This is a frustrating chapter to spork, because it’s almost entirely exposition. This book is less than thirty chapters long, and yet in Chapter 19, two chapters after Atticus basically promises the audience that the action’s going to pick up, he sits in a bar and talks to the hawt bartender about this witch’s backstory and how Druids work. And yeah, it’s good that there’s some more exposition on how Druids work, but it would have been better to get that at say, the beginning of the story.

Anyhow, this also means that this chapter recapping mostly involves a lot of “He says/She says” and I apologize, ‘cause I’m sure that’s pretty tedious to read, but that’s really all there is to this chapter, aside from a few breaks where Granuaile leaves to do her job.

I’ll try to make it up to you by giving you this link to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra song.

The chapter begins with Atticus telling us how much he hates witches.

Gods Below, I hate witches.

Why? Why do you hate witches? WHYYYYYYYYY

I don’t understand it. Why does he hate them so much? He made a deal with one (Radomila) and seemed to be on good terms with them until the events of this book, but even if the local coven turned on him, why would he decide that he hates all witches? There are a couple of times where he hints that it might be because he considers their sort of magic perverse, trafficking with immoral eldritch beings, but A) if those exist in this setting, why aren’t they the Plot of the series, and B) Atticus has no room to talk! One of his best buddies is a serial-killing vampire lawyer!

Oh, and were you thinking to yourself, “It’s been a while since a pop culture reference, hasn’t it?”? No? Well too bad!

Since one of them was probably listening to me through Granuaile’s ears, however, I thought it more discreet to keep that observation to myself. But doubt would be permissible to express where outright disdain would not. I gave her my best Harrison Ford half grin o’cynicism, worn by every character from Deckard to Han Solo to Indiana Jones, and picked up my glass. “A nice lady, huh?”

See nerds? Atticus is just like you! He also watches Blade Runner and Indiana Jones! Don’t you just love him?

One of the frustrating things about Atticus as a character is how he tells us how he’s acting clever in a situation where he isn’t. For instance, when Malina is asking him questions, he tells us that he’s going to answer truthfully, but not tell the whole truth. So Malina asks him if he has Aenghus Og’s sword, Atticus says “No, it doesn’t belong to him.” And he tells us it’s clever because that’s not the answer she was expecting. Except it still answers the question and tells her that he has the sword, which if he was oh so paranoid and clever, he wouldn’t have done. He should have just said ‘No’ and left it at that, because he believes it to be true that the sword he has doesn’t belong to Aenghus.

Likewise here, after hearing that the witch is a nice lady from Granuaile, he obviously doesn’t believe it. And he tells us expressing disdain for witches would be rude and the witch possessing Granuaile would get offended and do something about it. So instead of expressing disdain he expresses doubt. As in, he doubts that the witch in question is a nice lady? Which is also not a polite thing to do when introduced to someone and a quick way to get them to not like you, a problem if you think this witch is a potential threat.

And it’s framed with a stupid pop culture reference in an attempt to disguise how stupid it is. “You like Harrison Ford, right? Well I’m doing what he does, so you know it’s cool.” Except it’s not, and he has nowhere near the charisma or the affability of Harrison Ford.

So Atticus asks Grannie when the witch moved into her head, and she tells him “shortly after you came back from that trip to Mendocino.” This throws Atticus and so… I’m going to skip a lot of this conversation and just tell you what they’re talking about.

Okay. So—maybe you remember in Chapter 7 there’s a bit where he explains that the cloaking spell on the magic is a favor Radomila did for Atticus in exchange for another favor. The favor that Atticus did for Radomila was to go diving off the coast of California, transformed as an otter, and retrieve a ruby necklace from a skeleton on the ocean floor. He didn’t know why Radomila wanted that necklace, and he didn’t care because he’s an idiot.

Welp, turns out that the skeleton in question was the Indian witch Laksha, who, upon her death, moved her spirit to a ruby in her necklace. When Radomila got the necklace, she exorcised the spirit and it popped on down to Grannie’s head, because Grannie lives in the apartment under Radomila. Isn’t that convenient!

While Grannie goes and helps some other customers, Atticus thinks about how this witch is probably going to ask him for a favor and that favor is probably finding a new body. Which he doesn’t know how to do. He then decides this will probably be another quest, and he blames Radomila for everything because at this point he just wants to point fingers.

Grannie comes back, and tells him that Laksha has taught her all kinds of stuff.

“Such as?”

“Such as, all the monsters are real—the vampires and the ghouls and even the _chupacabra._”

“Really? How about Sasquatch?”

“She doesn’t know that one; it’s too modern. But all the gods are real, and for some reason almost everyone who knows him thinks that Thor is a giant dick.

Thought you’d get away from characters mentioning how much they hate Thor in completely unrelated conversations, did you? Not today!

Since relaying exposition is boring, I’ll nitpick. Here’s the thing about those monsters: the first attributed chupacabra attack was in Puerto Rico in 1995, although some claim the first attack was in the 1970’s, it just wasn’t attributed to a cryptid that wasn’t yet A Thing. Bigfoot sightings go back to maybe the 19th century, if we’re not counting possible connections to Native American folklore. So if anything, it’s the Goat Sucker that should be more too modern for Laksha to know about, not Sasquatch.

So Grannie says that she knows that Atticus is a Druid, and feels weird about having served beer to and flirted with an ancient Druid. She asks him some questions, and he says that “There was no use lying,” because she already knows enough, and “the whiskey was good, and I could blame everything I said on it if I had to.”

He’s so paranoid, guyz.

Grannie asks him how is he so old, and he tells her “Airmid,” because he’s assuming that she won’t know what he’s talking about, because he’s an idiot. But turns out that Grannie knows exactly who Airmid is, asking if he means “Airmid, daughter of Dian Cecht, sister of Miach who was slain?”

That sobered me up some. “Wow. You’d win a shit-load of money on Jeopardy! with a brain like that. They teach Celtic mythology at the university here?”

Fun fact: I have a friend whose mother was on Jeopardy!. I tell you this because it’s a more amusing thing to say than the pop culture reference Atticus just spat in your eyes.

She has an old witch in her head, and she knows you’re a Druid, and she finds that interesting. Considering all that, is it so weird that she maybe, just maybe, decided to pick up a book about Irish mythology? Or scanned the Wikipedia page in question?

Bored yet? Here’s some Florence + the Machine.

Because the book doesn’t really elaborate, I’ll explain based off of what I know from Wikipedia (so myth nerds feel free to correct): Airmid was an Irish goddess. When her brother Miach was killed by their father, she wept over his grave and 365 healing herbs sprang from the ground watered by her tears. She picked them all up and learned all their secrets, but one day her father scattered them, and since then no one has ever learned them all again. Only Airmid knows, and she’s not telling anyone. Except for Atticus apparently, who used this knowledge to become an ageless immortal.

Grannie asks if Atticus is saying he knows the herblore of Airmid, and when he says that he does, she asks why the heck she shared it with him of all people.

That was a story for another day. “Can’t tell you.” I shook my head with seeming regret. “You’re too young.”

Please tell me this is implying that Atticus has slept with Airmid. Because if that’s the case, I just… I can’t do this anymore.

This is an author who claimed he was “tired of White Male Power Fantasy” in the fantasy genre. The guy who wrote THIS! A book about an immortal Irish guy who gets invincibility in the second chapter and regularly makes out with goddesses!

Atticus tells Grannie that he calls his herb concoction “Immortali-Tea” because he’s an idiot, and confirms that he is biologically twenty-one years old. She also calls him handsome and is clearly attracted to him and says she wants something from him and leans really close so that he can smell her because God forbid that there isn’t a fanservice-y woman who doesn’t want to bone our protagonist, amirite?

But turns out that what Grannie wants is to be a Druid! She wants to be Atticus’s apprentice.

What?

I’ve mentioned that I think this book is overstuffed with subplots? Well here’s a big couple of subplots that just got dumped into our main plot and are now super important: Laksha and Grannie. We’re over two-thirds of the way in, and now we basically have two more characters who are suddenly Plot Relevant. And one of them is now a main character. To be fair, Grannie was introduced before the last chapter, but she didn’t do anything other than fanservice stand there, flirt, and have Atticus ask questions about her.

So let’s count off: Aenghus Og, Brighid, faeries, a coven of witches, a completely unrelated witch ghost possessing Granuaile, Granuaile herself, werewolves, the Morrigan, a vampire, a magic sword, and demons from Hell. And ALL of these are Plot Relevant. Except they’re not really connected in a meaningful way that makes sense; it’s just like Hearne threw ideas at the wall and none of them stuck but he shoved them into the Plot anyway.

Atticus is a bit skeptical, because the last person who asked to be his apprentice was “one of those silly Victorians who thought Druids wore white robes and grew beards like cumulonimbus clouds.” And that’s honestly fair! If I was an immortal wizard type and someone walked up to me and said she wanted to be my apprentice, I’d have some questions before I agreed to anything.

He asks what he gets in return, and Grannie says that Laksha will help, because she knows that Atticus has problems with Radomila’s coven. By the Power of Plot Convenience, the Polish witches ALSO walked into this very bar and started talking about their Evil Plans. Grannie and Laksha started paying attention when they heard Atticus’s name come up in conversation, as they’re plotting to take something from him. They think that they’re going to get passage through and some land in the realm of Mag Mell. It’s a Fae realm, “The really posh one” according to Atticus.

According to Wiki, if you’re curious, it’s either an Irish afterlife reserved for those who died in glory, or an Earthly paradise where all the cool mythological figures hang out and you can sail there if you’ve got the guts.

And it’s being sold off to Polish witches.

…why is the Polish bit important? Like, it sounds a bit racist.

Atticus tells the audience that Mag Mell’s ruled by Manannan Mac Lir, and this probably means that Aenghus Og is planning to overthrow him too. We’re given little reason to care though, as we don’t know Mac Lir or have any point of reference for what he’s like, so this means absolutely nothing.

Grannie informs Atticus that Laksha wants to take a shot at Radomila to get the necklace back. Atticus asks why Laksha/Grannie, who I remind you live in the apartment right below them doesn’t take a shot at them without his help, and Grannie replies that Radomila’s apartment is magically protected like Atticus’s house is. Laksha wants the necklace back, and a drop of Radomila’s blood. She’s also fairly confident in herself, claiming that if she gets the necklace back, she can take on the entire coven by herself. Which Atticus admits is scary; in a rare moment of humility, he tells us that he couldn’t take on the entire coven at once.

Hey, isn’t this awfully convenient? Like, right as we’re nearing the end of the novel where he will, theoretically, have to fight all of the witches at once, a character who can actually do that for him steps up almost out of nowhere to do just that for him! More and more I’m convinced that Smith’s right: whenever a problem comes up for the protagonist, Hearne just looked at it and said “Make it easy!” And he did.

Once she gets the necklace, Laksha will soon try to hop to another body so that Grannie can be Atticus’s apprentice. That’s a condition on Laksha’s leaving; she wants Grannie to be Atticus’s apprentice too. Atticus is wondering why the witch cares, and Grannies says this?

“She knows that I don’t want to be pulling draughts all day for every Mike and Tom who comes in here.

That’s not an answer, but okay.

Grannie goes on to say that if she doesn’t become an apprentice Druid, then she’ll just become a witch instead, but that she’d prefer to be a Druid. Atticus asks her why.

If she took this opening to make a joke or to flirt or kiss my ass, I would tell her no right then.

Why? That covers how you approach every situation. A goddess of war and violent death materialized in your shop and you tried to grope her. Up until this point Granuaile’s been flirting with you, with this end goal in mind. So why would it bother you now?

Grannie tells him basically because Atticus is friggin’ old, man, and that learning from a person who has actually lived through history, because “It’s just the general principle that knowing is better than not knowing, knowledge is power, and so on.” Which… doesn’t sound good, when she’s basically saying she wants knowledge for power. Atticus doesn’t seem too impressed, but then Grannie continues with saying that witch magic is creepy because it involves making deals with “H.P. Lovecraft action figures” and rituals with weird body fluids and she finds the business gross.

Alright some things:

ONE: Lovecraft action figures? That’s a weird way to put it. In any case, this is the first time that we’ve really seen it spelled out that witches make deals with horrors from beyond the veil of reality or anything. The witches in Tempe seem to worship the Zoryas, is all, and that’s quite a bit of a difference from calling up Yog-soggoth.

TWO: “I want to be a Druid because I want magic powers but I don’t want the icky creepy rituals that go with witchcraft!” Which makes sense, and as a Catholic I don’t really advise witchcraft, but it’s like… she wants magic powers, but not anything that might be icky about it. She later explains that she doesn’t like how witchcraft is often more destructive in nature, and I get that, but it’s not like Atticus is a shining beacon of morality or non-ickiness either.

Atticus warns her that witches can get a lot of power a lot faster than Druids, and can do some things Druids can’t. But Grannie “shot back” that there are different kinds of power and that theirs is “the power to dominate and destroy. Your power is to defend and build.”

What the fudge has Atticus ever built with his magic? The very first scene in the book is him using magic to kill his enemies! Atticus acknowledges that Druid magic can be used to dominate and destroy, but instead of citing his own uses in that field, he mentions to the reader the evil magic that Bres and Aenghus have used. Grannie corrects herself, saying that it can be twisted to evil intention, but at its core, Druid magic is capital-G Good, while witchcraft has a lot of magic that can’t possibly be used for good. And Atticus kind of rolls with this, as if he uses his magic for benevolence all the time. Again: we’ve seen him use magic to kill. A lot, actually. And also to cover up his crimes.

He asks her what she thinks Druids do, and she says

“They are healers and wise people…Tellers of tales, repositories of culture, shape-shifters according to some stories, and able to exert a little influence over the weather.”

Atticus is almost none of these things. He only heals himself, he isn’t wise, he only half tells stories, he remembers Shakespeare, I guess, but nothing about Irish culture, and we haven’t seen him control the weather. But he does shapeshift, so… one out of six? That’s not a great score.

He then asks her if Druids fight, and she says they did sometimes, but not with magic, and Atticus doesn’t correct her. Which is also untrue: we’ve seen Atticus use his magic to win fights all the time, from the very first chapter.

There’s a lot of “according to the legends” from Grannie, and so Atticus asks them what they do all day. She replies that they advise kings and read the future. She then asks if he reads entrails, and he says that he doesn’t, he prefers to cast and read wands. Grannie takes this as more proof that Druids don’t do harm to anyone or anything, but if you recall, when talking about divination in Chapter 2 Atticus tells us that many Druids totally did read entrails, it was just not his preferred method. He doesn’t mention this to Grannie though.

I get that this exchange is him trying to figure out what her expectations are about Druidism, but he doesn’t correct her, implying that yes, she’s right: Druids are the Good Guys because they have the Good Magic that they use to preserve and heal, rather than other forms of magic that hurt and destroy. But that’s not what we’ve seen at all! Atticus uses his magic strength and healing battle all the time! He uses spells to slow down or trap opponents, and then kill them while they’re stuck. He uses a magic sword! He calls an iron elemental in the first chapter (who hasn’t been as much as mentioned since)! He made himself an amulet that lets him kill faeries just by touching them!

Atticus goes on to explain what training to be a Druid would actually entail: twelve years of memorizing crap for starters, including learning several languages. She’ll have to work for him at his book shop instead of as a bartender. After the initial training is when she’ll learn some actual magic, and then she’ll get her Druid tattoos, which will take five months. She’s a bit disconcerted about “getting stabbed with a needle” for five months, and Atticus corrects her: no, this isn’t done with needles, it’s done with thorns. That will complete her binding to the power of the Earth.

He also mentions Aenghus Og and his deal with demons in a minor tangent, and of course Grannie recognizes the name because she knows about Irish mythology. Which surprises Atticus, though he admits he shouldn’t be considering how this conversation’s gone. And that’s true. But again, we’re told time and again that he’s a guy that’s incredibly cautious and guarded, and here he just casually mentions Irish gods and his interactions with them to someone and is surprised when she knows what he’s talking about.

So finally, Atticus says he’ll consider her “application” and that he needs to talk to Laksha before he makes a final decision. Grannie agrees, but does some work while Atticus thinks about the very idea of taking an apprentice. He hasn’t even seriously entertained it was when he started training a guy in Spain in the tenth century, but then that guy was killed in the invasion of Iberia by the Islamic Conquest. Since then he’s never taken an apprentice.

I packed my things and headed off to Asia, eventually coming back to Europe with Khan’s hordes.

To kill people. You left Europe and didn’t come back until you were with an invading army to kill people. We just had a conversation about how Druids are all about healing and preserving. Then what are we supposed to think of Atticus hanging out with Genghis Khan?

Atticus does tell us that he’s considered starting a Druid Grove, but he’s never had time with “persecution by monotheists” and being chased by Aenghus Og. He also explains that the deal he made with the Morrigan doesn’t actually make him immune to death, it just mostly does? That if Aenghus Og makes a deal with Hell, then the Christian personification of Death might come for him, but no one believes that’s gonna happen because, after all, the motto of this book is “Make it easy!”

He also starts talking about how worried he is about the divination the Morrigan mentions at the beginning of the book in Chapter 2, which is strange, because when it came up then he dismissed it as stupid, and it has been seventeen chapters and he hasn’t been worried about it once since then.

So Grannie comes back, and lets Laksha take over her body to talk to Atticus, and that’s where the chapter ends.

Hope you like exposition and conversation, because we have another chapter of exposition before the Plot actually gets going again.

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Comment

  1. Cheap Dissertation Writing Services UK on 7 November 2019, 01:07 said:

    Like always, great content. Keep up the good work.

  2. The Smith of Lie on 17 November 2019, 05:39 said:

    This is a frustrating chapter to spork, because it’s almost entirely exposition.

    This is exactly what this book needs. More exposition. And you know what? I could take two chapter of expostion it they were expositing about something actually interesting and cool. I doubt this is the case here though.

    And yeah, it’s good that there’s some more exposition on how Druids work, but it would have been better to get that at say, the beginning of the story.

    Please, we’ve already seen ample proof that druids do no work. The one existing druid shows up in the shop he inexplicably knows every now and then and that is pretty much all.

    As for explanations of how their powers work I wouldn’t care too much either. Given what we have seen so far they work by being completely pulled out of the author’s rectum and doing whatever will allow Atticus not to be unduly inconvenienced.

    So here’s my exposition regarding how Druids work: Make it easy!

    Gods Below, I hate witches.

    That’s racist. Specieist? Classist? Whateve, it just makes Atticus even more of a prick. And even more like Jace.

    Why? Why do you hate witches? WHYYYYYYYYY […]

    I refer you to my previous statement.

    See nerds? Atticus is just like you! He also watches Blade Runner and Indiana Jones! Don’t you just love him?

    I’m not sure. He mentions Harrison Ford as an excuse to describe his own cynical grin and does not even name drop Han Solo?

    Also, this may just be me, but I never associated Ford with “half grin o’cynicism”.

    Likewise here, after hearing that the witch is a nice lady from Granuaile, he obviously doesn’t believe it. And he tells us expressing disdain for witches would be rude and the witch possessing Granuaile would get offended and do something about it. So instead of expressing disdain he expresses doubt. As in, he doubts that the witch in question is a nice lady? Which is also not a polite thing to do when introduced to someone and a quick way to get them to not like you, a problem if you think this witch is a potential threat.

    I am not an immortal 2000 year old druid (I know, I know, shocking revelation) dealing with witches. But I have had interactions with people whom I personally hate and have nothing but disdaing for in professional setting. And you know what I do when I think that showing disdain is not a good idea? I act polite and pretend to not harbor the worst feelings imaginable towards them!

    What an amazing and fresh concept, don’t you think?

    I’m going to skip a lot of this conversation and just tell you what they’re talking about.

    [Looks at the noose hanging from the ceiling. “Not today, old friend.”] Thanks. You have no idea what it means to us. Or to me at least.

    While Grannie goes and helps some other customers, Atticus thinks about how this witch is probably going to ask him for a favor and that favor is probably finding a new body. Which he doesn’t know how to do.

    Oh please. Given Atticus lack of morals I bet he’d be perfectly ok with walking into psych ward and just kidnapping some poor, catatonic soul. It’s not like the original occupant is using the body anyways…

    He then decides this will probably be another quest, and he blames Radomila for everything because at this point he just wants to point fingers.

    Well that is a surprising 180 from him. It’s not like it’d be out of character for him to react with “Ha. No.” to any request for aid from anyone. Also, he shares at least equal blame with Radomila for just doing her dirty work without any questions.

    Thought you’d get away from characters mentioning how much they hate Thor in completely unrelated conversations, did you? Not today!

    What is Hearne’s problem with Thor? I don’t get it. Yeah, he was not exactly all cuddles and rainbows but as far as the divine standards go Thor was a pretty chill guy who at least didn’t go out of his way to screw with mortals and he did some good things as well. Hell, compared to Greek pantheon he is pretty much saint. And even Atticus’ friend Morrigan has more skeletons in the closet than Thor.

    He’s so paranoid, guyz.

    [Screams incoherently while frothing from his mouth.]

    Grannie asks him how is he so old, and he tells her “Airmid,” because he’s assuming that she won’t know what he’s talking about, because he’s an idiot. But turns out that Grannie knows exactly who Airmid is, asking if he means “Airmid, daughter of Dian Cecht, sister of Miach who was slain?”

    You are overlooking that this is also a rather dickish move on his part. Asked a straighforward question, right after he decides to be truthful, he goes and answers in the most oblique and unhelpful way he can. And probably hoping to amuse herself at the cost of the other party ignorance?

    Bored yet?

    A bit, thanks for asking.

    Because the book doesn’t really elaborate, I’ll explain based off of what I know from Wikipedia

    I count this as Hearne’s failure. He keeps dropping vague references to mythology as if they’re supposed to be meaningful, but leaving them unexplained. While spending pages over pages exposiging about the stuff that is boring and unrelated.

    Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it comes off as contemtous. “Look, I’ve did my homework about mythology and if you want to know what’s going on you’d better do it too, cause I ain’t sharing!”

    Please tell me this is implying that Atticus has slept with Airmid. Because if that’s the case, I just… I can’t do this anymore.

    This is implying that Atticus slept with Airmid.

    Hey, you asked for it yourself.

    This is an author who claimed he was “tired of White Male Power Fantasy” in the fantasy genre. The guy who wrote THIS! A book about an immortal Irish guy who gets invincibility in the second chapter and regularly makes out with goddesses!

    Do as Hearne says, not as Hearne does.

    She also calls him handsome and is clearly attracted to him and says she wants something from him and leans really close so that he can smell her because God forbid that there isn’t a fanservice-y woman who doesn’t want to bone our protagonist, amirite?

    Well of course. If there was a single woman who didn’t want to bone him we’d have to cast serious doubt about his masculinity and worthiness of being a protagonist!

    But turns out that what Grannie wants is to be a Druid! She wants to be Atticus’s apprentice.

    Actually, why hasn’t Atticus ever taken on an apprentice? He is allegedly the last druid and full of white druid supremacy bias. So why didn’t he do anything to restore druids to their former glory?

    Atticus is a bit skeptical, because the last person who asked to be his apprentice was “one of those silly Victorians who thought Druids wore white robes and grew beards like cumulonimbus clouds.” And that’s honestly fair! If I was an immortal wizard type and someone walked up to me and said she wanted to be my apprentice, I’d have some questions before I agreed to anything.

    Fair enough. But on the other hand Granny already has a supernatural being in her head who probably explained more or less how druids work, even if only in approximation.

    Also, relating this to my previous point – over 2000 freaking years, with ability to pick or even raise potential apprentices from childhood, it is no excuse for not restoring druids.

    By the Power of Plot Convenience, the Polish witches ALSO walked into this very bar and started talking about their Evil Plans.

    Switch “Polish witches” to “jewel thiefs” or “terrorist cell”. How likely does that sound? Why are we supposed to take a world where people go to the pub to discuss their plots seriously? By this point we are in a wierd cross of a porn with staruday morning cartoon…

    …why is the Polish bit important? Like, it sounds a bit racist.

    Once again I feel attacked. And to make it worse, from what I’ve seen, the nationality of the witches has no bearing on their actions. It is just dropped there to make them… more exotic? If Hearne’s going to use their nationality and focus on it like this, he could at least make it relevant.

    Hey, isn’t this awfully convenient? Like, right as we’re nearing the end of the novel where he will, theoretically, have to fight all of the witches at once, a character who can actually do that for him steps up almost out of nowhere to do just that for him! More and more I’m convinced that Smith’s right: whenever a problem comes up for the protagonist, Hearne just looked at it and said “Make it easy!” And he did.

    Happy to be of service. I’d also like to point out that it is terribly convenient that Laksha is for some reason so cool with Atticus. I mean it is not like he was the one who gave her necklace to Radomila… Oh wait…

    Why? That covers how you approach every situation. A goddess of war and violent death materialized in your shop and you tried to grope her. Up until this point Granuaile’s been flirting with you, with this end goal in mind. So why would it bother you now?

    That’s because Atticus is tired of white male power fantasy!

    What the fudge has Atticus ever built with his magic? The very first scene in the book is him using magic to kill his enemies! Atticus acknowledges that Druid magic can be used to dominate and destroy, but instead of citing his own uses in that field, he mentions to the reader the evil magic that Bres and Aenghus have used. Grannie corrects herself, saying that it can be twisted to evil intention, but at its core, Druid magic is capital-G Good, while witchcraft has a lot of magic that can’t possibly be used for good. And Atticus kind of rolls with this, as if he uses his magic for benevolence all the time. Again: we’ve seen him use magic to kill. A lot, actually. And also to cover up his crimes.

    Ah, nothing like tying objective morality to your magic system. That is such a lazy way to make druids seem better than witches.

    Here’s a quick fix – mention that druids get acces to power from nature through themselves but since witches need to make deals with outsiders, they have to do whatever sacrifices those want. And they tend to want things that a good person is not willing to provide (like say blood sacrifice of children). Boom, explanation that fits already established facts of the universe and makes it clear why someone would prefer to be a druid!

    He then asks her if Druids fight, and she says they did sometimes, but not with magic, and Atticus doesn’t correct her. Which is also untrue: we’ve seen Atticus use his magic to win fights all the time, from the very first chapter.

    Oh hush. At this point expecting any consistancy from either Atticus or Hearne is like expecting sun to rise from the west.

    There’s a lot of “according to the legends” from Grannie, and so Atticus asks them what they do all day. She replies that they advise kings and read the future.

    Poor child. Imagine her disappointment when she learns that the last living druid is a useless lay-about who does non of those things, nor anything else that’s productive at all…

    But that’s not what we’ve seen at all!

    Doesn’t matter. That is what Atticus and Hearne want us to think about druids so it must be true!

    I packed my things and headed off to Asia, eventually coming back to Europe with Khan’s hordes.

    And again with Genghis Khan! I am seriously starting to think that Hearne has some kind of obssesive personality. He fixated on how Thor is an asshole, on Genghis Khan and on poodle harem and he keeps returning to those points over and over and over again!

    To kill people. You left Europe and didn’t come back until you were with an invading army to kill people. We just had a conversation about how Druids are all about healing and preserving. Then what are we supposed to think of Atticus hanging out with Genghis Khan?

    Hey, at least that might have involved actually advising a ruler!

    Atticus does tell us that he’s considered starting a Druid Grove, but he’s never had time with “persecution by monotheists” and being chased by Aenghus Og. He also explains that the deal he made with the Morrigan doesn’t actually make him immune to death, it just mostly does? That if Aenghus Og makes a deal with Hell, then the Christian personification of Death might come for him, but no one believes that’s gonna happen because, after all, the motto of this book is “Make it easy!”

    This illustartes how poorly thought out the whole universe is! If one is going to mix and match the mythologies and go for kitchen sink approach, the way various different mythologies and traditions interact should make sense.

    He also starts talking about how worried he is about the divination the Morrigan mentions at the beginning of the book in Chapter 2, which is strange, because when it came up then he dismissed it as stupid, and it has been seventeen chapters and he hasn’t been worried about it once since then.

    Too little, too late. No one cares about the plot at this point anyway.

    Hope you like exposition and conversation, because we have another chapter of exposition before the Plot actually gets going again.

    You are better person then I am, I’d have given up on this book about 19 chapters ago.

  3. Juracan on 18 November 2019, 17:13 said:

    This is exactly what this book needs. More exposition. And you know what? I could take two chapter of expostion it they were expositing about something actually interesting and cool. I doubt this is the case here though.

    I don’t know if this book was ever capable of delivering something interesting and cool. Not at this point, anyway.

    That’s racist. Specieist? Classist? Whateve, it just makes Atticus even more of a prick. And even more like Jace.

    Hey! Out of curiosity, who would you say is worse? Atticus or Jace?

    Also, this may just be me, but I never associated Ford with “half grin o’cynicism”.

    I didn’t really either? I don’t really stop and think about Harrison Ford that much though. He does have this famous sort of look to him, that comes up in a lot of his older work, but I don’t know if I’d call it the “half grin o’cynicism.”

    I am not an immortal 2000 year old druid (I know, I know, shocking revelation) dealing with witches. But I have had interactions with people whom I personally hate and have nothing but disdain for in professional setting. And you know what I do when I think that showing disdain is not a good idea? I act polite and pretend to not harbor the worst feelings imaginable towards them!

    Yup. It’s weird because Atticus tries to claim that he’s not being rude, all the while telling us an action that’s just a different kind of rude. It’s stupid.

    What is Hearne’s problem with Thor? I don’t get it. Yeah, he was not exactly all cuddles and rainbows but as far as the divine standards go Thor was a pretty chill guy who at least didn’t go out of his way to screw with mortals and he did some good things as well. Hell, compared to Greek pantheon he is pretty much saint. And even Atticus’ friend Morrigan has more skeletons in the closet than Thor.

    Because… Reasons.

    I honestly don’t get it either, and neither do a lot of readers. I’ve seen it said that Hearne’s claimed that in-universe, Thor isn’t always THAT bad, and it’s just that he has a douchebag streak that gets on people’s nerves while also having a heroic side that’s just not the focus of the story, but that doesn’t quite work. Because everyone in the story just will not shut up about how much they hate the guy and how terrible he is. It’s like he wanted to sort of reverse who the good and bad guys were in mythology, but once again, didn’t do any of the work to have it make sense.

    [Screams incoherently while frothing from his mouth.]

    I may have done that a lot while reading.

    I count this as Hearne’s failure. He keeps dropping vague references to mythology as if they’re supposed to be meaningful, but leaving them unexplained. While spending pages over pages exposiging about the stuff that is boring and unrelated.

    Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it comes off as contemtous. “Look, I’ve did my homework about mythology and if you want to know what’s going on you’d better do it too, cause I ain’t sharing!”

    I don’t know if it’s meant to be condescending, but it does kind of read that way, doesn’t it? Because it’s really, really weird, man! That he just doesn’t explain the Irish mythological stuff while rambling for pages about everything else! And sometimes it seems like he expects you to be familiar with the mythology, and other times like he just doesn’t care about it at all (like with Aenghus Og’s characterization). It doesn’t make sense!

    This is implying that Atticus slept with Airmid.

    Hey, you asked for it yourself.

    Actually, why hasn’t Atticus ever taken on an apprentice? He is allegedly the last druid and full of white druid supremacy bias. So why didn’t he do anything to restore druids to their former glory?

    The explanation given in-story is that it’s because the last time he tried that it didn’t go so well. The actual reason is: Plot.

    Switch “Polish witches” to “jewel thiefs” or “terrorist cell”. How likely does that sound? Why are we supposed to take a world where people go to the pub to discuss their plots seriously? By this point we are in a wierd cross of a porn with staruday morning cartoon…

    Yeah, and this is a college town. Are you telling me there’s no other place they could go to discuss their plans other than an Irish pub? That their enemy often frequents with his friends? It’s like if you lived in the small town American South and decided to loudly talk smack about the pastor at your church at Chick-fil-a. It’s… it’s exactly the last place you should go for these sorts of conversations.

    Once again I feel attacked. And to make it worse, from what I’ve seen, the nationality of the witches has no bearing on their actions. It is just dropped there to make them… more exotic? If Hearne’s going to use their nationality and focus on it like this, he could at least make it relevant.

    I think he wanted them specifically to be eastern European, and that’s the first country he thought of. Which wouldn’t be bad, as Polish people are generally underrepresented in American media, but this book sux and he sux at writing them.

    Happy to be of service. I’d also like to point out that it is terribly convenient that Laksha is for some reason so cool with Atticus. I mean it is not like he was the one who gave her necklace to Radomila… Oh wait…

    To be fair, she doesn’t know that yet. For… Reasons. And when she does find out she just thinks it’s funny.

    Because… “Make it easy!”

    Here’s a quick fix – mention that druids get acces to power from nature through themselves but since witches need to make deals with outsiders, they have to do whatever sacrifices those want. And they tend to want things that a good person is not willing to provide (like say blood sacrifice of children). Boom, explanation that fits already established facts of the universe and makes it clear why someone would prefer to be a druid!

    BOOM! This works! And it’s much better than what we’ve been given!

    [Also this reminds me of a similar, but not exactly the same, magic system in The Dragon Prince where some beings can call on magic straight from nature but humans must draw on the magic from other creatures, and there’s this divide between the two kinds of magic.]

    But nope! Instead we get “Druid magic is better because it’s good and draws on the Earth! Now watch me use my good powers to give the EMT a wedgie!”

    Oh hush. At this point expecting any consistancy from either Atticus or Hearne is like expecting sun to rise from the west.

    Fair.

    And again with Genghis Khan! I am seriously starting to think that Hearne has some kind of obssesive personality. He fixated on how Thor is an asshole, on Genghis Khan and on poodle harem and he keeps returning to those points over and over and over again!

    If it makes you feel any better worse, the poodle thing’s leading to a joke at the end of the book.

    You are better person then I am, I’d have given up on this book about 19 chapters ago.

    Better? More like, “I have no job and loads of free time and decided to whine to the Internet.”

    …wow, I sound really sad right now. I’m going to go play XBox or something.

  4. The Smith of Lie on 19 November 2019, 04:33 said:

    Hey! Out of curiosity, who would you say is worse? Atticus or Jace?

    I am surprised to say that of the two Jace seems the lesser evil. As far as I can judge both of them, which is via the medium of sporks, Jace while an asshat is rarely actively going out of his way to harm innocents or profit from their harm. The only time I can think of was him going to antagonize the werewolves in the bar. And he from time to time actually does a right thing, even if for selfish reason.

    Atticus on the other hand is actively malevolent and much more passive when it comes to helping anyone.

  5. Juracan on 24 November 2019, 22:20 said:

    That’s fair I suppose. Let’s not forget that Atticus is also immortal, whereas Jace, as obnoxious as he is, has a limited lifespan that will run out one day.

  6. The Smith of Lie on 25 November 2019, 06:31 said:

    That’s fair I suppose. Let’s not forget that Atticus is also immortal, whereas Jace, as obnoxious as he is, has a limited lifespan that will run out one day.

    This brings attention to one more point. Atticus has had 2000 years old to mature and grow a compassion, yet he failed that quite spectacularly. Jace is a hormonal teenager with issues, one can hope he will grow to by only slightly maladjusted, functional adult (not under CC’s watchful eye, but maybe offscreen he could).

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  8. TMary on 2 October 2021, 01:11 said:

    Hey, I’m back! And I wrote another novel! Would you like to read it?

    And yeah, it’s good that there’s some more exposition on how Druids work, but it would have been better to get that at say, the beginning of the story.

    Agreed. I don’t know if there are rules for what good exposition is, or how to use it properly, but I can’t help but feel that, especially in fantasy and science fiction, you need to have at least one beginning chapter be devoted to an at least cursory explanation of the rules of this world. It doesn’t have to be the very beginning, but it should happen reasonably early on. And you can go into more details later as they become relevant, but at least lay out what powers your main character has and what he can and cannot do with them, and give some idea of what does and does not exist or work in this universe. That way, the reader feels grounded in the world, and you don’t have to infodump at them for five pages in the middle of the rising action.

    There are a couple of times where he hints that it might be because he considers their sort of magic perverse, trafficking with immoral eldritch beings, but A) if those exist in this setting, why aren’t they the Plot of the series, and B) Atticus has no room to talk! One of his best buddies is a serial-killing vampire lawyer!

    Also, C) If Atticus thinks their magic is inherently perverse and evil, then why did he skip straight off to a witch to have his sword enchanted? Why didn’t he try to find a way to do it himself, or find someone whose magic was less evil to do it for him?

    I gave her my best Harrison Ford half grin o’cynicism, worn by every character from Deckard to Han Solo to Indiana Jones, and picked up my glass.

    Except it still answers the question and tells her that he has the sword, which if he was oh so paranoid and clever, he wouldn’t have done. He should have just said ‘No’ and left it at that, because he believes it to be true that the sword he has doesn’t belong to Aenghus.

    So I’m taking Scottish Gaelic lessons on the regular now, and one of my teachers has a class where he performs some routine task, like, say, making soup, and asks us to tell him, in Gaelic, what he should and should not do while doing so. “Should I put this onion in the soup?” The trick to this is that if you just say “Yes”, he will drop the entire onion in the soup and move on to another vegetable. Or if you, looking at the whole onion, think, “Not yet, he should cut it up first,” and you say “No”, he will say “OK” and chuck it blithely over his shoulder, as I found out firsthand. He does this partly because it is very funny, but mainly because he wants us to use as much Gaelic as possible, and not just answer his questions with a word or two. It’s a fun teaching exercise.

    And that fun teaching exercise? Where everything is very casual and there are virtually no stakes? Is a much more clever example of malicious compliance than anything Atticus O’Sullivan has ever done. And that drives me up a wall, because Gaelic mythology and folklore (both Irish and Scottish this time) is FULL of clever reinterpretations of rules and abuse of loopholes, and clever trickster heroes in general. Here, an example: A man managed to catch himself a leprechaun, and since the leprechaun had been caught, he had to tell where his gold was hidden. So he took the man to the tree it was buried under and told him to dig it up. But the man had no shovel, so he had to go back and get one. Before leaving, he tied a string around the tree, and made the leprechaun promise he wouldn’t remove that string. The leprechaun promised, and the man ran off for his shovel…but when he came back, every tree in a thirty-foot radius had a string tied around it.

    That kind of thing happens all the time in these cultures’ stories, and it also happens to be one of my all-time favorite tropes, so I’m doubly annoyed that it is used so poorly here, and then I’m being told that Atticus is an oh-so-clever Trickster Hero. No. He’s not. If he were kidnapped by folkloric fairies, and the only way to get out was to somehow trick them into promising to let him go, he’d be a prisoner in the fairy mound forever. (Although considering how obnoxious he is, they might toss him back out again after a century or two from sheer frustration.)

    Gah. Rant over, sorry.

    Likewise here, after hearing that the witch is a nice lady from Granuaile, he obviously doesn’t believe it.

    I may just be a bit obsessed with The Golden Girls, but wouldn’t it be great if Granuaile had replied with this?

    But you know, I’m really ticked off because I actually kind of agree with Atticus here? I mean, I don’t agree for his reasons, which are apparently, “I don’t like witches because I’m a huge honking hypocrite”, and I don’t agree that he should express this doubt, but I do doubt that Laksha is a nice lady. Why? Well, because when she first took over Grannie’s head in order to speak through her, Grannie had no idea it was happening. And she took over for something fairly trivial, something she could have just talked to Grannie about. And yes, Grannie insists, “No, she usually doesn’t do that without asking, she’s very ‘polite’ about leaving me in control of my own mind”, but first of all, that’s not polite, that’s basic human decency, and second, you have no way of knowing that! We just saw that you don’t know what’s going on when she’s in control, and that she has no problem taking over your brain if she gets impatient with you. Furthermore, even if she does usually ask before taking over, you still don’t know what she’s doing while she’s in control! The fact that she’s nice while she’s not in control doesn’t really prove anything; that’s called lulling you into a false sense of security!

    I know that last bit’s just conjecture, but still, the woman just forcibly used your body to do something, just because she was tired of waiting for you to do it. That’s not nice, it’s invasive. And what really gets me is how blasé Grannie is about the whole thing. If I had just found out that someone took over my mind in order to speak through me to someone else, against my wishes, I’d be a lot less eyeroll-omg-about-time-giggle and a lot more, “SOMETHING JUST TOOK OVER MY BRAIN, GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD BEFORE IT DOES IT AGAIN”.

    Not to mention how she phrases it. “She doesn’t do that often. She’s usually very polite about leaving me in control.” That pattern of words is not good. “She doesn’t do X unpleasant thing often. She’s usually very polite about not doing X unpleasant thing.” If someone says that, you should check on their well-being. And to Atticus’s very, very minor credit he is somewhat skeptical about this, but he loses my favor by what he does in Chapter Twenty…but I’ll get to that. The book, anyway, definitely loses my favor by not portraying any of this as the genuinely bad thing it is (unless I’m wrong about that…?).

    The favor that Atticus did for Radomila was to go diving off the coast of California, transformed as an otter, and retrieve a ruby necklace from a skeleton on the ocean floor. He didn’t know why Radomila wanted that necklace, and he didn’t care because he’s an idiot.

    See, see, right here! “Witches are inherently untrustworthy and evil and use dark magicks. Also, any time one asks a favor of me, no matter what the favor is or how little I understand about it, I will immediately go do it, no questions asked.” Atticus, you can’t condemn someone for something and then turn around and help them do it! That makes you an accomplice! You – you—

    While Grannie goes and helps some other customers, Atticus thinks about how this witch is probably going to ask him for a favor and that favor is probably finding a new body.

    I know he’s right, because he’s a Stu, but…what hard evidence is there that Laksha wants a new body? Have she or Grannie given any indication that they are unhappy with things as they stand? Heck, what proof is there that she even wants a favor from him? Aside from Atticus’s – ahem – strong natural distrust of witches? Here’s a thought: Maybe she has pertinent information for you, living as she does directly under Radomila, and she wants to share it with you simply out of the goodness of her heart!

    But then I guess that leads into something we discussed a while back, that Atticus doesn’t really seem to think anybody could or would do anything out of the goodness of their heart. I mean, he certainly never does.

    He then decides this will probably be another quest,

    The word “another” is doing some heavy lifting in that clause.

    and he blames Radomila for everything because at this point he just wants to point fingers.

    ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

    goes and checks the book

    YOU ARE SERIOUS. I DON’T BELIEVE THIS.

    Atticus, you – YOU – went and got her the necklace for absolutely no reason, when you absolutely did not have to! There was nothing she could have done to you to force you to do something for her – if anything, you had the ability to force Radomila to put a cloaking spell on your sword! It’s not as if you’d have any moral compunctions about it!

    All I’m saying is there’s a difference between getting stung by accidentally stirring up a hornets’ nest you didn’t know was there, and getting stung by chucking stones at what you knew good and well was a hornets’ nest before you started. Guess which one you did, Atty!

    “Such as?”

    “Such as, all the monsters are real—the vampires and the ghouls and even the _chupacabra._”

    “Really? How about Sasquatch?”

    “She doesn’t know that one; it’s too modern. But all the gods are real, and for some reason almost everyone who knows him thinks that Thor is a giant dick.

    Um, I have a question. How in the world does Laksha know about all this? I mean, she spent most of her life in India, and then spent a century or two more at the bottom of the sea, and only recently beamed herself into the head of a twenty-two-year-old bartender who had no idea the supernatural even existed until Laksha showed up. How does she know that all the monsters and all the gods are real? I’m sure she’d have a great grasp on Indian, specifically Hindu, lore, and I’m sure she could talk quite knowledgably about witchcraft, but why should she know any more than Grannie does about vampires and Thor and most especially druids? What has that got to do with anything in her sphere of reference?

    Also, Atticus, if you’re so smart, you tell us: Is Sasquatch a real thing in this world? I mean, why shouldn’t it be? If every other mythical beast is, and if this world is shaped by belief, why shouldn’t Sasquatch exist too?

    The cryptid lore is interesting, though. :)

    “There was no use lying,” because she already knows enough, and “the whiskey was good, and I could blame everything I said on it if I had to.”

    Let me get this straight. There’s no point in lying, because she knows too much already. But if you tell her anything that you decide later on that you don’t want her to believe, you’ll just lie and say you were drunk when you said it and she can’t take it seriously.1 But there’s no point in lying, she knows too much already.

    Grannie asks him how is he so old, and he tells her “Airmid,” because he’s assuming that she won’t know what he’s talking about, because he’s an idiot.

    What is it with you, Atticus? Just say, “Secret lore. Not telling.” Don’t give her a name! Just because you never follow up on any information you’re given, that doesn’t mean other people won’t! And generally speaking, if someone asks you for information, and you give them a name they don’t recognize, they will ask you what you’re talking about! How do you think people work?

    Fun fact: I have a friend whose mother was on Jeopardy!. I tell you this because it’s a more amusing thing to say than the pop culture reference Atticus just spat in your eyes.

    I hereby decree that all pop culture references from Atticus must be followed by a fun fact from Juracan. Any fun fact. Pick something.

    Please tell me this is implying that Atticus has slept with Airmid. Because if that’s the case, I just… I can’t do this anymore.

    Well, Smith already made the joke I was going to make, so I won’t. Instead, I will point out that if Grannie is too young for the story of Atticus sleeping with Airmid to get the legendary herblore (because let’s be honest with ourselves, that’s what happened, if only because anything else might have been interesting and not disgusting), she is also too young for Atticus to ogle her every time he walks into the pub. I mean, I know he’s making a joke, but it’s a joke that’s icky no matter how you slice it.

    Atticus tells Grannie that he calls his herb concoction “Immortali-Tea” because he’s an idiot, and confirms that he is biologically twenty-one years old.

    Well. That explains a lot.

    I mean, we’ve been talking all spork about how Atticus behaves like an immature frat boy – impulsive, obsessed with sex, self-absorbed, arrogant. Maybe he’s like that because he is literally frozen in development. He can’t mature, he can’t learn from his mistakes, he can’t grow as a person, because every time he drinks the tea he keeps getting reset to twenty-one years old.

    To be fair, I’m pretty sure a lot of this is just his personality, because my brother at thirteen was more mature than Atticus, but it wouldn’t help his personality to be literally unable to mature any further than twenty-one. I know Hearne didn’t intend to imply this, but it’s a more compelling idea than whatever’s happening right now.

    What is happening right now?

    She also calls him handsome

    Oh. Right. Of course.

    and is clearly attracted to him and says she wants something from him and leans really close so that he can smell her because God forbid that there isn’t a fanservice-y woman who doesn’t want to bone our protagonist, amirite?

    But turns out that what Grannie wants is to be a Druid! She wants to be Atticus’s apprentice.

    Who the heck acts like this? Am I really sheltered, or is this really weird? If you want to be the man’s druid apprentice, just say so.

    Unless, I suppose, you’re doing this because you know he’s more likely to do what you want if you flirt with him. Which does not fill me with confidence about the health of your student/teacher relationship. (I’ll have more thoughts on this subject when we discuss it in depth in the next chapter or two, but for now, suffice it to say that my thoughts are EW.)

    So let’s count off: Aenghus Og, Brighid, faeries, a coven of witches, a completely unrelated witch ghost possessing Granuaile, Granuaile herself, werewolves, the Morrigan, a vampire, a magic sword, and demons from Hell. And ALL of these are Plot Relevant. Except they’re not really connected in a meaningful way that makes sense; it’s just like Hearne threw ideas at the wall and none of them stuck but he shoved them into the Plot anyway.

    Yeah, they’re not connected meaningfully, they’re connected conveniently. Laksha and Grannie don’t really do anything to drive the plot, they just happen to overhear the coven planning to take out Atticus. And Grannie wasn’t an ongoing mystery Atticus had to solve, or a red herring while he was trying to figure out who was trying to kill him, or anything like that. She was just…there. We met her once, Atticus thought there was something weird about her, we forgot about her entirely for the next ten chapters, and then she gets dragged back in as a wannabe druid with absolutely no build-up.

    Meanwhile, the main conflict is supposed to be between Aengus Óg, who wants the sword, and Atticus, who doesn’t want Aengus to have it, but that’s not set up well at all, so rather than set it up well, Hearne instead adds to the confusion by throwing in Aengus planning a revolution against the Tuatha, which one would think would be a big deal, but is actually just kind of background noise. And then on top of that we have Slavic witches, who do affect the plot, but in silly ways, that would probably have been better either being taken out or at least being given to a creature from Irish mythology, or developed so that they made sense for the universe and story Hearne was creating.

    This ties into something I’ve been noticing in bad fantasy recently. There’s too much stuff in the world, and absolutely none of it has any development, or any connection to any other part of the world. And I feel like it’s an amateur’s answer to plot problems. They’re aware that the plot is weak or uncompelling, or the world feels undeveloped, but they don’t realize that the answer to that is not to throw in more undeveloped stuff, the answer is to stick with what you’ve got and work on it, so that it becomes a finished, solid world and a compelling plot. Hearne may have recognized that he had a problem, but he went about fixing it all the wrong way.

    Either that, or he didn’t notice he had a problem and just threw stuff in because he thought it sounded cool. One of the two.

    Atticus is a bit skeptical, because the last person who asked to be his apprentice was “one of those silly Victorians who thought Druids wore white robes and grew beards like cumulonimbus clouds.”

    cough As opposed to one of those silly Neo-Pagans who thought druids had magic powers and worshipped the Earth instead of the Irish gods? cough cough

    I mean, come on, Atticus. You can’t complain about how inaccurate the Victorian idea of druids was when you’re sitting here being an anachronism made flesh.

    Hey, isn’t this awfully convenient? Like, right as we’re nearing the end of the novel where he will, theoretically, have to fight all of the witches at once, a character who can actually do that for him steps up almost out of nowhere to do just that for him!

    Have we added up all the times in this book that Atticus has had to do something entirely for and by himself? I feel like you could count them on one hand. It’s getting to a point where I think, if his shoelace came untied, Hearne would drop an Irish goddess out of the sky to tie it back up for him.

    I will note, though, in the interest of fairness, that I think this:

    Granuaile nodded and held my eyes. Hers were emerald dappled with light, and they reminded me of home.

    would be a good line, if Atticus weren’t perpetually horny and drooling over every woman he meets, and if I believed for a second that he felt the weight of the many, many years he’s lived and the homesickness of living in a different country, speaking a different language, in a different time from the one he grew up in, and if he ever showed any affection for anything about Ireland beyond the purely superficial and stereotypical.

    As it is? It’s like discovering a jewel in a pile of dung. Like, huh, that’s nice, how did it get there? I think I’ll take it, clean it up, and keep it for myself.

    Which… doesn’t sound good, when she’s basically saying she wants knowledge for power.

    Again, I feel like this would work better if we had gotten to know Granuaile over the course of a book or two and discovered that she was an aspiring historian or folklorist or anthropologist, especially of Ireland. Then her interest in Atticus and her desire to learn from him would make sense, and wouldn’t seem so much like a supervillian origin story.

    she wants magic powers, but not anything that might be icky about it.

    I know what you mean. It’s a “have her cake and eat it, too” situation. It’s not helped by the fact that she admits that if Atticus won’t teach her to be a druid, she’ll just go be a witch instead. That makes it sound a lot less like she really cares about the supposedly more destructive and evil nature of witchcraft as opposed to drycraft (yes, that’s really what druidry is called), and more like she just doesn’t want to get her hands dirty, but she will if she has to.

    it’s not like Atticus is a shining beacon of morality or non-ickiness either.

    That’s the thing that’s really making this feel creepy and manipulative on Atticus’s part. He’s not, as you say, a shining beacon of morality or non-ickiness. But we’re meant to think he is, and he is definitely deliberately giving Granuaile that impression. He is making himself appear a lot nicer than he actually is, to make being his apprentice seem more attractive than it actually is. And on top of that, he very clearly wants to sleep with her. Just…ew! Ew, ew, EW!

    But Grannie “shot back” that there are different kinds of power and that theirs is “the power to dominate and destroy. Your power is to defend and build.”

    What the fudge has Atticus ever built with his magic? The very first scene in the book is him using magic to kill his enemies! Atticus acknowledges that Druid magic can be used to dominate and destroy, but instead of citing his own uses in that field, he mentions to the reader the evil magic that Bres and Aenghus have used.

    Wow, Atticus.

    Because I was! I was this close to giving the book some brief, grudging respect, for finally acknowledging the massive elephant in the room and stating that yes, actually, the protagonist has used his powers in dangerous and sometimes downright despicable ways…and then it proceeded to climb up onto the elephant in order to point more clearly at Aengus and Bres, while acting like I couldn’t see that it was sitting on top of a freaking elephant! Hearne, did you even read your own book?!

    “They are healers and wise people…Tellers of tales, repositories of culture, shape-shifters according to some stories, and able to exert a little influence over the weather.”

    brightly Also, according to my other Gaelic teacher, who is much more knowledgable about Irish mythology than I am, there’s a number of stories of druids turning young women into animals because said young women rejected the druid’s advances!

    I bring this up to make it very clear that if Grannie was actually reading old Irish myths about druids, instead of badly-citated Neo-Pagan websites, she’d know that “druid”, while it may be synonomous with “powerful”, is not synonomous with “non-icky”. And also to make it clear that, considering this, and considering the kind of man Atticus has proven himself to be, Grannie should run now as far away as she can.

    Also there is the possibility (though, as we discussed many chapters ago, not the certainty) that druids conducted human sacrifice, at least sometimes. And if I was Grannie, I think that would be my first question. “So did y’all sacrifice people, or was that not really a thing? And if it was a thing, are you going to expect me to do it?”

    He then asks her if Druids fight, and she says they did sometimes, but not with magic, and Atticus doesn’t correct her. Which is also untrue: we’ve seen Atticus use his magic to win fights all the time, from the very first chapter.

    HATE SO MUCH HATE GO DROWN IN DUNG, ATTICUS

    if you recall, when talking about divination in Chapter 2 Atticus tells us that many Druids totally did read entrails, it was just not his preferred method. He doesn’t mention this to Grannie though.

    HATE

    Atticus goes on to explain what training to be a Druid would actually entail: twelve years of memorizing crap for starters, including learning several languages.

    pulls herself back together with the aid of roughly half a gallon of apple juice Why the frick should she have to learn several languages? I could understand needing to learn Old Irish, and maybe modern Irish too. Maybe Latin as well, if there were some old texts about druids that she needed to study. But that’s three at the most.

    Although there is a line in here that puzzled me:

    You might be able to knock off a year or so because you’re starting later than most initiates and your brain is fully developed

    Um…alright, this isn’t specifically referring to learning languages, but he then goes on to bring up languages as one of the things she’ll be learning, and…it’s generally considered to be better to start learning another language as early as possible, because by full brain maturity (which most neuroscientists agree is around twenty-five, not twenty-two), you lose the elasticity that makes language learning relatively easy in childhood. All of this is gross overgeneralization, of course, but it’s still completely against the grain of conventional wisdom.

    Oh, and I just loved this way of talking about the sacred duty of learning and retaining and passing on the knowledge and lore of your people:

    Just memorizing and regurgitating for twelve years.

    Ohhh, so much hate… drinks the other half a gallon of apple juice

    He also mentions Aenghus Og and his deal with demons in a minor tangent, and of course Grannie recognizes the name because she knows about Irish mythology. Which surprises Atticus, though he admits he shouldn’t be considering how this conversation’s gone.

    Soooo…he mentioned this, expecting her not to recognize any of the names. Meaning that he was just going to drop some names and then act smug and pretentious when Grannie didn’t recognize them. What a charmer.

    (I will say, however, in the interest of fairness, that this exchange:

    Don’t you have a college degree already?”

    She rolled her eyes at me. “Yeah, I graduated in May with a degree in philosophy. And now I tend bar because what the hell else am I going to do with a philosophy degree?”

    made me snort a little bit. In the interest of unfairness, however, I will say that this:

    Tullamore Dew trickled down my throat as I considered her and reviewed why I hadn’t had an apprentice in more than a thousand years.

    is one of the most poorly-constructed sentences I’ve ever seen. It starts out sounding like he’s being drowned in whiskey rather than drinking it, and ends with him basically turning to the audience and saying, “Allow me to drop yet more exposition on you about why I’ve never had an apprentice”, rather than just beginning to think about it, like a normal person.)

    He hasn’t even seriously entertained it was when he started training a guy in Spain in the tenth century, but then that guy was killed in the invasion of Iberia by the Islamic Conquest. Since then he’s never taken an apprentice.

    And I note that he angsts – well, as much as Atticus can angst – for a little while about how things were just too unstable then and it was going to get someone else killed. Which would be fine.

    If it wasn’t followed by him deciding to take on a woman who knows absolutely nothing about drycraft or fighting or magic or anything that might be helpful to her, just when he is (allegedly) in the middle of a deadly conflict involving witches and demons and evil Irish gods. A woman who, I might add, he has been manipulating into thinking that both he and drycraft are much more Good than they actually are. And he doesn’t even really appraise her of the full situation until it’s too late and she’s already quit her job and agreed to be his apprentice! All because he decides he needs the witch piggybacking in her head!

    Don’t you dare pretend you have any concern for anyone besides yourself, O’Sullivan. You do whatever you feel like doing at any given time, based solely on how convenient it is for you. I’m sorry for your apprentice who died, but I’m really sorry for him because he had a teacher who didn’t actually care a rat’s behind for his life.

    To kill people. You left Europe and didn’t come back until you were with an invading army to kill people. We just had a conversation about how Druids are all about healing and preserving. Then what are we supposed to think of Atticus hanging out with Genghis Khan?

    Ohhh, so much HATE.

    He’s awful. He’s just the worst. The book might as well be spitting in all our eyes at this point.

    Atticus does tell us that he’s considered starting a Druid Grove, but he’s never had time with “persecution by monotheists”

    Hey, question. Wasn’t his apprentice also a monotheist, a Christian, in fact? Did he have no problems at all with becoming a druid? Better question would be, why do I even expect an answer to that question?

    He also explains that the deal he made with the Morrigan doesn’t actually make him immune to death, it just mostly does? That if Aenghus Og makes a deal with Hell, then the Christian personification of Death might come for him,

    This feels like someone pointed out to Hearne that having his protagonist be literally immune to death might be a bit of a Bad Idea, and instead of taking that to mean “Oh, maybe I should not make my protagonist immune to death”, he decided to fix it by going, “But see, he’s not really immune to death! Theoretically, he could still die!”

    Yeah, nice try. Oy, what a book.

    Starspirit: pokes his head cautiously around the door Um. Is the comment over?

    Me: At last, yes. Did you have something you wanted to add?

    Starspirit: Yeah. See, I noticed that Atticus mentioned that he was “kind of like Yoda hanging out in the Dagobah system”, and I cannot and will not allow this slander on my favorite Star Wars character to go unpunished.

    Even if we accept that there are some similarities between the state of the druids after the expansion of the Roman Empire and the state of the Jedi after Palpatine’s takeover, there are no similarities between Yoda and Atticus. First off, Yoda peaced out for like, twenty years max, not two millenia, and he was up against a genuinely dangerous enemy, without having literal godlike powers and eternal youth. Second off, Yoda is wise. And compassionate. And actually willing to fight on the side of good. And intelligent. And funny. And cautious. And brave. And genuinely respectful of the teachings of his calling instead of twisting everything about them in order to make life easier for himself. Yoda is awesome, Atticus. And that’s something you will never, ever be. You’re nothing like Yoda. I’d say you were like Jabba the Hutt, except that Jabba, whatever his other faults, at least was dedicated. You don’t build a criminal empire like that without a lot of hard work and initiative. You’re more like… if only the worst aspects of pre-character development Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were made into a man. You’re a whiny, selfish, lazy little turd, is what I’m trying to say.

    OK, just had to get that off my chest. Sorry for the intrusion, y’all. flashes a peace sign and leaves

    Me: And I am going to leave too, before this gets any more absurdly long. Great spork as always, Juracan!

    1 Even though she was watching you drink and knew you hadn’t had that much and you’ve been a regular for a while and she should be reasonably familiar with your alcohol tolerance.

  9. Juracan on 2 October 2021, 16:11 said:

    Hey, I’m back!

    YOU’RE ALIVE! HUZZAH!

    And I wrote another novel! Would you like to read it?

    Of course! Always good to hear from you!

    Also, C) If Atticus thinks their magic is inherently perverse and evil, then why did he skip straight off to a witch to have his sword enchanted? Why didn’t he try to find a way to do it himself, or find someone whose magic was less evil to do it for him?

    Presumably, that was who was available and nearby. But if he’s been alive for over two thousand years, one would think that he might have built up other connections. If Radomila really was the only person nearby who could have done the enchantment, that means he only had the enchantment put on the sword relatively recently, as it’s implied he hasn’t really been in Tempe for more than a few years. You’d think if he was oh so “paranoid” he’d have gotten it done a much longer time ago.

    That kind of thing happens all the time in these cultures’ stories, and it also happens to be one of my all-time favorite tropes, so I’m doubly annoyed that it is used so poorly here, and then I’m being told that Atticus is an oh-so-clever Trickster Hero. No. He’s not. If he were kidnapped by folkloric fairies, and the only way to get out was to somehow trick them into promising to let him go, he’d be a prisoner in the fairy mound forever. (Although considering how obnoxious he is, they might toss him back out again after a century or two from sheer frustration.)

    Gah. Rant over, sorry.

    No, it’s okay. Because we’re clearly meant to think of Atticus as a clever trickster hero in that vein, and he’s very clearly not. The man is so dense he basically bulldozes his way through every problem. Which wouldn’t be bad in a character, but the narrative tries to paint him as a trickster type when he’s just a very lucky idiot. The contradiction drives me mad reading the books.

    But you know, I’m really ticked off because I actually kind of agree with Atticus here?

    No you’re right in the reasons you outlined, but as you also said, the reasoning is different. Atticus doesn’t have any actual reasons for distrusting Laksha other than that he hates women witches.

    See, see, right here! “Witches are inherently untrustworthy and evil and use dark magicks. Also, any time one asks a favor of me, no matter what the favor is or how little I understand about it, I will immediately go do it, no questions asked.” Atticus, you can’t condemn someone for something and then turn around and help them do it! That makes you an accomplice! You – you—

    In this case he did it because he owed Radomila a favor. But again, if he was oh so clever as he thinks he is, or as paranoid as he keeps telling people he is, he would have investigated this and found out as much information as he could. Instead he just… didn’t.

    Um, I have a question. How in the world does Laksha know about all this? I mean, she spent most of her life in India, and then spent a century or two more at the bottom of the sea, and only recently beamed herself into the head of a twenty-two-year-old bartender who had no idea the supernatural even existed until Laksha showed up. How does she know that all the monsters and all the gods are real? I’m sure she’d have a great grasp on Indian, specifically Hindu, lore, and I’m sure she could talk quite knowledgably about witchcraft, but why should she know any more than Grannie does about vampires and Thor and most especially druids? What has that got to do with anything in her sphere of reference?

    I don’t know why but this vaguely reminded me of this one episode of Jackie Chan Adventures that deals with Hinduism or something and Uncle is asked something and his reply is like, “I don’t know; my expertise is Chinese mythology.” There’s also the season that deals heavily with Japanese Oni, and there’s a whole arc (which, admittedly lasts an episode I think, but it’s there!) about Uncle feeling useless because this isn’t what he’s used to and doesn’t know how to deal with these demons the same way he would with Chinese monsters.

    Anyhow this is a fair point? I can only guess that before leaving India she would have had some sort of contact with the Western mythological world, as it’s not out of the question that she would have met magic users from other traditions. But it isn’t ever really explained, you’re right. She shouldn’t know as much about it as, say, creatures and magic users from south Asian traditions.

    What is it with you, Atticus? Just say, “Secret lore. Not telling.” Don’t give her a name! Just because you never follow up on any information you’re given, that doesn’t mean other people won’t! And generally speaking, if someone asks you for information, and you give them a name they don’t recognize, they will ask you what you’re talking about! How do you think people work?

    It’s fairly easy to explain why he acts this way: it’s because he’s an idiot. Also Hearne wanted to work this information in some way, and it was either this or a narration infodump.

    I hereby decree that all pop culture references from Atticus must be followed by a fun fact from Juracan. Any fun fact. Pick something.

    This is probably a great time to announce that I’ve started doing Fun Fact Fridays on Tumblr, in which I give random fun facts to anyone who asks for it.

    Who the heck acts like this? Am I really sheltered, or is this really weird? If you want to be the man’s druid apprentice, just say so.

    To answer the question “Who acts like this?”: the female lead/love interest in bad movies.

    Which does not fill me with confidence about the health of your student/teacher relationship. (I’ll have more thoughts on this subject when we discuss it in depth in the next chapter or two, but for now, suffice it to say that my thoughts are EW.)

    What’s really weird is that even though Grannie is quite transparently the love interest of the series, and Atticus is into her, once he decides to make her his apprentice Druid, he doesn’t really… there’s not that much about how much he’s into her? In this book at least. Which is a surprise from Atticus. But there’s also absolutely no discussion or reflection or anything about taking on a student who he used to regularly flirt with at his favorite bar.

    Have we added up all the times in this book that Atticus has had to do something entirely for and by himself?

    No, but the sporking for the next book has a Make It Easy! count, which is like the opposite of this.

    Also there is the possibility (though, as we discussed many chapters ago, not the certainty) that druids conducted human sacrifice, at least sometimes. And if I was Grannie, I think that would be my first question. “So did y’all sacrifice people, or was that not really a thing? And if it was a thing, are you going to expect me to do it?”

    Yes. Considering one of the things a lot of people think about when it comes to Celtic paganism is Wicker Man, you would think that right out the gate it’d be a question Grannie would want answered.

    Why the frick should she have to learn several languages? I could understand needing to learn Old Irish, and maybe modern Irish too. Maybe Latin as well, if there were some old texts about druids that she needed to study. But that’s three at the most.

    I… don’t actually know? If Druids were treated here as sort of being the Jedi of the magical world, traveling around and keeping peace between people and the Earth while solving problems with magic, then that would make sense. But Atticus is explicitly not like most Druids, who apparently all stayed confined to Western Europe and Celtic countries. There’s not really any reason for him to say that Druids need to learn a bunch of languages. Maybe Hearne just assumed that urban fantasy protagonists need to know multiple languages?

    Hopefully the next sporking chapter of Hexed will be up by the end of the weekend!

  10. TMary on 4 October 2021, 21:23 said:

    YOU’RE ALIVE! HUZZAH!

    Haha, yeah. Did you miss me?

    If Radomila really was the only person nearby who could have done the enchantment, that means he only had the enchantment put on the sword relatively recently, as it’s implied he hasn’t really been in Tempe for more than a few years. You’d think if he was oh so “paranoid” he’d have gotten it done a much longer time ago.

    That’s a good point, and I didn’t even consider that, but yeah. Two thousand years have gone by and it never once occurred to him that hey, maybe the magic sword that would give the Bad Guy immense power should be under some magical protection?

    I mean, I think the ultimate reason, as with so many of this book’s problems, is that Hearne didn’t really consider how his character having lived for two millenia would affect the plot. But that just, yet again, makes his character look like a complete blockhead.

    The contradiction drives me mad reading the books.

    Same here, dude, same here.

    Instead he just… didn’t.

    He just doesn’t do anything, does he? Which I guess is the only thing Hearne could come up with for why his immortal invulnerable iron-bonded druid with a magic sword couldn’t just snap his fingers and solve the plot, but really makes for a dull protagonist.

    I don’t know why but this vaguely reminded me of this one episode of Jackie Chan Adventures that deals with Hinduism or something and Uncle is asked something and his reply is like, “I don’t know; my expertise is Chinese mythology.” There’s also the season that deals heavily with Japanese Oni, and there’s a whole arc (which, admittedly lasts an episode I think, but it’s there!) about Uncle feeling useless because this isn’t what he’s used to and doesn’t know how to deal with these demons the same way he would with Chinese monsters.

    See, this makes a lot more sense than having everyone who comes in contact with the supernatural know everything about all supernatural beings just because. I much prefer the idea of different people having different expertise in different aspects of the supernatural.

    She shouldn’t know as much about it as, say, creatures and magic users from south Asian traditions.

    The Doylist explanation here, I suspect, is that Hearne didn’t know much about creatures and magic users from South Asian traditions and either didn’t want to or didn’t think of researching them. The Watsonian explanation? shrugs

    This is probably a great time to announce that I’ve started doing Fun Fact Fridays on Tumblr, in which I give random fun facts to anyone who asks for it.

    …Are you Juracan on Tumblr as well?

    To answer the question “Who acts like this?”: the female lead/love interest in bad movies.

    Ah, of course. How could I forget?

    What’s really weird is that even though Grannie is quite transparently the love interest of the series, and Atticus is into her, once he decides to make her his apprentice Druid, he doesn’t really… there’s not that much about how much he’s into her? In this book at least. Which is a surprise from Atticus.

    That is really weird, and it was something I was noticing. He’s…oddly casual about being attracted to Grannie, and she is similarly casual about being attracted to him. It feels more like something Hearne thought was inevitable than anything he genuinely wanted to write about or put much thought into; like, she’s a hot woman and he’s Atticus, of course they’re into each other, and we don’t need to explore that any further. At any rate, I am simultaneously relieved that not much happens between them, surprised that not much happens between them, and disappointed that I am surprised and relieved.

    But there’s also absolutely no discussion or reflection or anything about taking on a student who he used to regularly flirt with at his favorite bar.

    This, though…like, come on, Hearne, in this day and age, there’s no way you didn’t realize what you were writing. Is there???

    If Druids were treated here as sort of being the Jedi of the magical world, traveling around and keeping peace between people and the Earth while solving problems with magic, then that would make sense.

    True! And it would be, yet again, a much more interesting book than we got. Possibly. At least it would have been a more interesting concept.

    Hopefully the next sporking chapter of Hexed will be up by the end of the weekend!

    It hath been read and enjoyed! :)

  11. Juracan on 6 October 2021, 06:24 said:

    Haha, yeah. Did you miss me?

    I always miss Internet friendos when it’s been a while!

    I mean, I think the ultimate reason, as with so many of this book’s problems, is that Hearne didn’t really consider how his character having lived for two millenia would affect the plot.

    I mean there are ways around this, like he had another witch or someone else do it in a previous century, and this is just the latest enchantment put on it in the last few years. But it doesn’t say that, and frankly given how little deep thought Hearne put into the worldbuilding, I would not be surprised at all if he didn’t even think of that.

    The Doylist explanation here, I suspect, is that Hearne didn’t know much about creatures and magic users from South Asian traditions and either didn’t want to or didn’t think of researching them.

    Yeah, probably. South Asian creatures rarely appear in urban fantasy in the same volume as vampires, werewolves, and fae creatures, so I imagine he didn’t feel the need to do much with them.

    …Are you Juracan on Tumblr as well?

    I would have been, but when I was grabbing URLs that one was taken!

    This, though…like, come on, Hearne, in this day and age, there’s no way you didn’t realize what you were writing. Is there???

    In Hexed he’s quite obviously still into her and doing his best (which isn’t very much) to try to avoid thinking about it, but Atticus is such a sleazy guy that he’s basically checking her out at every opportunity.

    It hath been read and enjoyed! :)

    Hooray!