I’m trying to be more on top of things but I don’t know how well that will go. I was able to get through this chapter fairly quickly because it’s actually a pretty boring chapter? There’s very little that happens here. It really is just Atticus talking to people. And I understand that not every chapter of every book is going to be a thrilling battle, but with an author this unconcerned with actual Plot it’s not encouraging.
Anyhow!
I spent most of the cab ride home muttering about thrice-cursed trickster gods, but by the end of it I was smiling in spite of myself. I wasn’t the first guy who’d been tricked by Coyote, and I wouldn’t be the last. I’d actually gotten off pretty lightly, walking away with nothing more than a flesh wound.
As stated at the end of the last sporked chapter: what is he talking about? Coyote getting the best of Atticus amounted to… lying about his motivation. And it was a pretty small lie, as far as fibs go. He didn’t really pull one over on him, he just gave him a different reason as to why he made him clean up his own mess. And yeah, maybe he didn’t save Atticus as quickly as he could have, but the fact that he saved him at all makes him a better guy than I would have been in the same situation.
The “flesh wound” comment also reminds me that any time Atticus complains about the threat of injury feels hollow, because he can heal himself! And! HE’S BASICALLY IMMUNE TO DEATH ANYWAY! It just feels very stupid for him to complain about how he was basically inconvenienced. He’s virtually unkillable, super powerful, super strong, and successful! And if that weren’t enough, he rubs it in our faces all the time! I’m having trouble sympathizing with him at all!
So he gets home, he talks to Oberon about the movie he watched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and I don’t care but in this scene Atticus tells us that Oberon is actually kind of immortal too? Sort of. There’s an anti-aging potion that Atticus drinks, and he gives some to Oberon too, so he’s actually older than Irish wolfhounds tend to be, and Oberon has no idea that he’s living longer than his allotted lifespan. And it’s a nice little thing, but it makes me wonder why Atticus apparently never shared this potion with anyone else in his life?
Anyhow the phone rings the song “Witchy Woman” because Malina’s calling and Atticus specifically got that ringtone for her. She’s been able to confirm that the evil German witches mentioned earlier are in the area, but were unable to locate exactly where. She hypothesizes why they can’t get a precise location by magic (not the same number of witches in the coven since the evil witches started killing them, and the evil witches are cloaking themselves magically). She also urges Atticus to deal with the Bacchant situation as quickly as possible.
Atticus, being Atticus, doesn’t want to do anything remotely responsible, and tries to ask if he could do it later instead of tonight. Malina explains exactly the sort of chaos that will ensue if the Bacchants use their magic to make their Bacchanalia.
Bacchanalia will spread disease. It will ruin marriages and other relationships, causing untold emotional distress and greater economic damage through divorce. It encourages a lifestyle of reckless behavior and moral turpitude, and participants often become criminals in short order.”
“That sounds like a weekend at the Phoenix Open.”
Hearne really thinks he’s funny, I guess.
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 10
Malina insists that she’s not joking, that people could die, and that if Bacchants go left unchecked they could multiply. Atticus then remembers that the Bacchants were apparently already living in Vegas before trying to move to Tempe, and asks why then Vegas isn’t as Malina described, only to remember that it totally fits Malina’s description of the Bacchants’ effects to a T and retracts the question.
This meant to be a joke? It would be if it weren’t coming from such an unfunny book and an unfunny protagonist.
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 11
Malina tells Atticus that the bacchants rolling into town will be at a nightclub called Satyrn. Get it? Because satyrs? I’m surprised Hearne did, considering he didn’t know much about them in Chapter 24 of the last book.
She also tells him to clean up because a nightclub is a nice establishment and he needs to look “a little less scruffy.” Atticus asks her to repeat the word ‘scruffy,’ which she does, and asks why. Atticus tells her it’s because he’s trying to learn her accent. She is understandably annoyed by this, and hangs up. Is this a joke? I don’t know.
Atticus leaves the house. On the way out, the Leprechaun sees him and asks if he saw Mary. Atticus confirms he did, and that he’ll talk to her about it after work. And so he goes to work, although he tells us that his store has an automated inventory, so whenever something gets sold a replacement is automatically ordered, and so he doesn’t actually have to do much in the store other than show up from time to time and run the apothecary. He could have his employee Perry run most of the store with no problem.
Reminder that Perry Thomas is, according to Atticus, “the cheeriest Goth kid I’ve ever met.” And as discussed before, no, that’s NOT a typo, for whatever reason Hearne thinks that ‘goth’, as in the subculture, is supposed to be capitalized. I think in the comments for the last book we decided that we’re just going to assume that he’s actually a Goth, a member of one of the tribes of Germanic peoples who fought the Roman Empire and set up kingdoms throughout Europe.
Also, have you MET any goths? There is a reason Perky Goth has a page on TV Tropes. It’s not really that uncommon.
Perry isn’t very good with mixing potions other than, say, basic tea, and doesn’t really pay attention to the herbs and can’t recognize that they’re low on something. In short, it doesn’t capture his interest at all and he has trouble working with it, so Atticus doesn’t let him sell those herbs and stuff outside of basic mixtures.
Granuaile’s in the store practicing Latin on her laptop. Atticus assures us she’s picking it up pretty quickly–they can trade basic sentences. She smiles at him when he walks in, and because he’s apparently incapable of NOT thinking about sex around Granny1 he immediately starts trying to remember boring baseball facts to avoid getting a boner. We get a quick rundown of current customers in the store (two professors talking, a short guy asking about random occult topics), and then Granny tells her boss that three people are coming in for job interviews in the afternoon.
And then a priest and rabbi walk in and ask for the store’s owner. Atticus introduces himself as such and asks if this is a joke. They don’t get it, so he tells them, “You know, a tall priest and a short rabbi walk into a pagan bookstore,” and to be fair, that does sound like the setup for a joke. The priest even finds it a little amusing.
After they introduce themselves as Father Gregory Fletcher and Rabbi Yosef Zalman Bialik, they ask after Atticus O’Sullivan, and he replies *“You’re talkin’ to him.”
I laid on the college kid’s informality pretty thick. These fellows didn’t look right to me, and until I knew what they were after, they weren’t going to see anything but the facade I presented to the general public.
Ah yes, he’s hiding behind a college kid persona. Right after admitting he owns a New Age Bookstore. I’m sorry, how many college kids do you know that run their own stores? Not like an Etsy shop, an actual, successful, independently-owned store in a building that has an actual collection of antiques. It’s not impossible, but it’s very far from the ordinary in the US. So right off the bat, he’s putting up a front that’s suspicious and unusual.
He does have reason to be cautious though–he looks at their auras, and they’re weirdly power hungry? That’s apparently a thing you can tell from auras. Also, the rabbi looks like a magic user in Atticus’s magic vision.
Father Fletcher says he expected someone older considering his reputation, and when Atticus points out he doesn’t expect that he has a reputation among the clergy. Fletcher replies that he’s known in some circles, but when our protagonist asks what circles, he changes the subject.
And really, is that difficult to understand? As indicated by the first chapter of this book, the entire supernatural community knows where Atticus lives (something which Atticus doesn’t care about despite his “paranoia”). It is not a stretch to say that a major world religion, one which has a rite of exorcism–in a world in which demons are very real–would know of someone who had just shaken the status quo of the supernatural world.
This conversation feels very odd because Atticus clearly wants to play his cards close to his chest, which is understandable. Or at least it would be if it wasn’t an open secret. Everyone in the supernatural world already knows! All they have to do is find someone else in the community and ask about it!
Cutting to the chase, Father Fletcher asks Atticus if he was “involved in an unusual situation in the Superstition Mountains about three weeks ago,” or put plainly: were you involved in what happened at the end of the last book? Which again, everyone in the supernatural community knows about, and knows he was involved. It’s barely even a secret.
Atticus’s reply is “Nope, never been out there.” The rabbi calls him a liar, but in Russian2, working under the assumption that he wouldn’t understand Russian. Of course, Atticus does, but he decides to pretend not to.
“Hey, I’m an American,” I said, “and the only language I speak is English, and not too good neither. When you speak that other stuff, it makes me think you’re sayin’ something rude about me.”
Am I wrong to read this in a Southern accent? It looks like a Southern accent to me. Which is weird, because they’re in Arizona. I suppose Arizona is in the South, but in the Southwest. Do they have Southern accents there?
Or is this just how he thinks college kids talk? I’ll give it a count just in case:
The Kids These Days: 6
Father Fletcher apologizes and then asks if he was at Skyline High School this morning, and now Atticus is worried, because no one should know about that but Coyote and Mary. He also says that it “took me to new heights of paranoia,” which is justified, but again I’m pretty sure he’s going to do nothing about this. So he denies and says he’s been in the store all day, which anyone could easily prove he wasn’t if they went snooping. C’mon man, at least make your lies convincing!
You Keep Using That Word: 8
Father Fletcher just moves on and asks to see the rare books collection, while Rabbi Yosef is standing there fuming because he knows, and we know, that he’s not telling the truth.
Onto the rare books! He does actually have legitimately rare books, including spellbooks that are old as dirt. Atticus also tells us that there are manuscripts with secrets and directions to ancient treasures and stuff? For instance, one of the books says where one might find some Aztec gold that conquistadores hid away and never made it back to.
I like knowing secrets like that, and I admit that when I’m all alone in the shop sometimes, I rub my hands together greedily and laugh like a one-eyed, black-mustached pirate to think that I have a bona fide treasure map locked up in my cabinet.
He has the location of a priceless treasure the Spanish stole from the Mexica people, and he’s just _sitting on it. _I’m not saying I want him to take the gold; what bothers me is his motivation. Atticus isn’t keeping this secret because he wants to protect the cultural heritage from colonizers, or opportunistic treasure hunters. He doesn’t keep the secret because he wants the gold for himself. It doesn’t mean anything to him! He just likes knowing something that other people don’t! He just likes something else to be smug about!
Imagine being in a writer’s group, and talking about your protagonist you tell your fellow writers, “Yeah, my protagonist has a treasure map to secret Aztec gold. He’s not telling anyone about it. He doesn’t plan to take it. He just likes to have things like that to make himself feel cooler than everyone else.”
Let’s give it a
Better Than You: 4
Hearne tells us about the book display case, which is sealed, behind bulletproof glass, and also magically protected. Father Fletcher asks about the books, and Atticus says the section’s not for browsing, that none of the antique books were for sale–though he tells the audience that he sells one at an auction once a year, which again, these things could easily be traced if these guys are that interested, why are you telling a lie that can easily be uncovered?
You Keep Using That Word: 9
Atticus gets between them and the door when they’re about to leave and asks why they’re here.
“Why did you come here today, gentlemen?” I said, a challenge in my tone.
Yeah, that doesn’t clash with the early tone/accent you did earlier, does it? And Atticus admits this, but doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue. Because a coherent cover isn’t something Atticus thinks is worth building?
For whatever reason the priest starts stammering, because apparently he didn’t actually consider what would happen if the person he was interrogating about the supernatural started acting wary around him? The rabbi shoots back in English that they don’t have to tell Atticus jack because he hasn’t been honest with them. Atticus replies that they’ve been acting sketch since they arrived, and he doesn’t even know that they’re truly clergymen. Their reaction to that comment makes Atticus think that they are, because they never seemed to even consider the idea of faking being a priest and rabbi.
So Father Fletcher apologizes and says that the two of them represent a group that is interested in Atticus. Rabbi Yosef gets annoyed and they leave.
They clearly knew more about me than I knew about them, and that’s an extremely uncomfortable feeling for an old Druid.
ALL THE GODS KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!!!!
Anyhow after they leave, it’s time for job interviews! There are two guys and a girl. Take a guess which ones are dismissed in a few sentences without dialogue and which gets a long character description and a conversation.
Go on, guess.
…if you guessed the female candidate, you win! After all, it’s not like Hearne is ever going to pass up an opportunity to talk about how HAWT a woman is.
If you guessed the two male candidates, you’re clearly not paying attention.
The first two candidates were semi-sentient boys who stared at me with their mouths open whenever I was talking. Their eyes were dead and never lit up until I asked them if they liked video games. They’d probably have difficulty alphabetizing.
Better Than You: 5
See, Atticus isn’t like other young men, who play video games and are so stupid that they can’t even figure out the alphabet! Atticus is much cleverer and cooler and smarter than the average man!
I mean, look at this! This is what Hearne thinks of a large chunk of his audience. Are you a young man who likes video games? Well, sorry. According to Hearne, you’re an idiot. You have no critical thinking skills. You can’t understand basic conversations. You can’t even read. You’re barely even alive, if “semi-sentient” is anything to go by.
I am not, in theory, against the idea of going through job candidates and dismissing them because they’re dumb. Have you ever heard of the webcomic Sufficiently Remarkable? There’s a similar scene in which Riti is interviewing potential boyfriends for her roommate, and it has a similar result–she meets several guys who are just terrible and dismisses them out of hand. But given everything before it, like the stupid guys the Morrigan kills in Chapter 2 of the first book I get the impression that, once again, this is just Hearne putting himself up on a pedestal again and showing how his self-insert is a much better man than those other men who are so stupid they can’t read.
And it’s not like Hearne is any better in his portrayal of female characters! The third candidate, who is hired on the spot, is Rebecca Dane, a HAWT blonde who gets a full description for her looks and outfit because, really, what else would you expect from this book? Hearne likes describing attractive women. I’m not typing out that description because I have better things to do than copy out his fetishes.
She also has a necklace of religious symbols for “practically every known world religion.” Atticus asks about it, and she replies that she’s “kind of checking out the whole buffet” and I hate this? I mean, it actually fits fine with the worldbuilding of the series, but Rebecca doesn’t know that. I am of the opinion that religion, any religion, is something to be taken seriously, because it’s making fundamental claims about the nature of the universe. Skipping through belief systems whenever you feel like it is something I think of the same way someone might view a person who hops back and forth between political parties. You’re not wise, you’re just an indecisive fool.
Well that impresses Atticus because he’s a bigger fool, and she knows some stuff about herbs so he hires her on the spot, promising to double her starting salary if she learns to work the apothecary in store.
After that Atticus talks with Granny for a while, and then the two of them go back to his neighborhood to talk to the Leprechaun. They tell her Granny’s training to become a Druid, and the Leprechaun is surprised because she assumed that she “raised a proper Catholic girl” and what? Why would she think that? It’s not like she met Granny in church or seen her wearing a crucifix. I guess because of Irish stereotypes, the Leprechauns saw a young redhead and assumed she was Irish Catholic?
[shrugs] I dunno.
Granny’s answer is dumb too, because she says as a philosophy major, she feels like there are no certain answers or something. I don’t care. The two of them go back to Atticus’s house, and while Granny hangs out with Oberon, Atticus tries calling his vampire lawyer Leif. Leif picks up asking if Atticus is willing to go kill Thor now, and when Atticus still says ‘no’ Leif hangs up. Granny asks if there’s a way to apologize.
“Well, no, it’s not like I can send him a box of chocolates. I have scruples about sending him people for dinner.
You have no scruples about helping him figure out how to approach his prey more easily though, given the first chapter? The line here makes it sound like Atticus doesn’t like the idea of Leif killing people for blood, but it’s not like he does anything to stop it. He might as well, at this point.
Anyhow Laksha calls to say she arrived at the airport and needs to be picked up. So Atticus puts on his sword and hops in the car with Granny. That’s how we end this chapter.
1 Man, I just realized that without the context that ‘Granny’ is short for ‘Granuaile,’ this sentence sounds very strange.
2 “On ne gavarit pravdu,” which is translated by Hearne as “He is not telling the truth.” If I plug the English phrase into Google Translate, I get the same result, but I don’t know any Russian-speakers who could double check this for me. I would not be surprised if it was done only with Google Translate.
Better Than You: 5
Did Not Do Homework: 10
The Kids These Days: 6
You Keep Using That Word: 9
Make It Easy!: 7
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 11
Faranae on 2 March 2022, 21:31 said:
I keep thinking that these books seem sort of structured like fan fiction – written a chapter at a time with a lot of inconsistencies happening in between somehow. Turns out, that’s Hearne’s method
Re: Granny. Honestly, I don’t think Hearne understands how weird a name he’s given her, or how not poetic the name sounds (Clare Accent , a Mayo Accent and a Meath Accent) It would be like naming someone Bluebeard! Granny is at least closer to an actual normal Irish name…
The necklace of religious symbols could have been cool, if it had turned out she was an ordained ULC minister But no, it’s just dumb.
Aikaterini on 3 March 2022, 19:21 said:
I tend not to read a lot of books that have slacker protagonists in them, so I don’t know if it’s common for slacker protagonists to relapse into laziness every time there’s a sequel, but I still don’t think that this is funny or charming. I don’t understand why we’re supposed to like a protagonist who has to be dragged through the plot kicking and screaming just to interact with it. At least Reluctant Heroes tend to have a reason for not wanting to accept the Call to Adventure. Atticus doesn’t have a good reason. He’s just lazy.
Right, because Las Vegas is such a nightmarish cesspool of madness and villainy where people die right and left. If the worst thing that will happen if the Bacchants multiply is that places will look like Las Vegas, then where’s the threat? Where’s the tension? What are the stakes? Why should the reader care? “Oh, people might start gambling, cheat on their spouses, or get addicted to drugs. Or they could have a perfectly fun time and then go home. How awful.”
In addition to this not being funny, this is also annoying because it really feels like an attempt by Atticus to procrastinate and avoid doing his job. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll go after the Bacchants, whatever. But first, let me talk about your accent!”
You’d think that after living for so long, Atticus would be able to craft a more convincing lie.
And considering that, as you pointed out, Atticus owns his own bookstore.
Dragons have often been characterized like this: collecting and hoarding mounds of gold and treasure that they don’t even use. The problem is that those dragons tend not to be heroic. They don’t tend to be the protagonists. In that scenario, they’re the embodiments of avarice. So, why are we supposed to like Atticus?
As opposed to Atticus, who is so stupid that he can’t stop himself from ogling women every five seconds or see anything wrong with his cover story of being a college student who owns his own bookstore.
Juracan on 4 March 2022, 21:52 said:
I don’t think that’s a bad approach to a novel, if done right. But it does indeed explain quite a lot about how things go on a chapter-to-chapter basis. It certainly explains why the urgency of the story doesn’t seem to carry forward with a lot of momentum.
Probably he Google’d “Irish stuff” or heard about the namesake once and wanted to make a tribute in the text regardless of whether or not it made sense. And you know what? I’d think it was fine if this was a purposefully ridiculous story, something like Simon Green’s Nightside in which characters had ridiculously dramatic names on purpose, or if Granny’s name was lampshaded somehow. But we’re constantly being told by Atticus how much he blends in as a normal person, how things are different in this story and not like in the movies, so it’s just stupid and weird to have a character named that.
I’m vaguely reminded of All Creatures Great and Small in which there’s a character named ‘Siegfried’ and he has a quick line explaining it by saying that his father was a big fan of Wagner. It is remarked upon as an unusual name in-text! Not so with Granny.
And Atticus is not even kicking and screaming! He just sort of wanders into it sometimes, and when he’s given even the slightest push, he acts like he’s been manipulated! He’s a really dull sort of hero (both in that he’s boring and that he’s pretty dumb).
You would think, wouldn’t you? Then again, Hearne probably thinks this is convincing.
Fudge if I know. Ask the fans of these books. The guy’s an unlikable douchewad in every scene and we’re supposed to find this.. charming, I think?
And yet, I assure you, we’re supposed to think that Atticus is the smartest smart man to ever smart. Unless someone “manipulates” him, in which that’s meant to be a reflection of how insanely intelligent those people are by, uh… [checks note] giving a small lie about their motivations that one time.
The Smith of Lies on 7 March 2022, 16:18 said:
I think I understand what you are getting at, but that sentence just sounds like a contradiction.
And once again it makes me think about Rebecca Roanhorse’s Sixth World novels, which include Coyote and they include him pulling a decent con, despite the person falling for it being wary. But then again they are good books.
I am 99% certain it makes him a better guy than Atticus would be in the same situation.
Do you know how many infants go into that thing? And gathering those is hard work, that for some reason tends to be frown by other people so you have to be all sneaky about it. Do you expect Atticus to put the work of stealing enough babies to make even more potion? Oberon probably only gets any because being a dog the dosage based on the body mass would be pretty small.
I know it is a bit of boomer humour but it reminds of an old joke – when a woman asks her husband to do something she can rest assured he will do it and she does not need to pester him about it every 6 months.
Atticus’s thoughts on the matter.
Makes you wonder how she knows this. Then again I will give Hearne benefit on the doubt, since this is a second hand reading for me, maybe she spouted some excuse about scrying spell or such.
Now that you mention that one I do believe we did! And I am pretty certain because the second I saw a capital G Goth I was about to make a joke about Perry wearing tunic, mail and having wooden shield and spear on his back! You know, looking bit like this:
Which in my headcanon he does!
Slightly. But hey, given his flirty interactions with Leprechaun (even if it was her wistful about jumping his bones) I would not put anything beyond Atticus…
Eh, while I principally agree with the point, I can easily see one getting “a small loan of 1 million dollars” from their father to start one. [Or maybe 3.5M$ or thereabout adjusting roughly for inflation.]
So it would probably register as unusual but as long as they don’t have any reason to suspect any supernatural mischief the suspicions it might rise would be somewhere between “a jumped-up trust fund kid” and “there is some kind of money laundering happening here and the kid is a front”.
Which admittedly is not ideal as far as keeping low profile goes but we have long since established that Atticus would not recognize Paranoia if it rappelled through the window SWAT style and kicked him in the dick.
bq.I don’t know any Russian-speakers who could double check this for me.
I wouldn’t say my very brief education qualifies my as a Russian-speaker, but having some slight experience with the language I am very tentatively going to venture that while it might be grammatically correct, it sounds very stiff and formal. And it is possibly still wrong.
Why the hell is he even keeping books like that in his store, which is a front for him anyway? I know I partially excused him being a proprietor at an early age, but this is new level of stupid.
Antique books as I can imagine have a community of people who keep track of them rather closely, some for fiscal reasons and some for passion. There is no better way of lighting a beacon over your head than publicly getting involved into a field where you display ostentatious wealth in form of rare and unique objects.
This is going beyond being suspiciously rich kid, this is him making his front operation conspicuous by how extraordinary it is! Not to mention that if you have people involved in supernatural, as the pair obviously is, advertising that you have some rare, possibly magically relevant books is exact opposite of lying low!
Oh boy, oh boy! Ain’t I a lucky bleeder? What do I get? Is it a cookie?
Ah yes, this old chestnut. It is like Sapkowski being asked if he knows people who played Witcher games replying “No, I prefer company of intelligent people.”
I am pretty sure this is Hearne projecting the same kind of snobbery – if he is not interested in the medium it is obvious that it is worthless. Which I find hilarious because he is creating in the genre that gets the same treatment in literary circles – it is fantasy so it can’t have any value! Talk about a plank in one’s eye.
That must be a heavy burden given there’s about 6000 give or take few. Also reminds me of this scene from the Mummy. So my headcanon is that she is Benny’s descendant.
Will you shut up about killing Thor for one minute!
I guess the treat would be to the “traditional family values”? Not like I personally would mind that much, neither would Atticus.
Juracan on 8 March 2022, 07:40 said:
I should have specified what I meant: I was able to spork this chapter pretty quickly because I don’t have to describe a lot of events. It’s mostly people talking.
I should put a disclaimer in a sporking chapter that if you want a good Coyote story, just pick up those books.
You are correct. It’s through some magic nonsense that she knows this.
This is now canon. For this sporking, anyway.
True—it’s more unusual than immediately suspicious, in and of itself. But I think along with everything else, it’s pretty sketch. And as you point out, it’s not exactly keeping a low profile. In fact it would not be out of the ordinary for a local newspaper or magazine to try to interview him for a feature article because he’s such a young business owner.
He tell us that a lot of the books are one-of-a-kind rarities that most people don’t really know what they are, and that there are scholars who’d kill to have some of those books. Which is still… yeah, as you point out it’s a good way to become a target. Because it’s not like he keeps these in a vault, they’re on display. And as I’ve pointed out, the entire supernatural community apparently knows where he lives.
Sure. Go get yourself a cookie and a glass of milk.
Oh Sapkowski! He’s fun in how much he absolutely does not care about anyone’s opinion. The times I’ve seen interviews, anyway.
It is pretty weird? Again, it seems like he really hates the nerd crowd, or a large section of it, when it’s not like it’s a different demographic from what he’s trying to appeal to. I can’t imagine that the type of people who read these are unlikely to play video games.
I’ll take that headcanon. If not literal descendant, then at least his spiritual one.
If it makes you feel any better it’s the subject of the next book.
The Smith of Lies on 9 March 2022, 03:58 said:
Yeah, this is what I gathered. I just found the phrasing slightly amusing.
I respect his writing skills and I would put the Hussite Trilogy by him in top 10 of my favourite books with no hesitation. But the fact is that through interviews and public statements he strikes me as a bitter, unpleasant, snob.
At least as far as I know he does not openly and actively support causes that I find detestable, as some authors out there do, so I can comfortably separate the artist from the art.
Honestly? The people who are the closest to the demographic of the books get very negative descriptions in them. First the stoners Morrrigan wanted to murder, now those guys. It is a little weird.
Yeah, maybe that foreknowledge is what makes me even more irritated at Leif, for being so monotone about it?
Juracan on 9 March 2022, 21:19 said:
I mean… yeah. He seems like the sort of person who would be very annoying to have to actually interact with in real life. I remember reading about when he sued CD Projekt Red for millions in royalties for The Witcher despite having sold the rights to the books to them because he rejected a royalty deal, as he thought there was no way the games would be profitable—and I thought that it seemed a bit greedy and stupid on his part.
I reminded of a video that explains how often the BBC Sherlock makes mean-spirited potshots at its audience and called them stupid for their fan theories and hopes of character development.
Like. Hearne. My dude. You’re not writing High Art here. This is your crowd.
And that’s fair. Hearne isn’t really known for writing deep characters, and this is Leif’s one thing. There’s a vaguely-hinted REASON for him hating Thor so much, but he has so little other personality it’s not like I can summon up much reason to care.
Faranae on 17 March 2022, 00:51 said:
I know several antiquarian book sellers. While they are all functionally recluses, they also all know each others’ collections fairly well despite not only living in different countries, but living on different continents. And these are not books on display! People interested in rare books talk! It’s shocking, I know. It’s like Hearne just can’t imagine anyone having any intelligence or interest in other people at all, really.
A used bookstore or hippie shop would be a great front. But it can’t have fancy glass-encased non-sales items on display! A crumbling used bookstore no one is sure how it doesn’t close down is a beloved community space no one looks twice at. But also, I don’t know why he needs a front? Why isn’t he just a hermit? You can get a nice mansion in the Colorado foothills, complete will full delivery of all your needs, and no one will ever notice your existence other than “that fella on the hill”.
Same goes with Big Bang Theory which is just season after season of hating nerds in the most offensive ways possible.
At least with Hearne and Atticus, I can actually understand what’s going on – the target audience sees themselves as Atticus, not the random dudes who are barely described. What I don’t understand is how he has female fans and friends at all. Indeed, if I didn’t see his interactions with Ursula Vernon, I would have thought he was as huge a dick as his writing makes him seem. In this case, separating the art from the artist is the only way to salvage the author.
Juracan on 17 March 2022, 22:16 said:
I don’t know that Hearne can do subtle. As I pointed out, at the end of the last book Atticus claims that he “lives simply” as a reason why he has so much spare money and can hand out tens of thousands of dollars on a whim. Given everything we’re told—that Atticus is paranoid, that he lives simply, that he thinks it’s his sacred duty to protect the natural world—one would think he’d be a hermit character, or someone who lives out in the wilderness and acts in tune with nature.
Instead, Atticus is… a magic frat guy.
Basically it’s very obvious that he’s living the life Hearne wishes he lived.
I was going to go with ‘I don’t know if nerds were really the audience BBT was aiming for, because of that, but now that I think about it I suppose it kind of was? They would get so many big-name guest stars from nerd culture that I can’t imagine they weren’t aiming to catch the nerd crowd. I don’t know what to tell you other than maybe, at the time, featuring nerds as main characters at all, instead of being just the sidekicks.
It’s not a flattering portrayal, but it’s at least about them.
That’s the best theory I can come up with anyway.
Yeah, I remember picking up Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne (which I wouldn’t recommend because most of it just isn’t that funny), and the author’s note in the back explained that they wrote it because they were both tired of fantasy as a genre being “a white male power fantasy” (I wouldn’t have thought that this was what the book was satirizing from reading it, honestly) and I was… puzzled, because what I’ve read of Iron Druid is textbook white male power fantasy.
How did this conversation even go? How does anyone listen to him talk about the problems of white male power fantasy and NOT point to these books?