat. Hopefully soon, from their perspective. Which means that if you are a human blessed by the sixth kenning, and your gift is communication with blackwings, you can spot trouble coming before your blackwings get a meal.

And that’s the story of A Blight of Blackwings, the spotting of trouble on the horizon. However, just like in A Plague of Giants, there are lots of blackwings hovering over trouble in lots of places. A concept which the UK cover for the book makes much more clear!

With even more on the horizon by the end of this portion of the Bard’s tale. And it’s awesome every step of the way. For multiple definitions of the word “awe”.

UK cover

Escape Rating A++: To paraphrase Hanima the Hivemistress, this book is the BEST!

This is a huge story, covering an entire world. You do have to have read A Plague of Giants to get into A Blight of Blackwings. If you love epic fantasy you’ll be glad you did. This world-spanning story is a real treat.

That being said, it’s necessary to talk about what makes it such a treat.

A big part of that for me was that the author’s experiment in voice really worked. The author said that he was trying to recreate the feeling of the old bardic tales as Homer used to tell them. While we don’t know what that was really like, what he has created here turns out to be a fascinating way of telling a big story with a huge cast of characters while making sure all of those threads are easy to follow.

The framing story is that Fintan the Bard is telling the tales using the voices and faces of the people who experienced each part, strung together with a bit of what is going on in the city through the eyes of Dervan, the chronicler and confidant of the city’s ruler. So we see what has happened in the past through Fintan’s tale, and what is happening in the present through Dervan’s first-person asides.

I will also say here that the two voice actors do a terrific job of making all of the voices distinct. Even when I switched to reading the ebook I was still hearing their voices in my head and it definitely helped form my picture of who each of the different characters was.

The invention of the “kennings” the magic of this world, is a new take on the whole magic in fantasy idea, and the way that it works underpins the politics and people’s perspective on their world. On the one hand, there’s the sense that the kennings kind of function like the old saying about when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, just writ very, very large.

At the same time those kennings underpin both politics and religion, so the discovery of a sixth and possibly even a seventh upsets a whole fleet of apple carts.

One other thing that makes this magic system different is the price that is paid to wield it. One of the terrible things that frequently happens in other magic systems is that magic is either the ultimate power or so easy to use that everyone gets lazy. The cost of magic in this world is extremely dear, both to acquire it and to use it. Magic users always have to think about whether the ends they have to achieve justify the loss of years of their lives. Perhaps even all the years they have left.

This is also a story where the use of language can shock you with it’s terrible beauty. After discovering that his entire town has been slaughtered in his absence, the leader of a band of hunters reflects that, “Most of us were still in the shock stages of grief, the foyer to a mansion of pain in which I knew we’d dwell for many years. Just beyond, however, a red room beckoned, a spacious expanse for rage, and I had little doubt the entire band would step in there with me for an extended period.” I was struck by that phrase, and chilled by an intense feeling of recognition. It feels right and true and haunting in the vividness of the image. A haunting that returned every time that character refers back to it. Because he’s right, they are all heading for that red room of rage – and possibly taking the rest of the country with them.

We’ll find out in book 3 of the series, tentatively titled A Curse of Krakens. I want it so bad, and I want it now! But I expect I’ll have to wait a couple of years, based on the time between A Plague of Giants and A Blight of Blackwings. And it will be SO worth it!

Review: Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearne and Delilah S Dawson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C+ Reviews
Review: Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearne and Delilah S DawsonKill the Farm Boy (The Tales of Pell, #1) by Delilah S. Dawson, Kevin Hearne
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fairy tales, fantasy
Series: Tales of Pell #1
Pages: 384
Published by Del Rey Books on July 17, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In an irreverent new series in the tradition of Terry Pratchett novels and The Princess Bride, the New York Times bestselling authors of the Iron Druid Chronicles and Star Wars: Phasma reinvent fantasy, fairy tales, and floridly written feast scenes.

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told.

This is not that fairy tale.

There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened.

And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell.

There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he's bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there's the Dark Lord who wishes for the boy's untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there's a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar "happily ever after" that ever once-upon-a-timed.

My Review:

If Robert Asprin’s Myth-Adventures series had a love child with Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, and then if that love child had a child with Monty Python – or possibly a love child with each individual member of Monty Python, all midwifed by The Princess Bride, you might get something like Kill the Farm Boy.

Or you’d get a cheese sandwich. Or possibly both.

On the one hand, the description of this book can easily be read as a fairly typical epic fantasy. A group of adventurers, including a ”chosen one” set out from obscurity to undertake a quest.

But this particular fantasy is fractured from beginning to end. Like so many fantasies, the adventuring party consists of a wizard or two, a rogue, a warrior, a bard and a trusty steed. The opening salvo in the quest is to rescue a fairy tale princess from a sleeping castle. In a twisted cross between Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast.

That beast is a rabbit. Or at least sort of a rabbit. And sort of a girl. The rogue is a klutz, and a not very bright klutz at that. Of the two wizards, neither is exactly the leader of the Light. One fancies himself a budding Dark Lord, and the other is as grey as grey can get – except for her hair, because the natural color of that has been hiding behind magic for decades at the very least.

The dangers they face are life threatening and never ending. But there’s no farm boy in sight. Oh, there was a farm boy all right, but he gets chosen for death relatively early in the story. The real “Chosen One” is the trusty steed, but he’s neither trusty nor exactly a steed. And he likes to eat boots.

If the tongue was any further in the cheek, it would poke out the other side.

Escape Rating C+:Some of the reviewers make the comparison between Kill the Farm Boy and the Discworld. If that comparison holds at all, it’s only between Kill the Farm Boy and the first two Discworld titles, The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic, where Sir Terry was merely skewering the genre and not exactly plotting a story. And where he clearly had no clue yet that he was at the beginning of something that needed a real plot, sympathetic characters and at least a bit of internal consistency to wrap around that skewer.

While I love the work of both of this book’s authors, Delilah Dawson for the Blud series and Kevin Hearne for the Iron Druid Chronicles, this collaboration does not live up to either of their previous work, nor to any of the many antecedents I mentioned at the beginning of this review.

And that’s a real pity, because Kill the Farm Boy had so much promise. And it does have its funny moments. But in the end it doesn’t deliver – even though it’s obvious that the co-authors had tons of fun in the process of writing this.

The snark is too thick and the plot is too thin. It reminds me of the lesson that Mike the computer learns in Robert A. Heinlein’s marvelous The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Mike is trying to teach himself humor, and his human friend introduces him to the difference between “funny once” and “funny always”. Kill the Farm Boy attempts to be “funny always” by keeping up a nonstop torrent of snark and in-jokes.

And those are almost always “funny once”.

But we’ll be back in Pell for No Country for Old Gnomes. It took Sir Terry until at least Mort (Discworld #4) for that series to really get its legs under it. Maybe The Tales of Pell will manage to get there a little sooner. We’ll see.

Review: Trapped by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Trapped by Kevin HearneTrapped (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #5) by Kevin Hearne, Luke Daniels
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from library, purchased from Audible
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: urban fantasy
Series: Iron Druid Chronicles #5
Pages: 290
Published by Del Rey Books, Random House Audio on November 27, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

After twelve years of secret training, Atticus O’Sullivan is finally ready to bind his apprentice, Granuaile, to the earth and double the number of Druids in the world. But on the eve of the ritual, the world that thought he was dead abruptly discovers that he’s still alive, and they would much rather he return to the grave.   Having no other choice, Atticus, his trusted Irish wolfhound, Oberon, and Granuaile travel to the base of Mount Olympus, where the Roman god Bacchus is anxious to take his sworn revenge—but he’ll have to get in line behind an ancient vampire, a band of dark elves, and an old god of mischief, who all seem to have KILL THE DRUID at the top of their to-do lists.

My Review:

I really have a concentration problem this week. I hope it gets better soon, or next week is going to be hell. Then again, the house closing is this afternoon, so afterwards I’ll either have more concentration to read, or a whole lot less. OMG.

I bounced off of three books before I got a clue and decided to finish Trapped. I was in the middle of listening to it during workouts – Atticus certainly makes the treadmill fly by – but was figuring I’d finish in a couple of weeks, one way or another.

It’s now. As I was already literally at the mid-point, I knew I liked the book more than well enough to finish it. And I’m glad I did.

Although it’s really weird that even when I’m reading the book, I still hear it in Luke Daniels’ voice. His voice has become the voice of Atticus O’Sullivan, and I can’t get it out of my head.

Just like the title says, Atticus spends most of this book in one trap or another, and often hounded from one trap to another, and sometimes even trapped within a trap within a trap.

This is also a story about karma being a serious bitch. So many of the people setting traps for Atticus are people that he seriously pissed off somewhere along the way.

Not that the traps aren’t ingenious and that Atticus’ escape from them isn’t interesting and occasionally epic, but everything that happens in Trapped is pretty much all stuff that he brought upon himself.

After all, back in Hammered, Jesus and Ganesha both told him not to go to Asgard. Or at least not to go with the band of revenge seeking deities, immortals and supernatural badasses he took with him. They told him that no good was ever going to come of that mess – and they were right.

In addition to bringing on Ragnarok AND killing off a whole bunch of the Norse gods who were supposed to get in its way, Atticus also managed to get Bacchus honked off at him back in Hexed. And he’s been redirecting the blame for many of his less than savory actions onto the Svartalfar for centuries. Word was bound to get back to them – eventually.

So all of Atticus’ sky-is-falling chickens come home to roost just when he needs a few months of peace in a nice cave in friendly woods so he can finally bind his apprentice Granuaille into her power. So she can finally stop being his apprentice so they can shag each other blind for a few days.

Oberon is right, human mating rituals are weird and occasionally stupid. But it’s up to the Irish wolfhound to help keep his humans safe from everything that’s after them – even if evil, mesmerizing steaks just happen to drop into his path.

Escape Rating B+: Like all of the Iron Druid Chronicles so far, Trapped is a lot of fun. It also feels like a story that closes off a chapter, so it’s not a good place to start the series. Go back to Hounded, which is not only the first book but also the one that is nearly all joy and snark. Atticus’ world gets continually darker from that point. Not that there aren’t still plenty of moments of joy and epic amounts of snark.

But Atticus kills a god in Hounded, and his life is never the same after that.

Trapped is a story where Atticus is forced to reap a whole lot of what he’s sowed. The Norse want him to pay a blood price for killing the Norns, Thor and Heimdall. Since they won’t be available to play their parts in Ragnarok, Atticus needs to take their place. All of their places, which is not going to be an easy job.

Bacchus is after him because Atticus killed a whole bunch of his baccantes back in Hexed. He had a good reason, but Bacchus is just not the understanding type.

Atticus own pantheon, the fae in Tír na nÓg, aren’t happy with him because they see him as being on the “wrong” side in their own little bit of internecine warfare. And they’re peeved because he successfully pretended to be dead for several years. Nobody likes being fooled – especially a deity.

The vampires are after him because as a druid he knows how to unbind them – meaning kill them. The vampires are the reason that Atticus has been the only druid in the world for past millennia – and they are not giving up on their purge now – especially because Atticus is about to bind a new druid to the earth.

And for the past millennia or so, every time Atticus has needed someone to blame for something he did, he’s blamed the Svartalfar, the dark elves. They’ve finally found out – and found Atticus.

Under the principle of the “enemy of my enemy is at least my ally”, all of these groups are working together to wipe Atticus off the face of the Earth, and any other plane he manages to escape to.

The scene where an entire clown parade turns into Svartalfar and chases after Atticus, Granuaille and Oberon is particularly creepy.

So the story in Trapped is a story of running hither, tither and yon, and then back again. It’s also a story that feels like it’s one gigantic interruption. Every time they settle down to take care of Granuaille’s bindings, another faction is led to them and disrupts the work. Which makes this very much an “out of the frying pan into the fire” kind of story.

And it’s a fun one.

Fair warning, it ends on a cliffhanger of truly epic proportions! But that’s OK, because I’ve already got Hunted queued up and ready to go!

Review: Tricked by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: Tricked by Kevin HearneTricked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #4) by Kevin Hearne, Luke Daniels
Format: audiobook
Source: purchased from Audible
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: urban fantasy
Series: Iron Druid Chronicles #4
Pages: 368
Published by Random House Audio on April 24, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Druid Atticus O’Sullivan hasn’t stayed alive for more than two millennia without a fair bit of Celtic cunning. So when vengeful thunder gods come Norse by Southwest looking for payback, Atticus, with a little help from the Navajo trickster god Coyote, lets them think that they’ve chopped up his body in the Arizona desert.

But the mischievous Coyote is not above a little sleight of paw, and Atticus soon finds that he’s been duped into battling bloodthirsty desert shapeshifters called skinwalkers. Just when the Druid thinks he’s got a handle on all the duplicity, betrayal comes from an unlikely source. If Atticus survives this time, he vows he won’t be fooled again. Famous last words.

My Review:

I wasn’t looking for something to link between Tony and Anne Hillerman’s Leaphorn, Chee and Maneulito series about the Navajo Tribal Police and Thor: Ragnarok, but I found it anyway. It’s Tricked, the 4th book in the Iron Druid Chronicles.

Hel is the daughter of Loki, not Odin, but just as in the movie, she does preside over the realm of the dead who do not qualify for Valhalla. As far as Atticus is concerned, the big problem is that she has possessed the body of his late friend, the Widow MacDonogh, in order to chase him down all that much more effectively.

In Hammered, Atticus and his friends killed Thor and crippled Odin, along with a whole bunch of the Norse pantheon. Hel wants to thank him for making her victory at Ragnarok inevitable. When he spurns her thanks, she sets her dogs on him. Not just dogs, of course, but also beings native to the Four Corners Reservation where he is currently hiding out.

She sends skinwalkers. And gives them a compulsion to find and eat Atticus O’Sullivan.

Not that he wasn’t there to deal with them anyway, in a roundabout sort of way, but she’s just made it way too personal.

This story is just full of roundabout ways by roundabout people, because Atticus is on the rez to pay Coyote back for helping to stage his death. His recent raid on Asgard has left the denizens of several pantheons out for his blood. Not because he messed with the Norse, but because he has proven that he can successfully mess with any of the gods – and none of them want that to get around.

Atticus in in a big mess – as per usual. Coyote did him a big favor, and now he wants a big favor in return. Coyote died for him twice – not the he wasn’t absolutely certain he’d come back – both times. But in return, Coyote wants Atticus to create a gold mine in the middle of the rez, so that the gold can be used to fund a renewable energy empire.

Coyote is a trickster, so Atticus knows there has to be a catch, and a big one. But Coyote isn’t scamming the locals, who are, after all, his people. And he’s not exactly scamming Atticus. But he’s also not exactly not scamming Atticus. He’s just being Coyote.

As is usual with Atticus adventures, figuring out what is really going on is going to result in a lot of bloodshed – some if it even belonging to Atticus himself.

And there will be a butcher’s bill to pay. Whether the results will be worth it – only time will tell.

Escape Rating A-: This one had some absolutely hilarious moments. The sequence about the relative measurements of shitload, buttload and fuckton had me grinning for several miles on the treadmill – and laughing out loud. I know the other people at my gym think I’m crazy.

In spite of the trademark snark, in full abundance in Tricked, this story also had its darker elements. As I said in my review of Hammered, it feels as though the series has turned a corner, and that things are going to get darker from here. In Tricked, we saw several of the loose ends left over from Hammered try to wrap themselves like nooses around Atticus’ neck.

But the action in Tricked revolves around Atticus fulfilling his deal with Coyote. One of the problems of working with Coyote is that he just can’t stop himself from trying to get the better of every deal. He is, after all, one of the quintessential trickster avatars. So while Atticus is more than willing to pay his debts – he is unwilling to pay more than his fair share – particularly without being asked first. No one enjoys getting taken advantage of over and over again – which is always Coyote’s aim. He really can’t play it straight.

So Atticus finds himself saddled with one job that he can barely handle, and one that is way, way outside his skillset, while frequently wondering which is which. As usual, he’s making it up as he goes along.

Because Oberon is sidelined for much of Tricked, his outsider commentary and comic genius has to be picked up by someone else. In Tricked, those roles are taken by Frank Chischilly, the hatałii who is conducting the ceremonies to bless Coyote’s operation.

Frank is an old man, and a very powerful one. His Blessing Way ceremony is providing real magical protection. And while he doesn’t know exactly what either Atticus or Coyote are, he is aware that they are much more than they appear to be. He’s pretty sure about Coyote, and I believe that the only reason he can’t identity exactly what Atticus is that that what Atticus is is considerably outside his cultural magical framework.

Frank is not humorous in the same way that Oberon is. Frank mostly plays straight man to some of Atticus wilder moments. But his wry humor and outsider’s perspective often result in a chuckle rather than the guffaws that Oberon generates. But he does provide some of the story’s lighter moments – until he provides the darkest one of all.

As snarky as Atticus is, this story is still much darker in tone than the first two books in the series, Hounded and Hexed. Atticus’ actions continue to have mounting consequences. But as serious as things are, there are points where it might have been better to cut to the chase a bit. The repeated attacks of the skinwalkers, while always life-threatening and scary, began to have a sameness about them. The skinwalkers don’t have a lot in the way of imagination. Or strategy or tactics.

But Atticus’ snarky and irreverent point of view always carries the reader along. I’ll be continuing with Two Ravens One Crow, the novella that sits between Tricked and Trapped.

Review: Hammered by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: Hammered by Kevin HearneHammered (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #3) by Kevin Hearne, Luke Daniels
Format: audiobook
Source: purchased from Audible
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: urban fantasy
Series: Iron Druid Chronicles #3
Pages: 336
Published by Brilliance Audio on July 5, 2011
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Thor, the Norse god of thunder, is worse than a blowhard and a bully — he’s ruined countless lives and killed scores of innocents. After centuries, Viking vampire Leif Helgarson is ready to get his vengeance, and he’s asked his friend Atticus O’Sullivan, the last of the Druids, to help take down this Norse nightmare. One survival strategy has worked for Atticus for more than two thousand years: stay away from the guy with the lightning bolts. But things are heating up in Atticus’s home base of Tempe, Arizona. There’s a vampire turf war brewing, and Russian demon hunters who call themselves the Hammers of God are running rampant. Despite multiple warnings and portents of dire consequences, Atticus and Leif journey to the Norse plane of Asgard, where they team up with a werewolf, a sorcerer, and an army of frost giants for an epic showdown against vicious Valkyries, angry gods, and the hammer-wielding Thunder Thug himself.

“Kevin Hearne breathes new life into old myths, creating a world both eerily familiar and startlingly original.” —NICOLE PEELER, author of Tempest Rising__________Unabridged, 8 audio discs, 9 hours 43 minutes

My Review:

I mostly listened to this, and usually while working out. But I finished up reading the ebook, because my workout ended in the middle of the climactic battle, and I just couldn’t wait to see how issues resolved.

They mostly didn’t. And that’s probably as it should be. The book ends with a lot of loose ends still jangling.

Hammered feels like the “turning point” book in the Iron Druid Chronicles. Although Atticus faced a certain amount of trouble in the first two books, Hounded and Hexed, at the end of each book Atticus was able to settle down after a job well done and live what counts as his normal life while waiting for the next crisis to jump up and bite him in the ass.

Hammered has a much different tone, and there was a strong sense throughout the story that however things ended, life was never going back to what passed for “business as usual” for Atticus, his Irish wolfhound Oberon, and his apprentice Granuaile, no matter how things turned out.

The warnings from both the Morrigan and Jesus that Atticus was stepping into a pile of shit that was going to rain crap all over everyone were not the only hints that he was messing with something that should never have been messed with, but they were the biggest and certainly the freakiest.

And of course they don’t stop him. He gave his vampire friend his word that he would take him to Asgard to help him kill Thor – no matter what it takes, and no matter what it costs.

Even if that cost is higher than he ever wanted to pay.

Escape Rating A: I’ve made no secret of the fact that I am absolutely loving this series in audio. I’m not sure how consuming one right after another would work if I were reading them, but as something to listen to on the treadmill, Atticus’ snarky sense of humor read in Luke Daniels’ marvelous voice is just about perfect.

I smirk, I chuckle, I snigger and occasionally I even laugh out loud. A lot. The scene where Jesus shows up to have a beer with Atticus and deliver his warnings – along with a rather painful lesson – had some fantastic laughter inducing moments.

But the overall tone of Hammered is pretty darn serious. Atticus is making plans to take his vampire friend and lawyer Lief as well as his werewolf friend and lawyer Gunnar to Asgard so that they can finally get revenge on Thor for some pretty seriously awful stuff.

Atticus spends a lot of the book making contingency plans. If he comes back, he knows that the gods, not just the Norse gods but multiple pantheons of gods, are going to be after him, and he needs to leave Tempe and lie very, very low for a while, along with Oberon and Granuaile. He does a lot of serious leave-taking all around, and his farewell to the Widow MacDonagh had me sniffling.

But Atticus is also planning for the reality that he might not come back, something that Granuaile doesn’t want to hear or deal with, and who can blame her?

It’s obvious throughout the story that whatever happens in Asgard, it certainly won’t stay in Asgard. Some of their very assorted company will not make it back, and even if they do, Atticus life will be irrevocably changed. The creatures who will be coming after him will be bigger, badder and a lot more powerful.

The story is going to get darker from here – and it’s going to be one hell of a ride. Even if that’s where it goes.

I have a feeling that the events in Hammered are going to be crucial for the events in the next several books, And I can’t wait to find out. I’ve already got the audio of the next book, Tricked, cued up and ready to begin.

One final comment. As Atticus and Lief’s very motley crew get ready for the trip to Asgard, there are several chapters where all the participants tell their individual stories of just why they are willing to possibly throw their lives away for a shot at Thor. The individual stories are absolutely riveting, and all are ultimately tragic. But the storytelling sequence itself reminded me very much of the author’s epic fantasy, A Plague of Giants, which is told in its entirety as a bard telling stories to a crowd. I found myself wondering if the genesis of that book might be in this sequence. Whether it is or not, A Plague of Giants is marvelous!

Review: Hexed by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> book reviews
Review: Hexed by Kevin HearneHexed (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #2) by Kevin Hearne
Formats available: paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Series: Iron Druid Chronicles #2
Pages: 296
on June 7th 2011
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids, doesn’t care much for witches. Still, he’s about to make nice with the local coven by signing a mutually beneficial nonaggression treaty—when suddenly the witch population in modern-day Tempe, Arizona, quadruples overnight. And the new girls are not just bad, they’re badasses with a dark history on the German side of World War II.

With a fallen angel feasting on local high school students, a horde of Bacchants blowing in from Vegas with their special brand of deadly decadence, and a dangerously sexy Celtic goddess of fire vying for his attention, Atticus is having trouble scheduling the witch hunt. But aided by his magical sword, his neighbor’s rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and his vampire attorney, Atticus is ready to sweep the town and show the witchy women they picked the wrong Druid to hex.

My Review:

The usual pattern with urban fantasy is that the hero or heroine finds themselves going into darker and darker places, fighting bigger and more powerful evils, as the series continues. But when you open the series by defeating a vengeful god, it’s a bit difficult to get anything bigger or more powerful.

That doesn’t stop things in Hexed from upping the darkness scale, finding Atticus and his allies fighting the witches that seem to have fanned the flames of World War II – with even more flames.

In this second entry in the series, the one and only remaining Druid, now calling himself Atticus O’Sullivan, is dealing with the fallout from events in the previous book, Hounded. And while I think that enough backstory is provided that a person could read Hexed without reading Hounded, I’m not sure why anyone who likes urban fantasy would ever want to.

Atticus’ epic battle with the Celtic god Angus Og at Tony Cabin in the Superstition Mountains created a whole lot of collateral damage, beginning with his Viking vampire lawyer (say that three times fast) and Leif’s hate-on for Thor. Not that there’s not a long line of people who hate Thor. He’s not a quarter as handsome or reasonable as the movie version.

But in this universe where not only all the pantheons but all the versions of all the pantheons seem to exist, Atticus is not exactly eager to step up to the plate and bat at all the various versions of Thor, one after another.

He has enough problems dealing with the version of Coyote who shows up at his doorstep, expecting Atticus to kill one of the leftover demons from his fight – the one that is messing with Coyote’s people in Tempe. Not that Atticus doesn’t get tricked in the process, because that’s what Coyote does.

In the end, the big bad that Atticus has to take care of in this story is one that he has wanted to beat on for years, decades in fact. There’s a coven of very evil witches that wants to move to Tempe to unseat the local coven. A local coven that is now vulnerable and at reduced strength, after having gotten caught in the middle of Atticus’ fight with Angus Og.

While Atticus doesn’t really trust witches, he is about to sign an alliance with the remainder of the local coven. He may not exactly trust Malina and her coven, but he is convinced that he, they and the werewolf pack are a big part of what’s keeping Tempe a nice place to live.

And he’s been hunting for their mutual enemies (and vice versa) since the dark days of the Holocaust. He wants payback – but so does everyone else. Even with the help of the local witches and that Viking vampire lawyer, the good guys may have bitten off more than they can chew.

They might get chewed, instead. And not in a good way. Not even like one of Oberon’s tennis balls.

Escape Rating A: If you are ever looking for an audiobook with while to while away untold numbers of hours while going from laughs to thrills to giggles to chills and back again, I can’t recommend the Iron Druid series as read by Luke Daniels enough. I listened to most of Hexed while on a treadmill, and it made the miles just fly by.

Admittedly, the people who were next to me probably wondered about the shit-eating grin on my face. The story is told by Atticus O’Sullivan in the first person, in Luke Daniels’ Audible Narrator Hall of Fame voice, and this is a case where the first person perspective really, really works.

Especially since the reader/listener gets to hear the thoughts in Atticus’ head, which are usually even snarkier than whatever comes out of his mouth.

As the second book in the series, Hexed offers readers an even deeper dive into both its main character and the world in which he lives, including much more information about his friends, associates and enemies. Including his nosy neighbor with the rocket launcher in his garage.

A big part of Hexed is Atticus being forced to look back at a past he usually buries – his actions as a maquisard in World War II, helping to smuggle Jews out of occupied France to reach the port in Lisbon where they could leave Europe’s charnel house. His recitation of this particular snippet of his history is absolutely riveting.

This story also marks a turning point for Atticus, as he comes to the realization that he is no longer on the run from Angus Og, as he has been for almost the entire Common Era. He finally figures out that he has put down roots in Tempe that are worth defending, and has made friends that he wants to keep and needs to protect from anyone else who might – make that almost certainly will – come after him in the future.

Hexed has absolutely everything that those of us who love urban fantasy read it to find, a terrific, kick ass, thoughtful and snarky hero, a great bunch of sidekicks and irregulars, and a world full of magic that just might be our own.

I can’t wait to get Hammered, and I probably won’t.