I am very, very late, and I am very, very sorry. I had hoped to get this up sooner, but things happened, as things are wont to do. But I have a chapter up, and then Mondaybor Day is Labor Day (at least for my US readers)! That’s something to look forward to.
The last chapter ended with Atticus saying, “Wait! I’ve come across these witches before in World War II! I just didn’t know who they were back then!” If this is supposed to be a meaningful Plot Twist, it fails; it reads like Hearne pulled this straight out of his rectum without thinking of a way to tie this into the narrative more organically. And if you were wondering what Atticus was doing in World War II that made him the enemy of a German witch coven, well, you’re going to have to wait, because for once Atticus does not stop the narrative to awkwardly explain something.
[sigh]
So Chapter 18 opens with Atticus removing his binding on Granny’s vision and ordering her to stay in the house. While he goes chasing after the witches, Atticus gives some directions of where he’s going, and interestingly, he actually names the streets he’s on. I Googled this, and it turns out that these are real streets in a real part of Tempe, Arizona.
I don’t know how I feel about that.
Atticus realizes that her path will take her past the Leprechaun’s house (the elderly Irish widow who is his neighbor and talks like the Lucky Charms mascot), and that makes him worried, because he doesn’t know if the witches know that Atticus is friends with the unstable Irish neighbor. If they do, they may try to hurt the Leprechaun to get to him.
I used to try to protect all my friends in the early days, but gradually I realized that the very process of protecting them often painted them as targets–or pointed the way to where I was hiding. It became counterproductive to keeping my location secret, so I long ago fell out of the habit. Running after the witch now, I realized that the situation had changed and I’d failed to see it: I was no longer hiding, so my friends might as well be wearing sandwich boards that said, Hurt me to hurt the Druid.
Have you ever been so paranoid that you didn’t realize that you had a public life with friends that you regularly visited and talked to?
You Keep Using That Word: 28
This is such a bizarre way to characterize Atticus! He’s acting as if he now suddenly cares about other people, but remember that in the last book he demanded one of his werewolf allies go and sacrifice himself for his own quest, and then seemed offended in this book that maybe the werewolves are not thrilled about being used as his disposable mook squad. Atticus blatantly does not care about most of the people around him, other than what they can do for him. The Leprechaun is an exception because Hearne thinks she’s funny and therefore endearing.
Even if we accept this as character development, it still doesn’t mean much! “Atticus is a swell guy, he wants to protect the Widow MacDonagh!” Fine, he doesn’t want a little old lady he’s friends with to be painfully murdered by witches. What does he want, a Cookie for Basic Decency?
So once again, we need to confront the paper-thin myth that he’s paranoid. If he was really paranoid at all, if he was so concerned with not being found, he wouldn’t have built up such a network of friends! He wouldn’t be living in the suburbs of a college town! He wouldn’t be a business owner of a popular New Age store with valuable antiques on display! Remember, he can control plant life and wind, hunt by himself, and heal himself. He can be fully self-sufficient. Except he goes out of his way to live what most people think of as a really good life out in the open. This is all incredibly obvious, and now he’s acting like, “Hey, wait a minute, I haven’t really kept my life secret these past few years!”
This man is apparently Oh-So-Paranoid, and yet _this is just now occurring to him.
He’s an idiot.
Atticus considers drawing on more magical power to catch up with the witch, and then realizes that she’s running on the street. She’s thinking about how to fight, unlike how Atticus usually approaches things. Because she knows Atticus is a Druid who draws his power from the Earth, she is walking on pavement; if he follows, he’ll no longer be in contact with the ground and thus lose his power source. Smart, but again, if Atticus used any of his powers in a non-straightforward way (again, he can control wind when he wants to), she’d be screwed. Luckily for her at this moment, Atticus is an idiot.
Atticus decides that he’s going to get ahead by shapeshifting. He observes that around here there are no windows facing the street, so he throws off his clothes, and turns into an owl. The witch doesn’t notice him, and then sneak attacks her, clawing at her scalp and getting some hair for friendly witch Malina to use.
Give it a
Make It Easy!: 20
for the bit about no windows facing the street.
Of course, as he flies away, the witch throws another hex at him, which staggers owl!Atticus in mid-air, though doesn’t do much more damage because of his magical F-You Amulet. He crashes into the street pavement in human form (which is naked, reminder). The witch grabs him by the hair, and Atticus barely has any power left in his amulet to draw from, so he…
Instead of resisting and trying to tear free by lunging forward, I pushed into a backward somersault.
…a backward…somersault…?
Okay, I get that he’s an immortal, so he’s got time to practice gymnastics, I guess, but it’s a little weird that we’re meant to believe he’s worn out now when he can just… do a backward somersault. It also feels pretty contradictory to Atticus constantly telling us how “real” fights go down, though he’s constantly doing crazy unrealistic stuff in fights, so who even cares at this point?
Well, when he gets up, there are now TWO witches, which kind of freaks out Atticus. He doesn’t know where the second one came from, so conveniently Hearne doesn’t have to figure out where she came from either! Isn’t that handy?
Because they look different now, Atticus realizes that they must be visible on the normal spectrum, so he turns off his glamour vision to observe what the witches looked like to ordinary humans right now.
They looked like they wanted to be Pat Benatar. Or maybe Joan Jett.
I really don’t care about your stupid pop culture references.
To be fair, there are more details about their look, because they’re female characters and Atticus will always give you details about the appearances and wardrobes of female characters. Of course, he’s sure to explain to us that the witches aren’t actually as youthful as they look, because witches don’t have the cool immortality/eternal youth that a Druid has.
Because you need a reminder that he’s eternally young, and that his magic is so much better than everyone else’s.
Better Than You: 11
Police sirens are going off, signaling their approach, and he and the witches are trying to figure out what to do next, when
“Atticus? Is that yer naked bum what I’m lookin’ at?” the widow called from the porch.
Gosh, I hate this woman’s accent. Let’s apply the fix TMary suggested!
Is that yer Irishly naked Irish bum what I’m Irishly lookin’ at? I’m Irish!”
There, that’s better.
Atticus realizes that the witches could easily blast the shiz out of the Leprechaun, so he needs to create a diversion. What he comes up with is that he’d dropped some of the witch’s hair on the ground, so he picks it up, sticks it in his mouth, shapeshifts into a hound (using the last of his magical energy to do so) and runs towards his house. The witches, worried about what might be done with the hair, go after the dog instead of noticing the Leprechaun.
During the chase, Atticus wonders if the witches have any other spells other than the one killing hex that he’s seen them use. He points out that some witches can have a lot of spells up their sleeves, especially if they have time to prepare, but a lot of them aren’t really any good at upfront, in-your-face combat.
He chalks this up to a European thing? That “a lot of European witches” are the type who aren’t really good at combat unless they’ve prepared rituals, unlike Indian witch Laksha who can throw down with anyone. And I’m once again thinking that this is Hearne going with the idea that Asian people all know kung-fu, or some sort of martial arts, and that European combat was primitive and stupid. We had something similar in the final boss fight of the first book, in which Atticus tells us that Aenghus Og has only one sword fighting style, whereas he, Atticus, has learned martial arts in Asia.
Which martial arts? Y’know. Those ones. From Asia. The witches know them, too!
One day, there will be a rant about this, but given that right now I’m picking this as a vibe from a throwaway line, I don’t know if it fits here. [points at Hearne] But I’m watching you, pal!
The witches try a magical charm to pull the amulet off of him, which doesn’t work (it’s magically bound to him), but it does knock him over. Atticus picks up on the fact that they’ve picked up on the fact that they can’t just blast him, but they can wear him down and cause him a lot of inconvenience if they keep hexing him.
So he runs to his house! And he almost changes back right on the porch, but Oberon mentioned at some point earlier that Mr. Semerdjian, the nosy neighbor that Atticus hates for Reasons, was back home, and he notices that he’s watching through his window. So Attticus doesn’t turn back into a human because said neighbor would report him for indecent exposure or something.
[sigh]
I almost put a “LAUGH, DAMNIT” but I don’t know if this is a joke? I understand that he’s got a lot going on, so Atticus doesn’t want to be investigated for something stupid, but we’re really deciding that he’s making choices in the middle of pitched magical battle based on what he’s afraid his neighbor might report to the police. Lives are on the line here, Hearne! Or maybe not–the witches explicitly can’t even step on Atticus’s front lawn because of the magical protections there.
And you know what? I’m tempted to give it a “Make It Easy!” because right now, we could be having Atticus’s house besieged by the witches, his apprentice and dog trying to hold the lines, as he frantically tries to get in and his neighbor witnesses what’s going on, or something. How interesting would it be if Atticus risks exposure of the magical community in trying to make himself safe? Yeah, he wouldn’t care because he doesn’t care about anyone, but everyone around him would care and make his life difficult. But no, instead of exploring any of those angles, he gets in without a hitch.
But maybe it doesn’t deserve a point for that, because I’m projecting possible ideas? I don’t know. In any case, before he gets in the house, Atticus tells us he’s completely magically recharged though, just from sprinting across the lawn, so I WILL take a point for that.
Make It Easy!: 21
Remember in the last book when he recharged by sleeping in the yard overnight? He has to be in contact with the ground to recharge magically, but he just… manages it by running in dog form across the front yard? What the heck is this, then? Maybe it took extra power because he also had to heal himself more in the last book, but really, in this one, he’s recharged from running around the yard a bit?
Granny lets Atticus inside, and he turns back into a human and explains that the witches outside are from the coven that tried to kill them earlier. He then warns her to stay inside until he comes back. Because he’s leaving again! This time to go protect the Leprechaun from the witches. She seems a bit worried, noticing the wound he’s got from where he landed on the street, his skin all scraped, but Atticus dismisses it as it’ll heal.
Also! Remember, that when Atticus shapeshifts, he loses his clothes.
“Okay, sensei,” she said. “Nice ass,” she added as I closed the door behind me.
*LAUGH, DAMNIT:*28
O-kay, I get that using humor to deflate tense situations is a thing, but really? Is now really the time? The house is besieged by malevolent witches, and Atticus was just chased through the streets by them. And the apprentice’s comment, after getting a brief explanation of what’s going on, decides to compliment his butt.
What is this? What is the point of this? To build up their relationship? To be funny? You would think that if Atticus is really that invested in not seeing his apprentice in a sexual light, he would tell her off for making that comment. That would, of course, require Atticus to have some level of intelligence and maturity though, and he can’t even see her freckles without having sexual thoughts so here we are.
At least, shapeshifting actually takes some kind of toll on Atticus, which makes me feel slightly better about his overpowered-ness. It’s apparently “starting to hurt.” Not sure why, but it’s an interesting side effect.
So he grabs another of the extra amulets that the Morrigan left him, he turns into an owl, activates his magical camouflage and–hang on! He can cast spells in animal form? This probably isn’t the first time he’s done that, but now I’m thinking about it, and it’s a little weird? I’m not one of those people who insists that when fantasy characters turn into animal form, that they have to have an animal mind as well1, but there should be some trade-off, I think? Except in Iron Druid, apparently a Druid can turn into an animal and still cast spells. Does that not strike anyone else as being a little too convenient for him?
I don’t use these counts enough anyway, here we go:
Make It Easy! 22
The witches have left the siege of his house, and so Atticus appears on the porch, turns back into a person, and again, remember that when he shapeshifts, he’s not wearing clothes so
“Whoo-hoo, Atticus, have ye come to give me a show? I think I have a couple of dollars in me purse inside.”
I hate the Leprechaun so much. Again, let’s apply the fix:
“Whoo-hoo, Atticus, have ye Irishly come to give me an Irish show? I Irishly think I have a couple of Irish dollars in me Irish purse inside. I’m Irish!”
I don’t know why it works, but it does make me feel a little better.
He covers himself and asks to go inside. When he does, he covers himself in a towel.
“Aw, why’d ye put away yer twig and berries?” the widow teased
STOP TALKING YOU STUPID STEREOTYPE
LAUGH, DAMNIT: 29
Atticus instructs her to lock all the doors because witches are on the way. He hands the Leprechaun the amulet and asks if she can put it on a necklace, and she goes to get one from her bedroom, although she says he better have an explanation for her. Atticus starts using the magic to “bind the metal of the locks to the jambs” in order to make it harder to get in. They lock themselves in the bathroom, and someone starts beating on the front door as he explains the situation as (and I’m paraphrasing) “There are two German witches trying to kill us, so wear this amulet. If it hurts, that means it’s working, so please don’t take it off.”
The Leprechaun asks why these German witches want to kill them, and his reply?
“The short version is that one of them’s having a bad hair day,” I said.
I would be mildly amused by this if I didn’t hate these characters.
The witches break in through the front window using… the patio chairs? Why can’t they just use their magic? I’m unsure. But they break in and try to open the bathroom door.
“Sie sind hier drinnen!” one called to the other.
Someone who knows German, tell me how good this is. Atticus, who knows German, should probably be able to tell us right away what this means. I don’t know, maybe we’re meant to figure out from context, which admittedly isn’t that hard.
Anyhow the witches start trying to bust down the door. Atticus tells the Leprechaun to hide in the tub, as he’ll take care of it.
Concentrating on the locking mechanism, already buckling after a couple of kicks, I began to whisper an unbinding on the metal
WAIT this reminds me! Druid magic works by speaking spells! I forgot about that, but this reminded me, because he’s using spoken magic to work the binding here. And he uses spoken magic when he’s casting spells in combat, like the Cold Fire spell. So going back–how does he cast spells as an animal? Animals can’t physically speak human languages, right? I guess the Morrigan can speak in crow form, and the Irish gods are just uber-Druids, but the first time she does in the second chapter of the first book, that a bird’s anatomy shouldn’t be able to form words.
What the eff, it’s not like Atticus’s magic has ever really been well-constructed.
He yanks open the door as the witch tries to kick it down (again, why not use magic to bust down the door???), and then punches the witch in the face. The second witch blasts him (with MAGIC). Atticus uses his towel to make an impromptu weapon. Which means he’s not wearing anything right now–
“Nice bum,” the widow said softly as I approached the doorway, and I almost laughed.
[headdesk]
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 30
Again, THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR THIS. They could quite easily END the Leprechaun right now, and have been knocking Atticus around, have torn up her house–and she’s cracking jokes about Atticus’s butt. We need to reinforce how these two different women (Granny and the Leprechaun) BOTH think Atticus has an attractive body in the middle of what’s meant to be an action scene.
I’m not saying you can’t put jokes in otherwise serious scenes, but Hearne just. Keeps. Doing it. And the jokes here are meant to lift up the protagonist in one way or another–to show off how clever he is, or in this case, how attractive he is to the opposite sex. I seem to recall that when jokes are cracked in fight scenes in Dresden Files it often highlights how ridiculous Harry is–sometimes while he’s being clever, and sometimes not.
Because he’s using this hammer home how awesome and hot he is, let’s give it a
Better Than You: 12
So Atticus whips a witch in the face with the towel, and he also makes an obligatory Douglas Adams reference because, you know, towels. Also apparently over five hundred people highlighted that reference on Kindle. They should just read Douglas Adams instead. He drops the towel and somersaults–
AGAIN? What is it with you and somersaulting?
The two witches argue about whether or not to retreat or work on killing him right now. NOW the German is translated for us, in case you’re wondering. But they’ve been knocked down, and so they think maybe it’s best to back down and try to kill him later. But also! Right now he’s unarmed and on his own, so this might be the best shot they have to kill him.
Of course I was alone. Did she think I had a posse or something?
I don’t know why he’s arguing about this? Atticus is acting like this is a stupid observation, but Atticus often goes into fights with at least one other person as backup.
Anyhow the towel doesn’t count as armament because he’s dropped it in the process of somersaulting, which is dumb, because it’s immediately after the sentence where he paraphrases Douglas Adams. He doesn’t even follow his own nerd advice in the following sentence! How stupid is this man?
It doesn’t matter, because IT JUST SO HAPPENS, GUYZ, that at that moment,
A blue BMW Z4 convertible switched off and Hal leapt out, his nostrils already flaring with the scent of blood in the air.
“Er ist ein Wolf! Das andert die Sache,” the brunette said. _He is a wolf! That changes things.
Damn right it does, witch.
And that’s the end of the chapter. One of his allies shows up to bail him out, and the next chapter begins with the witches running away, because they don’t want to fight a werewolf.
How convenient.
Make It Easy!: 23
The last chapter, this one, and the following one, could all be condensed into one, methinks. What the sequence actually accomplishes, Plot-wise, is introducing the witches and establishing that he has fought these witches before. There’s some character stuff about him going out of his way to help his friends. But all of that should have been established before we hit the (checks Kindle) 58% mark!
The witches are the actual Plot of the novel! Hence the title! And yet they just now arrived, and we still don’t know their names or goals! We’re only told that Atticus faced them before, and he only just found this out.
And to make it WORSE, when Atticus fights them, someone comes to bail him out of the fight just when he needs it (we’ll get more into the details of this next time). This might work in a better story–that he was only barely hanging on in this fight and has to be rescued, only to figure out how to beat them in the final battle. But this entire fight he’s managed to stay ahead. Yeah, he was running–while the witches stumbled around, no idea how to actually beat him.
Once again, this entire thing is a sequence meant to show off how awesome Atticus is. Even against an unknown enemy, he still beats them back, and one of his awesome friends shows up to save him–and make the enemies run off so they can be saved for the final battle.
Oi. This book is dumb.
Better Than You: 12
Did Not Do Homework: 14
The Kids These Days: 10
You Keep Using That Word: 28
Make It Easy!: 23
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 30
1 Though it should, given that he’s apparently susceptible to animal mind control in the first book when he turns into hound form.
Aikaterini on 6 September 2023, 11:36 said:
So, he gladly let his friends die or get hurt just to protect himself? What a hero. And what kind of self-centered logic is that? He protected them, so his enemies automatically found out where he was? What about random bystanders who were in trouble, how did his enemies find out who he was from them? But, wait, Atticus is a selfish slacker who doesn’t care about anyone but himself, so of course he wouldn’t bother with random strangers.
Again: “Whoo-hoo, Artemis, have ye come to give me a show? I think I have a couple of dollars in me wallet inside.”
Is the Leprechaun supposed to be senile? Not only is she ogling Atticus, she’s treating him like a stripper. If you saw your neighbor suddenly running buck naked outside your house, would your first thought really be “Whoo-hoo, I get a free show!” or would it be “What the heck is going on?! Wait, is that really him? Is he okay?”
Ha, ha, because sexual harassment is so funny. This isn’t creepy at all.
Umm, why is she saying this ‘softly?’ Why is the Leprechaun becoming creepier with every time that she observes Atticus’s nudity? She’s sure lucky that Atticus finds her funny instead of disturbing.
And yes, as you noted, way to repeat what Atticus’s apprentice already said. Almost like they both have no purpose other than to boost Atticus’s ego.
Juracan on 7 September 2023, 07:39 said:
I think what we’re supposed to be getting is that he didn’t get attached to people or make friends, but the way it’s written just says that he just stopped caring about them enough to both defending them. And we already know that Atticus doesn’t care about bystanders—he’s fine with them getting killed as long as it doesn’t interrupt his day.
She’s supposed to be a whacky, but sweet (and religiously devout) old woman. So yeah, that she KEEPS making these comments is more than a little weird. Then again every character exists to make jokes and prop up Atticus. Acting like a normal person with concern for another human being would be a twist, for these books.
It’s SUPER creepy and I’m frustrated that this is played a joke for so long.
Well, in this bit, they’re in the bathroom, she’s hiding in the tub, and Atticus has opened the door to fight the witch, so I think the idea is that she’s speaking softly to not distract him from the fight, or because she’s nervous about the witch attack? Or something? Look, I don’t know why it’s happening other than Hearne thinks it’s funny.
Faranae on 10 September 2023, 14:13 said:
I have nothing particular to add except that making a Douglas Adams towel joke in a bathroom is about as lazy as you can get. Also, this bathroom is huge if he’s somersaulting in it.
I still don’t understand why the supposedly paranoid Druid is living in an environmentally destructive suburb instead of disappearing into the Montana wilderness as an off-grid survivalist, other than Hearne lived in Tempe and knew the area.
Juracan on 10 September 2023, 18:42 said:
To be clear, he isn’t somersaulting in the bathroom, he somersaults out of the bathroom; it’s still a bit iffy, in terms of space, but less so than inside the bathroom itself.
You’re right, though, it’s the laziest use of the towel joke one could think of. I want to point out again that he immediately discards the towel after making the joke, too.
Because Hearne is familiar with it, and because Atticus is living the life that Hearne wishes he had.
Faranae on 11 September 2023, 12:18 said:
Invent an entire overpowered gary stu just so you can have… a white picket fence. Hearne might be the most boring man alive.
Juracan on 11 September 2023, 19:05 said:
And sex with goddesses who throw themselves at him, with no expectation/work of an actual relationship.
Can’t forget that.