It has been a really, REALLY long time since our last update, but guess what! It’s the final chapter, guys! We’re almost done!!!
Seriously, though. It’s been strange. When the site went down, I had started working on this sporking chapter and hoped to finish it within a week or so. I’d even gone ahead and read the next Iron Druid book so that I was ready to keep going. I just about gave up on sporking altogether, but with the vague hope that I’d put it back up one day–either through Tumblr or Blogger or something else. But we’re here! We’re up! Comments are down, but again, you can find me at jurakansporkings.tumblr.com–at least until someone in staff fixes the comments (don’t hold your breath on that).
Anyhow, on to the sporking!
When we left our “heroes”, Leif the blood-sucking lawyer had been set on fire and jumped out a window, so Atticus and one of the good witches, Klaudia, finished killing the evil German witches. And then they heard a scream outside! So they rush towards it.
So our final chapter begins! Klaudia ran to gather the other witches, and Atticus found Bogumila. When we saw Bogumila in the last chapter, she was fighting the fanatical Jewish rabbi from earlier. The guy’s beard grew out and attacked her magical shield. Apparently his beard triumphed, as Bogumila is now dead, and Malina, head of the good coven of Polish witches, is “righteously pissed”.
The Jewish beard was wrapped around Bogumila’s throat; now it was untangling itself. And I think it’s time we talked about this beard?
The “fanatically zealous Jewish witch hunter” is, as far as I know, not an antisemitic stereotype. It still feels weird and offensive, though, and right now, by turning the beard into a creepy weapon that strangles women…
Orthodox Jewish rabbis stereotypically have big beards that other Americans don’t, and in this instance, in this story, it’s because this is actually a weapon with which he kills people that he doesn’t like. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it definitely feels like he’s taking something innocuous (beards) and painting it as Other. Here’s a normal feature from a religious minority: how about we suggest that they’re not just unusual because they don’t wear their facial hair like everyone else does, that it could be dangerous and be used to hurt people.
It’s like those people who, a few years back1, would say things like, “I don’t trust Muslim women who keep their entire bodies covered! They could be hiding anything under there!” (and by anything, they mean explosives) and used that as an excuse to support laws that prohibited Muslims from wearing traditional clothing, or anything that covered the skin. People freaked out over Muslims wearing non-revealing bathing suits, because obviously it’s to hide something dangerous, right? It’s deliberately twisting someone’s expression of belief into something sinister.
With a religious group that has a history of being vilified with lies of being secretly evil.
I don’t know what I’m reading here. Maybe I’m seeing something that’s not there, alright, and maybe it’s just that Hearne wanted to write something bizarre, unique, and out there. A sect of fanatical rabbi witch hunters is something I can’t say I’ve seen before. He probably didn’t mean anything by it, especially because again, it doesn’t fit any antisemitic conspiracy tropes that I’m aware of. It’s still very, very strange and sets off all kinds of weird alarms in my head, because he still created a group of evil Jewish guys who are dangerous because they’re culturally and religiously different.
Anyhow Malina’s using magic to protect herself; Hearne gives us the Polish, and then handily tells us that in some later conversation she translated it for Atticus:
By her love I am protected, By her courage I am made fearless, By her might I am made strong, By her mercy I am spared.
This is, of course, a prayer to the Zoryas, who–in case you forgot–are presented in the books as a triple goddess of protection and magic. Which is bunk, but Hearne copied a bit from American Gods by Neil Gaiman2 and assumed that the Zoryas were like the Fates/Hecate. Which they’re not. The notion of a Triple Goddess in that mold isn’t universal, no matter how many times New Age crackpots insist that it is.
Atticus describes the shield that Malina made with the magic as “impenetrable”, and I have to wonder: is it? I’ve been working under the assumption that Hearne copied and pasted the “Gods Need Belief” system exactly from Neil Gaiman, but if that’s the case, the Zoryas should be a chump compared to the rabbi’s power. If gods are powered by belief, that means that a deity that has more active believers, like, say, the God of Israel that the Jewish people worship, should be able to mop the floor with a deity that barely anyone prays to anymore, like an obscure Slavic triple goddess. I suppose it’s possible that he has slightly diverged from Gaiman’s system… which, if the case, he should have told us.
I’m tempted to do a ‘Did Not Do Homework’ count, but I feel like that’d be cheating somehow.
Atticus raises his sword to the rabbi’s throat and uses its magic. If you remember, his magic sword, Fragarach (“Answerer”), is the Sword of Truth, and can be used to immobilize someone and make them speak only the truth. He’s used it a few times, like in Chapter 14 where he used it on the goddess Brigid. Malina thinks Atticus did it to make it easy to kill the rabbi, but Atticus stops her, because he wants to gather information about who exactly he is and what he can do.
So, upon questioning, the rabbi guy spills. He is from an organization called the ‘Hammers of God’, based in Russia. He also reveals that if he doesn’t report back, the Hammers would send a squad of “twenty Kabbalist fighters” to avenge him. Which is crazy–they have enough manpower to just send a twenty-man magic hit squad to avenge one of their own? What kind of secret society is this, and how has Atticus, globe-trotting immortal, never even heard of them?
Malina still wants to kill him, but Atticus points out that if they do, twenty more just like him will show up and blast them with [checks notes] Jewish magic. Malina tries to reason that he’s lying, but as Atticus reminds her, the rabbi is under the power of the Sword of Truth, and can’t lie in these circumstances.
So what does Atticus suggest?
“Take a few nice locks of his hair while I’ve got him here. He’ll know he’s in your power then. You can send him some explosive diarrhea or something like that, something painful and humiliating, yet short of death, and you can also set up a dead man’s enchantment so that if you can also set up a dead man’s enchantment so that if you die, he dies too. And then we’ll explain to him, in small words, how he killed a very nice witch who was trying to help us kill all the evil witches upstairs, and he and his Hammers of God should just leave us the hell alone from now on, because we have the East Valley well under control.”
Atticus’s plan to make sure that the fanatical Jewish wizards don’t bother them anymore is to… magically torture him and stick a curse on him, tying his life to someone that you know he hates.
Yeah, sure, that won’t backfire at all, will it?
You Keep Using That Word: 15
This idea, the whole, “We’ll make it so that he’ll die if he kills you” only works if you assume that he’s afraid to die. Newsflash, douchebag: religiously fanatical extremists stereotypically don’t tend to fear death! It’s a bit of a stereotypical quality! But of course Atticus assumes that everyone’s as afraid of dying as he is, so he thinks this is a good plan.
So that’s what they do. They make a bit of a point of ripping out the rabbi’s hair, because “We all enjoyed his pain.” Again, not a great way to ensure that he won’t come after you–cause him as much discomfort and humiliation in your “mercy” as you can, yeah, that’ll show him.
To the rabbi’s frothing accusations, I replied that, yes, I tended to enjoy the company of vampires and werewolves and witches, because all the ones I knew were extraordinarily well scrubbed and had fantastic taste in automobiles; but none of us suffered a scrap of hell to dwell in our territory unmolested, and we had, in fact been far more effective against them than the Hammers of God had been so far. So please you, good rabbi, get the fuck out of our town and stay out.
Now I could nitpick about how Atticus quite explicitly does NOT like the company of witches, considering how much he has said, in this book and the previous one, how much he hates them and can’t trust them. But he’s saying something for the enemy, so we’ll let that slide.
What we WON’T let slide is that the man claims that they don’t suffer “a scrap of hell” in their turf, and, uh… that’s plainly not true. Do you remember, earlier in this book when there was a demon going around munching on high school kids? Atticus killed it, sure, but he had to be coerced into it, because he very much dismissed it as not his problem. When Coyote made him do it, and then admitted he lied about why he made him do it, Atticus acted like he’d be manipulated.
There’s also, uh, that Hell-blighted land from the climax of the last book, which Atticus still hasn’t purified, despite that being his supposedly sacred duty.
And of course, it’s frustrating that he’s essentially saying that he hangs out with supernatural creatures because they’re cool and have expensive cars, because that’s what Atticus consistently puts value in: aesthetics over substance. In reality, Atticus associates with a bunch of crappy, violent people. Reminder that Leif the Blood-Sucking Lawyer sometimes kills carpenters because using a hammer reminds him of Thor, and he kills enough people that he has a group of corpse-eating ghouls on speed dial as the cleanup crew.
Better Than You:19
[Also! The ghouls are called in to deal with the evil witches’ bodies.]
The fact is that Atticus has never really pushed himself as the protector of this area. The_witches_ on the other hand have explicitly and intentionally driven off supernatural threats, some of which were beings Atticus had no idea were in the area. Atticus stepping up and claiming that he and his buddies have been protecting their turf from demons from Hell is, uh… not remotely true.
Moving on!
To Atticus’s credit here, he expresses condolences to Malina about the witches who died in this battle. After that, they start looking for Leif–if you recall from the last chapter he had caught on fire (hellfire?) and jumped out of the building, leaving Atticus and the witches to finish the fight.
Malina and Atticus hop in a car to follow where Leif went, and one of the other witches, Klaudia, sits in Atticus’s lap.
Klaudia sat in my lap, her torso twisting around to face me and a leather-clad arm draped around my shoulder. With her other hand, she was caressing my injured jaw with a delicate tip of a fingernail. She made cooing sounds of sympathy, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her lips.
Malina tells off Klaudia, and Atticus explains to us that Klaudia had an attraction charm on her lips, the way Malina did on her hair in the last book. Supposedly, Atticus’s amulet had developed protection from Malina’s charm after a while (when did this happen??), and that it would eventually do the same for Klaudia, but there was enough time that if Klaudia had wanted to hurt him somehow, she could have.
I think the notion that he didn’t already have a general blocking of attraction charms indicates he’s nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is. I mean, he can block out entire fields of magic, like Kabbalism, but not attraction charms? Seems an example of
You Keep Using That Word: 42
This all feels very silly, because Atticus is the kind of guy who would get distracted by that sort of thing, magical charm or not. I’d like to remind you that Klaudia’s introduction in Chapter 21 is just blatant sexualized fanservice.
They find Leif “a quarter mile east of Pecos”, face-down, half-buried in gravel. Because apparently, that’s how you put out hellfire. Look, I’m not an expert on the forces of the netherworld, but shouldn’t hellfire be… I don’t know, something other than just extra spicy fire? If you can put it out with dirt and gravel, doesn’t that make it sound like it’s anything special. Hellfire should be hellish, not just fire that smells bad.
“He’s not dead,” I said to the witches assembled around his body.
“Yes he is.” Berta begged to differ.
“Well, yes, you have a point, but I mean he’ll be okay. Still dead. But fine.”
I might be more amused if this book wasn’t already so bad. As it is, though, I have to say
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 47
The “begged to differ” part also feels like you’re saying something that’s already evident through the dialogue?
They pick up Leif and drag him back to the car. Charred as he is, parts of him are falling off, including a finger. Atticus is fairly certain that it’ll grow back, and, uh, okay. One of the characters has been burned by hellfire, and he’s just… fine? Okay, he’s not fine, but narratively he’s fine, because as a vampire he’ll recover and heal from any wound.
And in theory that makes some sense, because he’s a vampire and all, but on the other hand… well, you’d think an undead corpse would be MORE vulnerable to fire, wouldn’t you? And it sort of kills the stakes for the entire climax. If your companion just bounces back from being burned by hellfire with no permanent injuries, then this resolution doesn’t feel like it’s from a serious Plot. It feels like a little diversion to kill time from the series’s real goal. Which it is–to get to the part about killing Thor (that’s the next book).
We’ll talk more about that later, though. For now, we’ll give a
Make It Easy!: 35
They stuff Leif in the trunk of Atticus’s car, and he drives home. The werewolf doctor is still at home doing the Lord of the Rings marathon with Granny (watching LotR is Atticus’s cover story for the night). The werewolf doctor, Snorri, assures Atticus not to worry! They’ll get some blood out of the blood bank to fix up Leif, and he’ll help Atticus recover, without even charging him.
Yeah! Isn’t it great that a random side character with little to no characterization can help our protagonist and his companion deal with the aftermath of a tough battle with little to no real consequences?
Make It Easy!:36
Atticus goes into his yard to heal, because he can draw power when he’s in contact with the Earth. He lays there, and decides that he ought to go do that thing that’s apparently his sacred duty, but he’s been putting off since the end of the last book: going and healing that land that Aenghus Og blighted with Hell demons in Hounded.
There was a parcel of wilderness that needed my attention, which I had neglected for far too long.
YOU THINK?!?
The epilogue depicts Atticus beginning to work on that front. It’s not really that interesting, all told. It begins with Atticus in deer form (a stag is one of his four animal forms) hauling bags of topsoil, with Grannie and Oberon along to bring tools and some clothes for him to change into once he shapeshifts back into human form. He tells us that he doesn’t generally like being a stag, as “it’s still a bit lower on the food chain than I would like”, but carrying heavy loads like this over rugged terrain, it’s apparently the best shape.
[Why don’t they drive over there carrying all this stuff in a vehicle? Well, because there are no roads leading to this spot, apparently. Hearne does, to his credit, explain that much.]
We get a brief description of what the Hell-blighted terrain looks like, and it’s not really that bad? It’s not good, mind you, but it’s just that it’s all dead. The plants are all deceased, and there are no animals, fungi, or even bacteria to help the process of decay along.
Their work seems to be spreading a new layer of soil over the dead earth, and planting some new foliage in the form of a new agave plant. To be clear, it’s explained through dialogue with Oberon that this is far from the only thing they’ll do, it’s just what they’re starting with. Once some life gets into the place, he’ll be able to call the Earth/Gaia into helping the area recover, but it’ll still be a slow process.
Here’s the thing that’s bugging me, though–other than the idea that as a Druid, doing this is his sacred duty and he’s been putting it off–the reason the land got blighted was because Aenghus Og opened a portal to Hell. And you’re telling me that the land’s issue is just that everything is dead? There’s not a risk of Hell-magic spreading or something? There’s not a demon infestation? It’s just dead land? Yeah, that sucks, but you’d expect a Hell blight to be a lot worse.
Of course, the issue has to be something bad and yet something not too urgent. Because Atticus has been ignoring this problem for weeks. He tells Oberon that he “won’t feel well again until it’s finished”, though he hasn’t acted like this is a thing that’s bothering him all book. If he was really tied to the health of the Earth, and living in the vicinity of a Hell-blighted patch of land, you’d think he would feel physical discomfort or pain or something. Instead, it’s only a thing that bugs him when he stops to think about it, but he’s too busy leading his awesome life to worry about it until he gets the main Plot out of the way. Making it another example of
Make It Easy!:37
This being Iron Druid though, we have to end with a joke. Oberon tells Atticus that his pants have been unzipped while he worked, and Grannie hasn’t said anything, so Atticus tries to quietly fix that.
See? I got your back and your front. I deserve a treat.
That’s the final line of the book.
LAUGH, DAMNIT!:48
I don’t know why Hearne thinks this dog is funny.
And with that, we’re finished with Hexed.
I’m sorry, let me repeat that:
WE’RE FINISHED WITH HEXED!!
I’m going to post some final thoughts on the book, but we have sporked every chapter! The book is done! It has certainly been a journey, friends. If you’ve stuck with it I’m glad you have, and I hope to have something new for you, like sporking the next book, in the not-so-distant future.
Man, I’m glad to be back, for however long it lasts.
Better Than You: 19
Did Not Do Homework: 26
The Kids These Days: 15
You Keep Using That Word: 42
Make It Easy!: 37
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 48
1 And let’s be real here, are probably still saying it, though nowadays it’s less common in The Discourse. We got a lot going on.
2 So, um… okay there have been some developments about Neil Gaiman in the time since the last sporking chapter. I haven’t touched my “Sandman” comics in over a year. I promise I want to talk about this, but we’re not doing it right now.
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