Juracan

One day, I thought a question that all young men find themselves pondering in this modern age: how would I go about killing Edward Cullen? I threw this idea out a couple times to my friends, and their first suggestions were all conventional vampire killing methods. The problem with this is that Stephenie Meyer did her best to make her vampire hero much harder to kill—stakes, swords, knives, running water, and silver don’t work on her vampires. To take it to further levels of absurdity (and Mary Sueness), Meyer seems to hold that there is no weapon in the real world that would be likely to kill her vampires.

A thought experiment, then: if all the weapons of the real world short of nukes wouldn’t work (ludicrous, but for the purpose of Meyer’s amusement, let’s assume she’s right), what weapons of the realms of fiction would be best for disposing of this pest? I’ve compiled a list of suggestions, and as the list goes on I intend to make clear each of the weapon’s advantages and disadvantages.

Now for the list I decided I’d only pick one entry from each fictional world. I also figured that the qualifying factor was that it had to be a weapon that could in theory be wielded by any person and was lower caliber than the Death Star—obviously it could kill Edward Cullen, but it would kill the rest of humanity too (although if Stephenie Meyer’s vision of an Earth ruled by nigh-indestructible vampires were real, we might be doing the planet a favor).

Without further adieu…

Number One: The Lightsaber from Star Wars

Well, duh. If this wasn’t one of the first things that popped in your head, go home. The lightsaber is one of the most iconic “kill anything” weapons. It’s a blade that’s made out of energy. There’s not a lot more to it than that. Well, yes, some can lengthen the blade, the hilt can be made into different shapes and there’s a certain amount of power in the power cell that never seems to run out, but it’s a fairly straightforward concept.

The only things a lightsaber blade cannot cut through are another beam of energy and certain alloys that are fairly rare in the Star Wars universe yet have this annoying habit of popping up at inconvenient moments. Now if we were to ask Stephenie Meyer I’m fairly certain she’d assure us that vampires are energy-proof or some such nonsense, but let’s be clear: this thing could definitely chop off Wardo’s noggin. And given that vampire bodies are filled with flammable venom, it’s safe to assume that putting a hot energy blade through it is going to have some devastating effects.

We have some pretty glaring problems here, though. Meyer’s vampires are super-fast. As in, Meyer says they can outrun an explosion. So while if Edward Cullen comes at you, you can get lucky, the fact is you’re swinging at something that’s unnaturally fast. If someone with that kind of speed has any idea what they’re doing, you’re not going to get far with that weapon.

Also, the weapon itself is unbalanced. A sword is easy to wield because it’s easy to tell where the blade will go by how hard you swing the handle. Because lightsaber blades are made of energy, they don’t weigh anything. The reason you hardly ever see anyone other than a Force-sensitive use the things is because people who are Force-sensitive have the reflexes necessary to not kill themselves, and even then they practice with weapons that have lower energy settings for years before they build their own weapons. Unless some of the readers here are Jedi Knights (or Sith Lords), which I doubt, I don’t think it’s a particularly useful weapon.

Number Two: Mjolnir from Thor

Hm… impressive. A giant hammer forged from the heart of a dying star that is wielded by the thunder god Thor to kill giants. It returns to the hand of the wielder when thrown and can definitely cause enough blunt force trauma to shatter Eddie C.’s stony face. Plus, you know, you can put it on his chest and he can’t lift it, because there’s no way he’s worthy of the power of Thor.

See, this weapon only works if we assume we get someone worthy, because no one else has the ability to wield the hammer. I don’t think it’d be that hard to find someone, all things considered, as given we live in a world of seven billion people, statistically finding someone that fits the bill couldn’t be too difficult.

The issue that was brought up with the lightsaber still applies here, though—vampires can move super fast. Granted, the hammer has special powers aside from hitting things, but I can’t exactly be sure that they can be wielded by anyone other than, you know, Thor. Like, summoning lightning would certainly be effective in killing Mr. Cullen, but I’m not sure if anyone who’s not a storm god can do it. And once again, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not a storm god (I just borrowed one for my username).

Number Three: Soul Calibur from the Soul series

I considered putting Soul Edge on the list, but I decided that a demonic sword that possesses everyone who wields it and corrupts those who come into contact with it probably wouldn’t appeal to you guys.

Soul Calibur, on the other hand, is the sword that counters Soul Edge. Like Soul Edge, it changes itself to suit whatever fighting style the wielder is most comfortable with, and it can protect its host with a coat of nigh-impenetrable crystal and sustain life, as well as purifying unholy influences. This would get around that whole speed issue if applied correctly—if he can’t damage you, it doesn’t matter how fast the vampire goes.

It’s a perfect choice actually, except for one thing: the sword is kind of a dick. The sword might be the one that counters the evil Soul Edge, but it doesn’t really care who gets taken out on the way to destroying the world’s demonic influence. The spirit of the sword, Elysium, actually will possess the user fully and only the incredibly strong of will would be able to fight back. This could be… problematic in fighting a specific target, I imagine. I can’t imagine the sword not letting you kill Edward, but the risk of losing autonomy of one’s body might turn off some people’s willingness to wield the so-called “holy sword.”

Number Four: The Colt from Supernatural

Yes, vampires are supposedly bullet-proof, but they say this gun can kill anything. And that includes vampires. Granted, Lucifer claims he’s one of the five things in Creation the gun can’t kill, but its limits aren’t really elaborated on more than that. Given that the show has five named archangels (of which Lucifer is one), we can probably assume that the other archangels account for the remaining four. And even then, it certainly immobilized Lucifer for a while, and was shown to really hurt the bastard. So even the Devil himself isn’t completely immune to the weapon.

Which means it’s Cullen season!

The main obstacle in using this weapon effectively would be getting close enough to use it effectively without getting killed. The gun itself is also a revolver, meaning you should hit before you run out of shots, or else you’ll be killed while trying to reload. And you know, having that thing in the hands of a Cullen would suck.

Number Five: A Green Lantern Power Ring from Green Lantern

One of the most versatile weapons of any fictional universe, the Green Lantern Power Ring can easily put any normal human being in the big leagues with DC’s heavy hitters like Superman and Wonder Woman.

The power ring works like this: users can make constructs with the ring into any shape they imagine. The ring harnesses willpower, so the stronger your will, the stronger your constructs will be. Constructs can be anything—from swords and armor, to guns and shields, to straight up mechas and giant lawn mowers.

…or you can shoot lasers. Whatever.

The ring is an obvious choice for combat with a physically stronger opponent—it can make a shield around you to avoid anyone getting close and can be adaptable to almost any situation. Wardo’s speed means nothing if he can’t get close to you, and the ring provides all kinds of creative license to killing Mr. Cullen.

There are some downsides, of course. The ring does have a limited (though still great) amount of power, that needs to be recharged after a long period of usage using a power battery. The ring also has strengths and weakness based on other colors of the emotional spectrum—for example, in some stories it doesn’t work on anything the color yellow, so you’re going to have to be more creative if Edward decides to wear a yellow shirt. That being said, you can still throw stuff at him or move the ground he’s on, so it’s not too much of a limit.

Number Six: The Apple of Eden from Assassin’s Creed

The Apple is simultaneously one of the most exciting and one of the least exciting weapons on this list. It doesn’t really stab or shoot or do anything visceral, as much as make illusions and control people’s bodies by the user willing it to do so. But you can also use it to make people’s heads explode.

Oh yeah. Caught your attention there, didn’t I?

The Apple is a piece of incredibly powerful technology made by a precursor civilization, and it’s pretty much so advanced that it might as well be magic (and it has been mistaken for such in the past). You see, the lore of Assassin’s Creed states that humanity didn’t evolve as much as we were engineered by the First Civlization, who made us in their image. We were made a subservient race, though, and they needed a way to control us. Thus they implanted transmitters into our nervous systems and made devices that could send and receive signals to said transmitters and thereby control the nervous system.

It lets you control people like puppets, okay?

Members of the First Civilization didn’t have these transmitters, and some of them had children with humans, who, along with their descendents, gained immunity to the Apple. These people are a minority though. So it’s unlikely any of the Cullens were in that group when they were human.

The effectiveness of the Apple as a weapon is undeniable. You don’t have to worry about speed, because you just have to hold it and think to make it work. A thought, and Mr. Cullen’s head explodes. Or you can make him kill the rest of the Cullens. Whatever you want.

Here’s the main problem I see: Edward Cullen isn’t human. As far as I know, Meyer’s vampires still have their nervous systems intact, but it’s implied that vampires can still reassemble themselves after being dismembered, so it obviously doesn’t function the same way. Would the Apple work? It’s worth a shot, for certain, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll work.

Number Seven: The Speaking Gun from Nightside by Simon Greene

How do you kill something unkillable? Simple—you un-make it.

So God made everything in Creation by speaking its true name, right? The Speaking Gun, then, is a weapon that, when pointed at a target, will learn its true name and say it backwards, effectively un-creating it. Targets won’t die—they’ll have never been.

You’d have to take the time to point the thing at Edward, obviously, but once you do he’s a goner. You could probably take him by surprise if you played your cards right, and take out the whole Cullen family in one fell swoop.

Like many of the things on this list though, there is a downside: the gun is sentient, and it really likes un-making things. It wants nothing more than to go on a spree of tearing down all of Creation, and will push and tempt its wielder into doing so. So yes, we could easily use it to annihilate Wardo, but we might end up destroying a lot more than that if we’re not careful.

Also: it’s made of flesh. That might be kind of awkward to be carrying around.

Number Eight: The Master Bolt from Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

…we’re going nuclear.

The Master Bolt is the symbol of power for the king of the gods: Zeus. Forged for the first war to use against his father, Kronos, the Master Bolt is the most powerful of all of Zeus’s weapons, the original lightning bolt, on which all the others are modeled. The Bolt is what blasted Kronos off his throne and blasted the top off the mountain.

It’s arguably the most powerful weapon the Olympians have.

Okay, so it seems a bit petty to use the weapon of Zeus on a guy because he’s an asshole, but… seriously, he deserves it. The full power doesn’t have to be used every time, either—we can just channel enough power to not wipe a town off the map.

Actually, it’s questionable whether or not a mortal can use the thing. You don’t have to be a full god, but it’s possible that only one with divine power, like a god or demigod, can use the Bolt at all, and that only the most powerful of the Olympians can use its maximum power setting. And like I said above, I’m not a god, just borrowed one’s name for a little while.

And, you know, there’s convincing Zeus to let you use it…

Number Nine: Solomon’s Ring from The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud

How do you go up from the chosen weapon of Zeus? I’ll tell you how: the Ring of Solomon.

In Stroud’s books, magicians get power not from any inherent abilities that they themselves have, but by summoning and enslaving spirits like djinn and afrits and getting them to do stuff for them. Magic items were made by binding powerful spirits, often marids, to an item and having them serve a specific function.

The reader never finds out how the Ring of Solomon was made, only that Solomon used it to pretty much do whatever he wanted and could threaten anyone with the Ring. Why? In the Ring was bound the most powerful spirit ever seen in the series—Uraziel. Just what is Uraziel? No one knows, just that its power is limitless, and can be summoned by just a turn of the Ring. Being a spirit, it would be impervious to most attacks unless attacking with a weapon made of silver or iron, and even then, being in the spiritual weight class it is, I don’t think killing it with iron would as simple as stabbing him.

There’s a catch, though… the Ring actually leeches life off of whoever wears it, and whenever it’s used the user can feel Uraziel drain a bit of his or her life force. So while it would certainly work, one would have to be careful not to go overboard with the power. We could conceivably wipe all vampires off the face of the Earth, but we’d have to share the Ring between a group to make sure no one drops dead. And then there’s the inherent problems of passing around a weapon like that.

Number Ten: The Brahmastra from Asura’s Wrath

Remember how I said the Death Star was disqualified? This is about as close as we can get.

The Brahmastra is the ultimate weapon of the Shinkoku Armada. It’s the ultimate weapon against the enemies of civilization, the tool the Eight Demigod Generals use against Vlitra, the Will of the Planet Gaea, and is a last resort that the gods themselves prefer not to pull out.

It’s a big fucking gun.

Powered by the mantra of trillions of souls from the mortals of the world, and once it shoots, it is unstoppable. Next to nothing can withstand its power. It would certainly incinerate Wardo no problem, tearing apart his body like a shredder. He could not endure it. He could not outrun it. He has no chance.

The main problem is kind of obvious though—it’s a giant laser. Like, it tears up landscapes. As an offensive weapon, there’s nothing that can get in the way of its power, but you’d glass a city in pursuit of killing a person. Granted, it might be worth it to rid the world of Edward Cullen, but for some I’d imagine that’d be too high a price.

—-

This has been Juracan’s list on what’s most likely to be the best choice of fictional weapons to kill Edward Cullen. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Comment [45]

Today we’re going to talk about this video here.

Well recently I discovered that John Green released a video titled, “I Kind of Hate Batman,” which is admittedly a title that’s obviously designed to be flame bait. And while I’ll admit that I’ve certainly done things for the sole purpose of attracting attention like that, I’ll point out that I’m a guy who writes angry sporks on the Internet, rather than an international best-selling writer lauded as one of the greatest authors of our time who helps to lead a rather sizable worldwide Internet following.

Also, it’s a terrible video. It is an analysis of Batman by someone who knows jack shit about Batman (which usually wouldn’t be so much of an issue if it weren’t for the fact that this is a guy who teens listen to and look up and critics have hailed as one of the greatest literary minds of our time). More than that, the reasoning put in it is nonsensical and reeks of someone trying to preach a moral lesson rather than anything close to analysis of a fictional character. Now to be fair his brother Hank posted a response to the video which can be viewed here and addresses several of his points. But I thought I’d do more coverage because I have no life, the TFIOS spork hasn’t been updated in a while, and I felt like it.

First, a disclaimer: I am not writing this to make you like Batman. I don’t care whether or not you like Batman. You’re not obligated to like the character, and it’s not my business. My purpose in writing this essay is to illustrate that John Green’s arguments in his video are awful, considering how brilliant he supposedly is, and hopefully prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

And before I go on I should point out, as I have on comments before, that John Green is an advocate for a popular literary criticism theory referred to as “Death of the Author.” It basically states that the author’s intentions or ideas outside of the text itself don’t matter. And it’s not without merit—I mean, if Jim Butcher were to stand up and say, “Actually Dresden Files is about the negative effects of industrialization,” we’d all laugh and say he was wrong, because there’s no indication in any of the books that it’s actually the case.

John Green, in his take on this theory, tends to pick and choose what bits of author information he feels like. So for example, he makes a point to say that Hufflepuff isn’t so bad because Tonks was in it (a fact not revealed in any of the Harry Potter books but by Rowling herself), but when Rowling came out and said in hindsight that Hermione and Ron weren’t such a great couple, he posted “BOOKS BELONG TO THEIR READERS” in big letters on his Tumblr blog. Despite this “book belonging to their readers” business, he’s always been quick to point out what he meant and didn’t mean in writing his own books. Which isn’t wrong, but like I said, by saying that’s what the book definitively meant then it kind of negates the point of books not being the author’s, doesn’t it?

His video on Batman embodies the worst aspects of this criticism movement—that is, bending the material to fit your already preconceived notions. It’s the reason why the idea of Satan being the hero of Paradise Lost still persists—people keep saying he is, so when they finally get around to reading it that’s what they mold the text into, despite the fact that Satan is a lying douchenozzle throughout the poem. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough.”

Adding to this confusion is the reality (or is it the fiction?) that Batman is an incredibly difficult character to pin down under a specific set of traits. Yes, there are elements that stick in every version of the character, but Batman over the years has changed an incredible amount. Just check out this chart for an example. John Green doesn’t specify which version of Batman he is talking about; something that his brother Hank makes sure to do in his rebuttal. So already the analysis is somewhat problematic and lacking in weight, because the parameters aren’t set.

So on to the debate itself! What is Green’s first argument?

Like Hank, if I were a billionaire the first thing I would do is pledge ninety percent of my money to charity…

Point being, Hank, I don’t think I’d be a particularly good or generous billionaire, but one thing I wouldn’t do is spend a gajillion dollars developing a Batmobile that only I am allowed to drive.

This is actually not an awful argument on the face of it. I mean, assuming that before Batman showed up the only criminals in Gotham were for the most part regular people instead of psychos like the Joker or Killer Croc, that city could do with a lot of charity work. However, some things to point out:

A) Almost every piece of Batman media I have ever seen, whether it be comic, animated series, live-action movie or video game, at least references Bruce Wayne’s charity work in some form or another. You could definitely argue that Batman doesn’t give enough to charity, but Green doesn’t do that. Which is a problem. One of the things I’ve had drilled into my head for every persuasive speech I’ve had to do for school is that you have got to acknowledge the opposition in some way, if only to refute it. This isn’t doing that at all. It’s ignoring anything that can be used as opposition.

B) This statement implies that he’s not talking about the Nolan movies. We don’t always get a good origin story for Batman’s car, but in Batman Begins we do, and we know that Bruce didn’t spend a gajillion dollars on it, because in that film the Batmobile was already built before Wayne returned to Gotham. He may have spent money upgrading it or painting it black, but he didn’t really develop it.

But like I said, it’s a fair enough point. It’s why I like shows like Justice League Unlimited and Batman: The Brave and the Bold for occasionally showing superheroes do something besides punching bad guys in the face. People with these privileges, gifts and abilities using them to help others is a great idea, and I’m sad it’s not as investigated more with this genre—

Look, Spider-Man got bitten by a radioactive spider. He has to be Spider-Man. He doesn’t have a choice, he can’t stop shooting webs so you might as well use that skill to aid the police.

…So let me get this straight: you’re saying that Batman shouldn’t fight crime but instead donate most of his money to charity, but because Spider-Man has powers, he has no choice but to punch bad guys in the face?

What?

No, Peter Parker does not have the financial status to be able to give that much money to charity. But let’s look at his skill set—he’s an amazing scientist, is super strong and agile, and can travel around the city faster that an ordinary person. So why doesn’t he work the fire department? Or rebuilding places hit with disasters like tsunamis or hurricanes or earthquakes? I’m certain his skill set can be used in that regard. He definitely does have a choice.

And John Green’s assertion that if he were Bruce Wayne he’d give most of his money to charity opens all kinds of questions. Like, “Why doesn’t Spider-Man use his powers for disaster relief?” Or, “Why doesn’t Harry Potter use his magic to fix as many problems of the Muggle world as he can?” Or, “Why doesn’t Percy Jackson just go to places where there’s droughts and fix it?” And usually it wouldn’t be hard for writers to answer these questions, but they don’t always do that. Yet John Green applies this question specifically to Batman because his special privilege is money, as if money were the only solution to the problems of the world.

But Batman is just a rich guy with an affinity for bats who is playing out his insane fantasy of single-handedly ridding Gotham of crime; how is that heroic?

I’m tempted to just leave this quote from Batman: The Brave and the Bold : Someone’s gotta stand up to all this sin. But I also realize that it’s probably not enough. Please do enjoy that clip though.

Back on-topic, that is quite possibly one of the most simplistic character interpretation I’ve ever seen. I know that Batman’s often seen as a one-note character, and sometimes he’s written like that. And this idea that Batman is just a fantasy Bruce Wayne cooked up to make himself feel better, it isn’t new. The question of “Is Batman actually insane?” has been asked again and again. So no, this isn’t an original idea.

But the way the question is phrased… like I said, we can apply this to any character. “Harry Potter is just some nerdy kid who is playing out his crazy hope of standing up to an evil genocidal maniac who is nigh-unkillable; how is that heroic?”

Or, “Why do I care about Hamlet? He’s just some emo guy who plays out this elaborate plan of avenging his father’s death and might actually be insane?”

This level of scrutiny isn’t bad, but he’s applying it to just one character on the basis that he has money, so therefore he shouldn’t be a superhero. I’m not saying Bruce Wayne deserves to be uber-wealthy, more so than anyone else, fictional or otherwise. But that seems to be Green’s main accusation: he’s rich, so he should be doing more to help people.

[There’s also the question of whether not Batman works alone; yes, that’s the popular image of him, but in reality he’s got one of the largest extended “families” of any superhero. Check it out here. ]

Now Hank, I know what you’re saying: Iron Man. And fair enough, Tony Stark is a billionaire who could use his wealth a little bit better….But at least Iron Man has that weird bomb nuclear heart thing built with the token good and therefore doomed Arab guy. And he’s like, “Oh, I should use my nuclear heart for good.” It’s not much but it’s something!

Look guys, I’ve tried avoiding using gifs in this essay but…

THIS IS THE AUTHOR THAT IS “DAMN NEAR GENIUS” I SAY

You catch that? The reason Tony Stark doesn’t fall under these exact same criticisms, that he should be donating to charity instead of punching villains in the face, is because he’s got a “nuclear heart.”

Hey, you’re allowed to like Iron Man more than Batman. Plenty of people do, I’m sure. But the fact is, that argument makes no sense. If I’m trying my hardest, what I think Green’s saying is that once you have superpowers or bodily enhancement of any sort, you absolutely must become a superhero; if you just have money, then being a superhero means you’re indulging your fantasies (of being shot at, exploded, and having your friends and family targeted). Or something.

Also, slightly off-topic, I would argue that Catwoman, despite her jewelry-thieving, et cetera, is by almost any measure much more heroic than Batman.

…he doesn’t elaborate more than that, which is a shame because I’d really like to see how he argues that a person who steals from other people for a living is more heroic than Batman. I mean, if he argued that Barbara Gordon/Batgirl was more heroic than Batman, then yeah, I could definitely see that point and I’d be hard-pressed to come with any rational argument against it.

But Catwoman, more heroic? When she’s written at her best, she’s like the Han Solo of the cast; possibly more identifiable and charming than the main character, but not more heroic in any classic sense. At worst, she’s written just to be fanservice.

Crime is not actually caused by evil, it’s caused by systemic disenfranchisement and poverty and lack of access to job opportunities and education. And yet Batman goes on not funding police departments or schools or building low income housing but tearing up the infrastructure of the city he claims to love while fighting villains who are only powerful because that city is already so blighted and dysfunctional!

Oh Christ, okay… once again, this level of scrutiny and criticism is apparently not fair to aim at Spider-Man or Iron Man on the basis that their bodies are enhanced somehow. It’s aimed squarely at Batman, for whatever reason. If John Green applied this much criticism to every fictional hero, I wouldn’t have much to say here. But he explicitly has it out for Batman and excuses others on nonsensical grounds.

Never mind that in most adaptations the company Bruce Wayne runs, Wayne Tech, builds inventions that are used by everyone in the city to improve the quality of life, but since Bruce isn’t personally throwing money at those who need it he’s actually a monster who is an awful role model and we should all hate Batman along with John Green.

Also, why does no one ever call Batman out for devoting all of his resources to fighting crime in Gotham? When he could also be fighting, oh, I don’t know, global poverty or habitat destruction or climate change?

Why doesn’t the Wizarding World send some aurors to take care of world dictators? Why doesn’t Tony Stark fix the energy crisis? Why doesn’t Spider-Man mass produce his web shooters for more mundane uses? Why doesn’t that fictional character that everyone likes help my cause?!

Holy Father Francis, this guy’s like a broken record. And I know I sound like a scratched record too, but I can’t think of anything else to say because most of what Green is saying boils down to the same point: that this fictional character isn’t solving the world problems he wants him to.

But Hank, the question at the core of the Batman story still bothers me: why do we celebrate the vigilantic ambitions of individual billionaires? Surely we understand that the real work among humans is done not in isolation, but in collaboration. We do understand that, right?

As I’ve said above, Batman is usually not alone. Yeah, he’s often painted that way, but he’s far from it.

But even if we carry on with the idea that Batman is not alone, the fact remains that he’s not exactly the only one. The idea of the loner hero is one that’s got a significant amount of history in fiction. It’s one that sticks—the man or woman who has built up his or her own status by him or herself. And even if it’s unrealistic, it’s an image that’s stuck in our minds, far beyond the American icon of Batman.

And to see this criticism from an author whose own crowning achievement is a novel about two teenagers with cancer who think that they’re better than everyone else around them… well, you know. Pot calling kettle black and all.

This entire thing reminded me of an article about an article about Frozen that Lindsey Ellis/Nostalgia Chick wrote. The original article claimed that the film was un-feminist by virtue of it having its female leads being flawed, which Ellis made a point to refute thoroughly. Towards the end of her response, Ellis said this:

The era of Tumblr has brought social justice to the masses, but it has also ushered in a tendency for people to appropriate communications theories to justify why they didn’t like some Disney movie. It’s no longer “I didn’t like it”, it’s “it was a failure of [progressive thing]”, and all too often, as in the case with this article, the reasoning is just absurd.

And that’s pretty much what John Green did here. He could have easily said, “I don’t like Batman” for good reasons or no reason at all. You’re allowed to do that. Instead, he has to come up with an ideological reason for why he hates Batman which bends any sort of logic or rhetorical sense, so that he can preach about how we should all be working together. It’s not a bad message, mind you, but you don’t need to do a faux-analysis of a pop culture icon to do it.

This is the problem with people who take “Death of the Author” too seriously. Too often it turns into twisting things to make sure they fit the reader/analyst’s point of view, regardless of whether or not it’s true to what is actually on page/screen. And now everyone’s doing it, including best-selling authors/leaders of Internet nerd movements.

I need a freaking drink.

Comment [27]

Oh hey, I’m back.

Hellboy is really bloody anticlimactic, you know?

Alright, this is another criticism that’s a bit hard for me, because I love Hellboy. I love almost every aspect of it. I love how the crazy origin, the references to occultism from the past two hundred years, the Catholic saint imagery that pervades so much of it, the one-off stories that are re-tellings of legends and myths from around the world, and how the story explodes from being about Hellboy fighting monsters to an apocalyptic epic about defending the world from Lovecraftian monstrosities.

But dang is the story really bad about throwing away long-running plotlines like the shells of sunflower seeds.

Obviously, some spoilers ahead. But before we jump to that, we’re probably going to need to give some background for context.

The first major villain of Hellboy is a guy named Grigori Rasputin. Maybe you’ve heard of him. In Mike Mignola’s setting, Rasputin made some sort of Faustian deal with the Ogrdu Jahad, the Dragon of the Apocalypse that’s trapped in a crystal prison that only Hellboy’s stone right hand can open. At the end of Volume One: Seed of Destruction, Rasputin is seemingly killed, though he comes up as a ghost a few times after that. It’s pretty much understood and that he’ll be back.

Rasputin, though, overestimates his own power, and ends up going up against another recurring villain: Hecate. He bites off more than he can chew and ends up wrecked by the Black Goddess. One of Rasputin’s benefactors, the Slavic witch Baba Yaga, saves what’s left of his spirit in an acorn, showing an obvious way he could be brought back.

The acorn is brought up again in Volume 8: Darkness Calls, and immediately some nobody villain is like, “Screw that guy!” and chucks the acorn into the Abyss.

This is the end of Rasputin’s story. All that set up, his prophesying, his connection to the Ogdru Jahad—all of it doesn’t actually mean anything. He’s just a starter villain.

No really.

There’s some bits in the spin-off, BPRD where he’s remembered, but as a villain in Hellboy’s rogues gallery? Nope, he’s gone, unceremoniously thrown away by the other villains as an unimportant character without another fight.

Let’s fast-forward a bit. There’s a prophecy about Hellboy that worries everyone, because he’s supposed to be the Beast of Revelation. He’s destined to go down into Hell, overthrow all the Lords, Princes, Knights, and other assorted aristocracy, take the throne of Pandemonium from the Devil himself, and go conquer the world with hordes of demons. Hellboy, not being a megalomaniac, of course rejects this destiny because he thinks that’s kind of a dick thing to do.

But at the end of Volume 12: Storm and Fury, Hellboy is dragged down into Hell after an apocalyptic battle, leading to the series Hellboy in Hell. One of the first things he does in Hell is take a tour of the capital, Pandemonium, and his tour guide tells him that all the demons lords have fled at his arrival, fearful of him. All except one—Satan himself sleeps beneath the city, and it’d be all too easy for someone to go kill him in his sleep. Hellboy moves on, not being particularly motivated to kill Satan.

Except turns out he did. Later we find out that Satan is dead, his throat slit, and that Hellboy is the one who did it, even though it’s out of character and he doesn’t remember doing it, or even wanting to do it. It just happened, and it’s a done deal. Deliberate parallels are drawn to Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the murder of King Duncan, but that doesn’t add up because Hellboy keeps saying and showing how much he doesn’t want the throne. So instead of it being about the protagonist’s ambition leading him to do morally reprehensible actions and ultimately corrupting him, it just makes no sense.

The other demon lords that plagued Hellboy over the years are quickly dealt with. Astaroth and Hellboy’s demonic half-brothers at least confront him, but then out of nowhere they’re eaten by Leviathan without any foreshadowing. Hellboy’s half-sister, Gamori, who tried to kill Hellboy when he was a child, has a subplot where she tries to tell the Furies that Hellboy killed their brothers. When the Furies are set straight, they just take Gamori away and that’s that. She’s done with.

Maybe some other demon lord can pick up the slack? Welp, not really, no—they’re all dead. At Hellboy’s approach, they all skipped town and were killed by their minions, who decided now would be a great time to go all French Revolution on their asses. So there are no demon lords left.

[Except Varvara, but we’re not getting into that because that’s more into the spin-off BPRD and we’re talking Hellboy, got it?]

A couple of these plot points end up becoming important in the spin-offs, but it’s frustrating because you generally want the narrative arc of the original series to be complete and make sense within the original series. I like BPRD and Abe Sapien just fine, but I don’t want to feel like I have to read all of those just to get any satisfaction out of these stories that Mignola spent years building up. I just want the story to have some sort of satisfying ending. Not even necessarily a happy one, but one that doesn’t feel like a huge letdown.

I get that there are times when there’s a point to the writer adding the anticlimactic resolution to the story, to try to say that evil always turns in on itself or that what we thought we knew wasn’t real the entire time or something. But to have it happen again and again within the same story just seems like a major flaw. I don’t get the impression that Mignola is making a point, it reads as if he doesn’t have any idea what to do with all of the interesting plot elements he’s introduced and so he just awkwardly sweeps them under the rug like an unwanted clan of dust bunnies.

This is basic story-writing: you set up a plot line, you foreshadow it, you give it a payoff. I understand that sometimes it’s difficult to give a good payoff; when you get to the end of a storyline and you have no idea how to finish it. But there comes a point that it happens so many times it’s egregious. Mike Mignola just doesn’t know how to end a storyline in a satisfactory fashion. It’s telling that the spin-offs that do tie up loose ends set up over the years are actually not written by him alone; BPRD, for instance, is written with several other writers, notably John Arcudi, and the Abe Sapien series was written in collaboration with Scott Allie.

And like I said, it’s a damn shame because I love Hellboy. I love so much of the stories and the characters and the setting that it’s downright infuriating that I can’t see these plotlines get the resolution that they need instead of being discarded. If you spend years wondering what’s going to happen to all of these characters and their story arcs, it’s a huge disappointment when it reads as if the man writing it all doesn’t care enough to do anything but throw them away when he’s gotten bored with them.

Those are my thoughts, anyhow.

Comment [3]

I told myself I’d write more for ImpishIdea this summer, but then life got in the way. For whatever reason everyone keeps telling me I can’t live in the local library, so I’ve got to find a new place to live, and that in turn has held a lot of my thinking time. Who’d have thunk it?

Because of that, I don’t know when/if I’ll get to that sporking of Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles that’s been suggested a couple of times. For starters, I’d actually need to buy a copy of Hounded.

So instead I’m going to complain about having the wrong protagonists.

For whatever reason, there are a lot of stories in which the protagonist isn’t actually the main character. It’s fairly common, actually. It sounds like a problem that shouldn’t happen, but it does. Let me explain with an example or two.

I’ve been reading/watching/playing a lot of fiction involving Greek mythology lately. A lot of it is great. But I’ve noticed that there’s a tendency to make the story about a conflict between the gods but make none of the gods the protagonist. It’s always some human hero, who bumbles around without fully understanding what’s going on in the mythological world. To be fair, sometimes an author can make it work, like in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, in which we see the hero and the Titans actually face off against each other. Additionally, despite the cosmic scale of the series’s plot, it still remains personal story about Percy fighting to save the people he loves.

But then you have things like the movie Immortals, meant to be a film retelling the story of Theseus that is also about preventing the Titans from escaping their prison. Except that Theseus doesn’t prevent jack squat, the Titans escape, and the entire thing would have been prevented if Zeus actually got off his golden cape to do stuff. There isn’t any reason Theseus is the hero, other than because Zeus and the movie say so. Other characters (the gods, mostly) are more interesting, more complex, and could do much more with the actual plot.

The obvious answer to this criticism is that having an immortal godlike protagonist is too boring, as there are no stakes and the character is too distant for the human audience to identify with. And while I agree that it is difficult to have a compelling protagonist who is a deity or godlike figure, it’s not impossible. I think Neil Gaiman did it pretty well in The Sandman. In the comic the title character, Morpheus, is an immortal being, but nonetheless he’s bound by certain rules and limitations. And while he’s not threatened by most of the human characters, he is surrounded by treacherous family members and angry mythological figures who certainly can hurt him.

But even moving out of fantasy stories with gods, this happens in other fiction as well. Do you guys remember back when I was sporking Angelopolis? Yeah, fun times all-around, I know. But one of the things that struck me re-reading the book is that Verlaine was a pretty piss-poor main character. Yes, the story was “about him” in the sense that he was one of the main players moving the plot forward. But who are all of the revelations in the story about, and who is the one person that the whole plot hinges on in the end of the novel? It’s not him. It’s Evangeline. She’s the one who finds out about her parentage being different than she thought, who found out that she was created for the sole purpose of being a weapon against evil. The plot is, by all accounts, about her, and so being the main character you’d think she’d be the protagonist, like in the first book. But she’s benched for most of the story so that Verlaine and the other characters can wander around Europe asking stupid questions. Verlaine himself doesn’t do much to move the story along; despite the text and other characters constantly singing his praises, he always has to be rescued and being told plot-relevant information. This story should not be about him. But Trussoni tried very much to make it so. So she makes him the protagonist, despite him not being the actual main character.

The much-maligned Assassin’s Creed: Unity had a similar issue. I’ve heard a lot of Assassin’s Creed fans and critics bemoan how boring the protagonist of that game was. But I don’t think that Arno Dorian (the protagonist) is a bad character, but again, the story isn’t about him. The whole plot hinges on his epic love story with Elise: juggling his willingness to help her take revenge on her father’s murders and his desire to keep her safe. It’s not a bad character motivation, but it makes for a poor protagonist, because the story isn’t about him. It’s about Elise, and how her quest to seek revenge plays out. It’s not that Arno shouldn’t be in the story, but it’s just not his story. If Arno had gotten a story in which he was actually the central character, he probably would have been received a lot better.

I’ll admit that heroic destinies, revenge plots, and prophesied heroes have been done to death, but one reason they’re used so often is because we know precisely who the story is about. It’s an easy way to make sure you don’t lose focus of who you’re supposed to care about. You probably could do successful subversions, in which the protagonist is not the main character in the epic quest, but rather the companion, best friend, or another party member. But that would work more effectively in satire or parody than a serious story idea: having a character who points out all the plot holes and tropes of their story, or how unrealistic it all is.

[I want to note that one can play around with the viewpoint character being different than the main character/protagonist being different. Sherlock Holmes is indisputably the main character and protagonist of his stories, but most of the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are narrated by Dr. John Watson instead. The narrator doesn’t have to be the protagonist/main character at all, though they often are.]

It isn’t just a matter of the protagonist being a likable character; it doesn’t matter how likable they are, or are supposed to be. If they’re not the central character of the story, the one on whom everything else hinges, then they’re not the main character. The protagonist and the main character should be the same, and that should be someone without whom there would be no story: a character who makes some of the decisions that move the plot forward. If your main characters are just reacting to what’s going on around them, and don’t do anything to advance the story, then you’ve got some work to do before they’re protagonists.

Comment [7]

You ever notice there’s a lot of books about kids that really…shouldn’t be?

Within the subgenres of children’s and young adult literature, it’s fairly common to see the heroes of the stories to be around the same age as the intended audience. The result is that you have a bunch of preteens and teenagers saving the world, and while the stories resulting from these are often amusing, entertaining, and sometimes even heartfelt, it often makes me scratch my head and wonder where the grown-ups in the setting have all gone.

There are justifications and aversions, of course. In Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians it’s mentioned that most powerful demigods are found easily by monsters and don’t actually survive into adulthood, so obviously there wouldn’t be a bunch of adult demigods around to help our heroes. Harry Potter has our lead be a hero marked by Voldemort himself from infancy, and he’s the one the plot centers around. He’s only just learned he’s a wizard, and he’s becoming more embroiled in the Wizarding World as he gets older, so of course he has to deal with this himself. It’s also helpful to the credulity of the story that there quite a few things that adult characters do, but much of it is off-page or unknown to Harry as it’s happening. In Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching books, Tiffany’s the only witch for miles around, and since she’s often running on a clock she has to deal with the problems before the other witches have time to arrive.

Authors don’t always include a justification though. Hopping back up to Rick Riordan, the sequel to Percy Jackson and the Olympian books is a series titled Heroes of Olympus. It introduces another camp/home for demigods, one more Roman-flavored than Greek, called ‘Camp Jupiter.’ Unlike Camp Half-Blood though, Camp Jupiter is in an isolated valley with a small city (called New Rome) attached, with its own government, stores and even a college, all heavily inspired by Roman culture. And we see that demigods often live to adulthood here, as some of the campers we see are ‘legacies’ rather than demigods; descendants of deities rather than actual sons and daughters. Different families have different levels of influence in New Rome, and some have enough prestige to put their children in esteemed positions in Camp Jupiter.

And yet all the soldiers in Camp Jupiter…are teenagers. A designated amount of years of service in the legion is required by all citizens, and for whatever reason the New Romans decided it’d be best if they were served when their citizens are thirteen years old. They’re a full army and everything, with cohorts, praetors, siege weapons, and even a battle elephant they’ve named Hannibal. Their preferred metal for weapons, Imperial Gold, is liable to explode if broken. But the praetors they’ve got are both fifteen years old. They’re all child soldiers. The senate is also made up of teenagers, who decide to send child soldiers on quests or to war. If there are any adults in government or military positions, the reader is never introduced to them. They certainly didn’t stop their kids from marching across the country to go to war.

Moving away from Riordan, Apep’s sporking of Mortal Instruments makes it clear that there’s something odd going on there too. Cassandra Clare tries to excuse it by making it so that the kids are the only ones who really know what’s going on, but the only way that can work at all is by making all of the Shadowhunter adults completely bloody useless and terrible at their jobs. Yeah, I understand that Jace and Clary have a personal connection to Valentine and all, but shouldn’t there be someone at least supervising the heroes from the NYC Institute? Someone who isn’t Hodge, a former member of Valentine’s terrorist cult thing? A ordinary amount of regular adult staff members in the Institute of New York City, one of the most important cities in the world, would have made it much harder for Hodge to turn traitor (again).

[Though if we’re going to be fair here, the show somewhat rectifies it by having all the characters be at least eighteen, and the Institute is filled with other Shadowhunters going around doing stuff.]

Very rarely is this ever lampshaded, except for to point out that the heroes are apparently doing things much better than the adults. But…why? Really, why?

So many protagonists, especially young adult protagonists, are orphans¹, seemingly just so that their parents won’t be around to mind them going on adventures. But that doesn’t exactly excuse the lack of any adult supervision in activities that are dangerous or world-threatening.

Few stories seem to want to discuss this problem. The webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court is a notable aversion. The story has our main characters Antimony and Kat often go off and do their own adventures, but there are times that they’re called out by others (Jones, and more recently Red) on not involving the authorities or even trusted adult confidants in their problems. There are sometimes justifications given (the authorities being very corrupt and power-hungry), but whether or not they’re any good is left up to the reader to decide. In any case, there are times in which the leads do get the adult authorities involved, and are reminded that for their experience and knowledge, they’re still kids.

And I think that’s the kind of a reasonable compromise that writers should at least aspire to get to. I’m not against kid heroes, or teenagers risking their lives to save the world or whatever. Those are all fine. But if I’m reading a book or watching a movie and I stop and ask myself, “Wait, why are the adults in this world perfectly alright putting the world’s lives in the hands of these kids?” than that takes me out of the story and question its believability. Yeah, I know these protagonists and as a reader of fiction I’m fairly confident that they’ll stop the baddies, but the people in the story don’t know that.

If you’re going to have kid heroes, make sure there’s a justification for them doing their thing, and a reasonable amount of adult supervision given the situation. And no, saying, “The adults are all useless” is not a good explanation. If the story only works under the condition that “Some people are stupid” then it’s not a good story.

Ask yourself, “Does it actually make any sense for the characters in this story to be kids?” And think it through. If you can’t imagine a reason why it’s plausible that the fate of the world is on these kids’ shoulders, then age them up. You don’t even have to change the target audience! Your story can still be aimed at the same age group if you get the tone right. The notion that people won’t read about characters who are not the same age as them is just silly.

If the narrative allows me to poke holes in it like, “Why are the adults relying on child soldiers to do their jobs?” then it falls apart. We can do better than that.

¹ Or orphans by plot standards—parents can be kidnapped, captured, coma’d or otherwise incapacitated so that they can’t object to their children risking their lives.

Comment [9]

Wow this place is really starting to look dead, isn’t it? We haven’t had an article in months, and half the comments being added are by spambots. That’s…not a good sign. And I still haven’t delivered my promised sporking of Iron Druid. The draft is sitting around in one of my Google Drives somewhere.

So with the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi I’ve been thinking on the nature of its storytelling and the influence of Star Wars on fiction in general. There’s been a lot of discussion on the Intersnet about whether the sequel trilogy, particularly its latest entry, is any good, but that’s not a question I want to tackle here today. However I did have some concerns about the approach Lucasfilm (among other storytellers) is taking in telling the Star Wars story now that it belongs to Disney. Specifically, in regards to some things they leave out.

Some Last Jedi spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

So in 2015’s The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams sets up several questions about the characters and plot of the new trilogy—who is Rey, really? Who is Supreme Leader Snoke, and how is he in charge of the First Order? What is Luke Skywalker really doing out there on his own? Rian Johnson’s approach in The Last Jedi unceremoniously dropped several of these plot points to move on with the characters and make some plot points. For instance, and I’m posting a MAJOR SPOILER WARNING here, Snoke is unceremoniously killed off so that Kylo Ren can become the new Supreme Leader of the First Order and the new Big Bad.

This is really odd considering how many questions this character raised for audiences in the previous film. Who is Snoke? Where did he come from? How did he form the First Order and become its cult-like leader? It doesn’t really matter to the story Rian Johnson wanted to tell, so he moved past them without worrying about them, and that’s okay, I guess. But it leaves this gaping hole in the narrative because it’s unlikely that the third movie of the trilogy is going to stop the momentum its story in order tell us all of that information about a dead character. And we shouldn’t feel as if it has to.

Though I can’t help but think that none of these questions should be unanswered this far into the narrative.

The Force Awakens drops us into this conflict between the Resistance and the First Order without telling us much about where the First Order came from. It’s made “from the remnants of the Empire,” and it’s been compared to what would have happened if surviving Nazi officers got their stuff together after World War II and tried to conquer the world again. But the First Order isn’t just some small offshoot, as you would surmise from that description. It’s got a massive standing army, the resources to have a massive fleet of battle cruisers (including a dreadnought), sustain a sizable standing army, brainwash its soldiers from a childhood, and oh yeah, turn an entire planet into a massive homing laser gun that can take out entire star systems anywhere in the galaxy.

Furthermore, if it’s an Imperial remnant that fanatically reveres the Galactic Empire as a glorious golden age, who the heck is Snoke that they all defer to him as “Supreme Leader”? For that to make any sense at all, he’d have to have been a high-ranking member of the Imperial hierarchy. And yet he’s not a character from the past films, and even the Rebels television series makes no mention or vague allusion to Snoke. He came out of nowhere. I’ve heard the argument that the Emperor didn’t have any backstory in the original films either, but that’s not a fair comparison. When Star Wars first started the conflict was fairly simple and understandable. The prequels, for all their faults, did bucket-loads of worldbuilding and gave him a backstory, though admittedly some of it is more implied than actually spoken on-screen. The sequel trilogy is working under the weight of all of that story information. Six films in, the universe has been built enough that you can’t just inject an evil mega-powerful satanic space wizard that no one has even hinted at having heard of before now and expect us to believe he’s influential enough that he’s got an entire population of fanatical space Nazis willing to do whatever he wants at the drop of a hat.

The origins of the First Order are somewhat explained in supplementary books, and that’s where everyone is expecting Snoke’s backstory to be expounded upon. It’s not uncommon for fans to be referred to a book or comic for a more detailed explanation of a plot point or character motivation. But it shouldn’t be this way. You shouldn’t have to read a spin-off book or comic in order to understand what’s going on in the main story. You shouldn’t expect that important information about the story you’re watching will be relegated to a book. Snoke and the First Order’s rise to power are pretty much gaping Plot Holes at this point, and telling fans they just have to read the spin-offs to comprehend basic worldbuilding ideas is a lazy way to avoid admitting they just didn’t do the work to construct a story that made sense in a pre-established universe.

What’s frustrating is that this is becoming more and more common with media. In my essay on Hellboy I mentioned¹ that the Hellboy stories do this as well, with the actual ending of the Plot. The story of the end of the world and the attack of the Ogdru Jahad, the main antagonists of Hellboy’s story arc, is carried over into the spin-off B.P.R.D., so if you want to know how the world is saved, well screw you, you’ve got to catch up years’ worth of issues in a whole ‘nother long-running comic series with its own cast of characters and subplots.

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed also had this problem. Since Assassin’s Creed III 2012, there’s been an ongoing modern-day story tying everything together about how the ancient entity Juno is trying to take over the world. Last we saw in 2015, Juno had started building up a cult of followers, and was about to gain the means to gain a physical body. This past year saw the release of Assassin’s Creed: Origins, in which…Juno was completely absent, and in fact is never alluded to by any of the characters. It’s assumed by the fanbase that the whole ‘ancient AI goddess thing gaining a body to try to take over the world’ has been relegated to the plot of the spin-off comics, Assassin’s Creed: Uprising. And that tracks, as the last comic ended with Juno’s followers seemingly about to secure a body for her. This is all a bit frustrating because Ubisoft essentially decided that it’s better to take care of the series’s actual Plot and Big Bad in a spin-off.

I get that when there’s a massive story going on, you don’t have time for every detail to be in the story. Things will get pushed aside to make way for important story points. That’s fine. And if you’ve got the ability to make spin-off comics and books and whatnot, you can use those to expand on side characters or do worldbuilding that the main entries in the series won’t have the time to develop. That’s also fine. All of these series do that, and I have no complaints. But then they also relegate important information to the spin-offs that the audience needs if they want any sort of resolution to a major storyline or a clue as to what the hell is going on and why people are fighting in the first place.

And you know what? I also understand that a lot of times companies have talented writers and artists working on these spin-offs, and they want to make sure they get recognition by pointing fans in that direction to make sure they get their due. But that can be done by making those spin-offs actually really good, capable of standing on their own merits, instead of shoving necessary material to them out of laziness.

I shouldn’t be asking myself where I can find out howthe First Order and Snoke came from while watching Star Wars, or what happened to Juno’s plot to take over the world in Assassin’s Creed, or whether or not Hellboy’s enemies are going to succeed in destroying the world. I should have a completed story within the series itself, without having to commit to supplementary material without feeling totally lost. This isn’t rocket science. If you write a story, tell a complete story.

If a bit of information is important to understanding the story or the characters therein, you should put it in the story. I’m not suggesting that you have to spell out everything in a story. Stuff is going to get cut, there are things that really aren’t important enough to dedicate story time to. But you can’t cut out anything that make sense of the story, and you can’t cut out the actual ending of the Plot.

Let’s stop excusing lazy writing with spin-offs.

¹ I do not miss the irony of linking to outside articles for building my argument on why relying on supplementary material for important points is lazy writing. But I’m at least summarizing my earlier relevant points in this article so you don’t have to go to those other articles for the information, so THERE!

Comment [17]

I think the problem with season four of Sherlock is escalation.

There have been plenty of articles and posts written across the Internet about “Where Sherlock went wrong,” and I think most of those have merit and make good points. Yes, the focus on being rare and cinematic instead of having a consistent series of quieter character development hurt the series in the long run. Yes, the show’s portrayal of women somehow grows more spectacularly awful as the show goes on¹. And yes, the show justifies its titular character’s obnoxious behavior and attitude, letting him be condescending to his supposed best friend, mostly because he’s the smartest man in the world (other than his brother Mycroft).

But I think the one problem that not a lot of people have talked about with season four of Sherlock is that it represents the problem when a show keeps trying to escalate. Let me explicate:

When you’re writing a series, whether it be a movie, television, book or comic series, there is always the inherent urge to make the next installment of the sequence bigger. That is, the next villain needs to be even Badder, the stakes have to be that much Higher, and the scope of the story needs to be Bigger. The problem with this is, of course, that it’s often difficult to do, especially after you’ve already done a massive and carefully-plotted story arc.

Supernatural had this issue after season five. Season five, after all, was the culmination of everything that went on before it, and was about the Apocalypse. The villain was Lucifer himself, and after he’s defeated, the writers have to ask themselves where do they go from there. The series tried going back to a smaller, monster-of-the-week formula, only to find out that fans didn’t like it, and promptly spent the next couple of years throwing random plots and villains at the viewer hoping that one of them would appease the unpleasable fans. Among these were ‘The Mother of Monsters’, Leviathans, several angelic civil wars, Lucifer being brought back, and God’s evil big sister.

The villains have to be Bigger and Badder, without stopping and realizing that maybe it’s starting to sound ridiculous, that by now they should probably just pack up the show and finish it already. I personally don’t think Supernatural is quite as egregious as some people have suggested, because as a show with millenia of mythologies and folklore to draw from and build on, which means you can pretty much come up with anything and point that it’s drawn from somewhere. Yes, it should have ended by now, but I they’ve got a lot of material to work with so they’ve got potential to make that work.

Something like Sherlock doesn’t have that luxury.

The villain of seasons one and two of Sherlock is, of course, Moriarty. Moriarty is a genius-level intellect, same as Sherlock Holmes, only he decided that the best use of his talents was to become a consulting criminal, helping to fund and arrange illegal enterprises of any kind. After his death, the villain of season three is Charles Augustus Magnussen (based off the Doyle character Milverton ), an international media mogul that can manipulate governments by virtue of his vast memory with which he has catalogued enough blackmail to be able to do whatever he wants without fear of repercussion. And then season four gives us…Eurus.

Who is Eurus? Why, she’s Sherlock’s older sister that has never been mentioned or referenced before she becomes important! In fact, Sherlock subconsciously blocked her from his childhood memories after she murdered one of his friends when he was little. Mycroft had her locked up in a secret government prison because she was so intelligent, and can’t be trusted. Eurus is so smart, guys, that she can predict terrorist attacks from spending an hour on Twitter. Not only that, but she’s got an intellect so high above the average human that she can “reprogram” people (read: brainwash them) just by talking to them. I don’t mean analyzing their psychological insecurities and using those in conversation, I mean just hearing her voice is enough to turn someone into her personal toy. She understands human psychology intimately even though she’s a complete sociopath and has trouble with empathy or even understanding the concept of having pain. She’s been in control of her secret prison for years right under Mycroft’s nose² and even worked with Moriarty to create a death trap obstacle course for her brothers just so she can get some amusement.

Now, if you’re a person with a working brain you might be saying, “Hey, wait a second, that sounds like complete bullshit!” And yeah, you’re right, that’s true. They decided to create a new antagonist who was smarter, deadlier and more unexpected than anything that they did with their previous villains, and in the end they created some sort of comic book supervillain. Which isn’t bad for a superhero story, but for something like Sherlock that’s meant to be set in something closely resembling the real world, having a villain that is able to mind-control people is absurd.

The entire fourth season has this problem of trying to amp up the action. The fourth season’s opening episode, for instance, is much more of a spy thriller than a mystery, for instance, because Moffat and Gatiss thought that was what audiences wanted. Gatiss infamously published a poem claiming that those criticisms are complete bunk because Sherlock Holmes in the original stories was always handy with his fists and able to fight. But I don’t think Sherlock being able to fight was ever the problem, or even the criticism that people were getting at: it was the fact that the plot hinged more on the good guys having to fight and increasingly convoluted international thriller plots, rather than overcoming obstacles with mental prowess and solving mysteries. Sherlock has always dialed things up from the source material, but by season four the show was becoming unrecognizable as Sherlock Holmes stories and felt more like generic action movies.

The season finale doesn’t feel like a spy thriller though; if anything, it feels like Saw. Eurus puts our heroes in a series of torture chambers that she’ll only let them progress through if they follow the circumstances she allows. And of course she kills quite a few people over the course of the episode out of spite and sadism.

It’s not just that she’s a sociopath villain. Sherlock has had plenty of those. It’s that she’s a villain that’s apparently so smart she has mutant powers and no one has a chance of taking her down. The resolution to the story isn’t even killing her, it’s realizing that all she really wanted was the title character to spend time with her, so the last we see is her being content with Sherlock playing violin outside of her cell. That’s right, Eurus is so brilliant, the writers decided she can’t even be killed like almost every other villain the show’s had, because it would be a waste or something.

“How do we raise the stakes of the show?” Gatiss and Moffat asked themselves. Apparently the answer they settled on was “Secret sister with mind-control powers.”

It’s frustrating because the show, in its frantic pursuit of cinematic moments, absolutely shuns making these characters change and deal with the consequences of their actions. John and Sherlock’s relationship never really changes, nor does the show ever indicate to the audience that it’s not okay how abysmally Sherlock treats his flatmate. Molly’s unrequited infatuation with Sherlock goes absolutely nowhere other than to torment her. Whether or not Sherlock and Irene have any future together is only vaguely teased. Mycroft’s failure to keep a leash on Moriarty is never a liability for his job. Lestrade’s personal life is apparently boring enough that the writers don’t care about it. Mrs. Hudson apparently had a past life as the wife of a crime lord but that goes nowhere.

All of these are things that could be developed for drama and suspense and character development. But the show wasn’t actually invested in those, it was invested in becoming bigger than it ever had before whether or not it made any sense. And so instead of having its characters developed and working out their problems through interacting with each other, the show gave us Eurus Holmes.

“She’s so smart she can mind control you by talking!”

NO! NO! Screw you!

¹ The holiday special, set in Victorian England, has suffragettes justifiably angry about being denied the right to vote become violent terrorists, going so far as to copy some of the trappings of the Ku Klux Klan, and then we are told that they are entirely right to do so. This is Angelopolis level of stupid right here.

² A fact Mycroft can’t pick up, despite Moffat and Gatiss insisting he’s so intelligent, but Watson works out in within like five minutes of being on the prison island.

Comment [9]

I know I’m late to the party, but I don’t think Thor: Ragnarok is very good.

Alright before you get to shooting me, I realize that it’s pretty much Internet heresy at this point to suggest that Thor: Ragnarok is not one of the greatest superhero films of all time, and by far the greatest Marvel film. It’s taken critics and audiences by storm for taking the set up for the Thor movies, which so far had been mostly kind of ‘meh,’ and turning it into a hilarious galactic/mythological adventure. Everyone adored it.

Except me, apparently.

Alright, I’ll admit that at least part of my reaction was that I saw the film after everyone and their mother had, and with all the ranting and raving I’d heard, the movie had big shoes to fill. There was a lot of hype on Thor: Ragnarok and all my friends told me it was fantastic, so going in my expectations might have been too high.

But there were also things that I just didn’t like about the film. Honestly they made me somewhat angry about the movie and its reception. Thor: Ragnarok is not a great film; I don’t even know if I’d call it a good film. And I stand by that assessment. I’m not writing this to tell you that you should hate this movie, or that you are dumb for liking it. I just hope to point out that this isn’t exactly the glorious cinematic masterpiece that everyone says it is.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

The thing that stuck out to me the most about the film was how it just wasn’t very good at maintaining any serious tone. There were serious moments, to be sure, but they were almost all undercut by comedic moments and lines. The jokes were funny, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t change that they should not have been in some of those moments. It wasn’t even really dark humor, it was just humor that showed that the makers of the film refused to take the story seriously at any point. Thor, the Asgardian prince, the hero and the defender of his people, is being kidnapped and tortured, all the while he’s desperately trying to get back home so he can protect his people and his friends…and we’re all laughing at how hilarious it is that he’s being slapped around by slavers.

“The hero’s been enslaved and tortured and can’t help the home he loves from being taken over by a homicidal maniac! Tee-hee!”

When Hulk finally turns back into Bruce Banner, we find out that he’s been that way since Age of Ultron, and that he’s afraid that if he transforms into Hulk again, he’ll never be able to turn back. He utterly despises becoming the Hulk, the fact that he might have hurt people, but Thor only talks nicely to him because he needs his help, makes it clear he prefers Hulk to Banner, and the film makes light of the fact that Hulk has killed dozens in the arena, something that would horrify Bruce Banner When he sees that the people of Asgard are in trouble and he’s the only one that can help, he bravely leaps into Fenrir’s path to stop…and flops on the Bitfrost, unconscious, as he hasn’t transformed yet. He then transforms into the Hulk and the fight begins in earnest. He actually goes so far as to try to fight the giant Surtur, and is hilariously slapped away and Thor has to call him off.

“This guy might spend the rest of his life as a murderous alternate personality he despises, and the only familiar face he has around him doesn’t care! Tee-hee!”

The end of the film sees Asgard itself destroyed, but we’re all just chuckling because as the people of Asgard are watching the only home they’ve only known be destroyed, Korg has some funny lines. He tells them that they can still be rebuilt as long as the foundations are there. Right after he says that, on cue, Asgard is completely obliterated and nothing is left, prompting him to correct himself.

“These people are watching their home world be destroyed! Tee-hee!”

It isn’t just that there are jokes to lighten what should be a dark movie. If we were just talking about comic relief, I’d let it slide, but this goes beyond that. Thor: Ragnarok absolutely refuses to take these moments seriously, and that’s a problem. If the film doesn’t take these issues seriously, then why should we? I’ve seen tons of people deride 2017’s Justice League for having problems with consistent tone, but Thor: Ragnarok was by far much worse. The Asgardians are watching their home being obliterated, and we’re invited to laugh at it because Korg said something stupid.

It seems as if the film has trouble taking anything seriously, with seemingly every other line being a joke. Turns out the portal that they need to use to escape Sakaar? Is called ‘the Devil’s Anus.’ That’s…not even particularly clever or really something that makes much sense in-context of the setting. But hey, we needed a butt joke, I guess.

Moving aside from the humor, there are Plot Holes you could drive a truck through. Mind you, plenty of superhero movies have this to a degree, but Thor: Ragnarok has them by the bucketload. The new villain, Hela, is Odin’s eldest daughter, whom absolutely no one has ever mentioned before this point? In the hundreds of years Thor and Loki spent in Asgard, no one ever mentioned or thought about the fact that they had an older sister? Given Asgardian lifespans, it’s downright impossible that there would be no one else who knew about Hela, especially when we find out that she’s the one who wiped out the Valkyries (which both Loki and Thor have heard of). The surviving Valkyrie is definitely nowhere near as old as Odin, so there are Asgardians within living memory who should be familiar with Hela.

We’re explicitly told that time is different on Sakaar, I guess, but that doesn’t actually mean anything other than “We don’t want to explain why Loki’s here earlier than Thor.” As far as anyone can tell Hela’s takeover of Asgard is happening alongside Thor’s adventures in a parallel fashion; no time shenanigans here. It seems more like a handwave to say that the film’s not interested in making a coherent backstory or timeline rather than anything else.

And there’s also no reason that Hela didn’t kill Valkyrie (a character who the film doesn’t bother to even give an actual name)? We see that a blonde valkyrie takes a shot for her, but there isn’t any reason Hela would miss that there was another valkyrie right behind her? It’s unclear as to why she’s not dead.

I think most of all though, this film does not care about character. Valkyrie’s reaction to be the last surviving member of her order is essentially to become an alcoholic slaver who sends her innocents to be killed in the arena, yet we’re meant to overlook this because she’s an Asgardian upset at Hela. The Warriors Three, who by all earlier accounts are among Thor’s best friends and valiant fighters, are killed off with little fanfare by Hela, and Thor doesn’t hear this news, much less mourn their deaths. Sif is not in the film, due to Jaimie Alexander having commitments with her show Blindspot, but she also isn’t even mentioned making her role as one of the supporting characters of the franchise kind of moot.

Character arcs are kind of ignored for the most part, really. The Grandmaster, for instance, is just some guy. He’s a villain, I guess, but Thor doesn’t have any particular enmity for him, nor does he care about Thor much at all except as a gladiator. There’s a rebellion against him by the people of Sakaar, but Thor, Loki and Valkyrie have nothing to do with that and don’t care about it other than a means to suit their own ends. His downfall is relegated to an after-credits gag, because that’s all the Grandmaster is: a gag. He doesn’t contribute much to the Plot, he doesn’t have any thematic meaning, he doesn’t mean anything to the characters, he’s just there because Jeff Goldblum is funny.

Hela is also a rather boring villain, for all the fans’ assertions that she’s not. Yes, she reveals the problematic nature of Odin’s empire and all, but as a character, Hela’s one trait is that she’s a homicidal maniac. I’ve seen some try to point out that she’s evidence of Odin’s terrible parenting, but honestly it just seems that Hela’s always been a homicidal maniac. She never shows herself capable of anything else. There’s no indication that she was once not willing to murder people, that Odin turned her into a weapon, or that she has any soft side at all. The only other argument I’ve heard for why she’s a great character is that she’s a female villain, as if that in and of itself makes her interesting. She’s not complex, she’s just…another murder-happy villain.

I’m not against any of these things: important characters can be killed to great effect, dickish characters can be redeemed, absent characters can be written out, and villains can be simple. But the movie doesn’t bother writing these things in any coherent fashion. Valkyrie’s redemption arc is just plain skipped, Sif isn’t mentioned, and the Warriors Three are just cannon fodder for the villain. The villains are just there to be threats or to be jokes, with no connection to the heroes at all (in the Grandmaster’s case) or to be a onenote monster to be put down (as Hela’s case). I understand that when making a movie series, one does not have the time and liberties that something like a television series has when it comes to giving time to characterization, because important cinematic moments have to be the main draw of the film. But this movie didn’t even try to write in these issues.

There are continuity issues to contend with as well. The film seems to establish that the Asgardians, or at least the ones of the royal family, are actually gods. Odin calls them gods, and a major plot point is that Thor’s power isn’t in his hammer, but within himself. This is in direct contradiction to the previous Thor films in which their powers are implied and at times outright explained as advanced technology. Odin even says at the beginning of the second Thor film that they aren’t gods. It’s a retcon I don’t mind so much because I like this take on the characters much better, and the ‘sufficiently advanced aliens’ thing only went so far in making any sense. But it’s a glaring retcon, and pokes holes all through continuity when it comes to these characters and their universe.

“But Juracan! This movie fixes the Plot Hole with the Infinity Gauntlet being in Odin’s treasure room! That’s good continuity!”

Yeah, but did it need to? The Infinity Gauntlet appearing in the first Thor film was an Easter Egg. That fans were frothing at the mouth about the continuity of this one artifact appearing in one shot of a movie continues to boggle my mind. It’s an Easter Egg, not a Plot Hole. That doesn’t stop big sites like IGN calling the Infinity Gauntlet’s appearance “Marvel’s Biggest Plot Hole.”

And even if it was, does that change that Thor: Ragnarok is a mess of a movie? It doesn’t care about the seriousness of the events handled, it doesn’t care about its characters, it doesn’t care about continuity, but before Black Panther it was lauded by many critics and fans as the best Marvel film, because…it’s funny, I guess? I am baffled guys. It’s an enjoyable and competently-made film, at best, but it’s not great, and it’s not the best Marvel’s ever done by a longshot. I’m honestly confused why critics loved this movie as much as they did when it’s so amateur in executing its narrative.

Comment [21]

Before we start I want to give a shout-out to my Tumblr friend’s new spork of Tiger’s Curse that you guys can check out here. Let’s wish her well in her efforts to cover that monstrosity of a novel.

So…let’s talk about The Iron Druid Chronicles.

When you get into a certain genre or subgenre, there are certain titles that always pop up in recommendation lists. In urban fantasy, that book is invariably The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. And after you read those, Kevin Hearne’s Irond Druid Chronicles is almost always mentioned as an alternative. The problem is I don’t think it’s very good. In fact, there are times when it’s pretty bad. Hence this sporking.

Right now, I’m going to be sporking the first book of the series, titled Hounded.. It’s a weird male power fantasy book that I think makes all sorts of narrative blunders. Invincible hero? Check. Shoddy exposition and worldbuilding? Check. Awkward attempts at humor? Check. Forced pop culture references? Check. It’s all there.

Before we get started though, I want to give a quick disclaimer: this isn’t Angelopolis. This isn’t going as angry as the Angelopolis sporking. Because while I think Hounded is not very good and doesn’t deserve its reputation as one of the leading books in urban fantasy, it’s not that bad. It’s not until later in the series that we get to the really bad stuff. Angelopolis is a different level of shockingly bad storytelling and I don’t think anything will ever make me that angry again (unless Trussoni actually writes a sequel). So if you’re expecting hair-pulling insanity like in that spork, you’re not really going to get it here.

The biggest problem with Hounded is that it’s overstuffed; the author can’t stop shoving material in, whether it be more worldbuilding and monsters or just telling the audience completely useless information. His main character Atticus just can’t shut up. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

So without further ado, let’s begin the first book in the series, Hounded.

Our story begins with our hero reminiscing on the past:

There are many parks to living for twenty-one centuries, and foremost among them is bearing witness to the rare birth of genius. It invariably goes like this: Someone shrugs off the weight of his cultural traditions, ignores the baleful stares of authority, and does something his countrymen think to be completely batshit insane. Of those Galileo was my personal favorite. Van Gogh comes in second, but he really was batshit insane.

Alright I’ll admit this isn’t a great start for me, because Galileo Galilei is one of those topics that’s one of my berserk buttons, because everyone gets the story wrong. I invite you to look at The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown for more details. Mind you, Atticus doesn’t really go into Galileo’s work, or why he liked him, other than that everyone at the time thought he was crazy. The implication that he knew Van Gogh is also a bit weird, because if an immortal druid were friends with the depressed artist you’d think he’d have helped him with his financial woes, but apparently not; and as we don’t get any indication that Atticus really likes art it’s not clear why he’s mentioned. In fact, this aside about Galileo and Van Gogh has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the story, so for us to open with the character talking about how he met Galileo and Van Gogh is a bit weird.

Leading to the next paragraph and a minor nitpick on my part.

Thank the Goddess I don’t look like a guy who met Galileo—or who saw Shakespeare’s plays when they first debuted or rode with the hordes of Genghis Khan.

Why does every immortal in fiction happen to have met everyone famous? Why was Atticus in England in the Elizabethan Era? Why was he in Italy when Galileo was demanding everyone accept heliocentrism without proof of noticeable parallax shifts? Why was he a member of the Mongols, killing enough people they lowered humanity’s carbon footprint?

[shrugs] I dunno.

When writing immortal characters, having them mention the famous people they interacted with is common shorthand for giving you quick backstory, but it’s always struck me as being lazy. Why would an immortal magic character, who probably doesn’t want to attract too much attention to himself, go around in public with the people who were the equivalents of the biggest-name celebrities of the time? And they all happen to be the ones that are famous in the modern English-speaking world. Immortals in fiction don’t hang out with Yi Sun-Sin, or Jack Churchill, or Saint Machar, or Miguel Enriquez, or Zoroaster, many of whom are people who were also famous or notable in their times but are virtually unknown to the Average Joe in the US. Instead authors always go with names you can recognize even if you failed history in middle school. It’s lazy.

And from reading the rest of the book, it’s not like Atticus seems particularly like he cares about science, so why he would hang out with Galileo is beyond me, nor does he seem to care about theater, so why does he watch Shakespeare plays? He can fight, but he doesn’t seem like the type to make a career out of it, so why was he hanging out with the Golden Horde? Being an Irish druid is a huge part of this identity it seems, and it doesn’t seem like any of those three settings are places he’d fit. So why was he there in those places? Wouldn’t it make sense for him, as a druid, to be more interested in historical personages that displayed spirituality or particular connection to the earth? Or to spend time with Irish historical figures that made a huge difference? Instead of…everything else he’s done?

[shrugs] I dunno. And it has nothing to with the Plot other than showing that Atticus is immortal in the laziest way possible.

Anyhow, Atticus explains that he appears as a young man (the “young-Irish-lad facade” he calls it) and he runs an occult bookshop and apothecary in Tempe, Arizona for a living. Which… isn’t a bad idea. As he explains, the wildest assumption people ever get from looking at him is when they see the Celtic tattoos on his arm, and even then they probably think he’s a stoner or a punk. He says that sometimes he loses himself and does weird things like “sing shepherd tunes in Aramaic while I’m waiting in line at Starbucks” which, again, raises questions like, “When and why did he learn Aramaic?” and “Why does he know shepherd songs?” but that’s conveniently ignored.

Why does he live in Arizona? Well according to him, it’s because America, and Arizona in particular, is “practically godless.” Which, uh, is only sort of true? This is another one of those urban fantasy serieses that runs on the oh-so-tired cliche of “mythological beings exist because people believe in them” (we’ll discuss this more at length in a later chapter) so considering that there should be more mythologicals in Arizona than Atticus gives credit for.

So fun fact, Tempe is right next to Phoenix, Arizona, a city which is over 60% Christian. So there’s that. But even if Christian God is non-interventionist, you’re also only about three hours from the border of Mexico, meaning any lingering Mayan or Aztec gods are probably kicking around. You’re also only about half an hour from the Gila River Indian Community, a Native American reservation, and any traditional beliefs they’ve retained would be powering some of their gods. Atticus mentions the “occasional encounter with Coyote” as if he’s the only Native American deity in the Southwest. While he’s the most famous, there are a few others, like, say, Spider Grandmother and Kokopelli

Basically, yeah, maybe the American Southwest is less god-filled than the Roman empire that he mentions, but it’s not godless by a longshot.

Atticus also says that he likes Coyote because—

(He’s nothing like Thor, for one thing, and that right there means we’re going to get along fine. The local college kids would describe Thor as a “major asshat” if they ever had the misfortune to meet him.)

This sets up the conflict with Thor, because in Hearne’s books, everyone, and I mean everyone hates Thor’s guts.

This also sets up a running thing where Atticus informs the audience or other characters of some euphemism or expression and saying “This is what the kids are saying these days,” which isn’t objectively bad writing yet but still feels stupid to me because he says it so often.

But not only is Arizona lacking gods, it’s lacking faeries! Of course there’s MOAR exposition explaining that he doesn’t mean little pixies with wings, he means the Sidhe, creatures of Celtic mythology. In Hearne’s universe they are descendants of the Irish gods, the Tuatha de Danann, but to get to the human world they need oak, ash and thorn, which are trees that don’t really pop up a lot in Arizona. Which is good, because they hate Atticus.

You think now the Plot gets started, right? Nope, Atticus is going to tell us that he set up a new identity in Tempe, that his bookshop is called ‘Third Eye Books and Herbs’

(an allusion to Vedic and Buddhist beliefs, because I thought a Celtic name would bring up a red flag to those searching for me)

Yes, thank you for explaining the origin of the idea of a third eye. Heaven forbid you don’t explain everything to us. Like, yeah, I think it’s kind of clever that he avoids naming his bookshop something Celtic, but at the same time he goes around looking like a stereotypical Irishman with an Irish name, so it falls flat. And this information could easily have been delivered in dialogue rather than told to us.

His bookshop is…well, have you walked into a New Age-y store? It’s like that.

I sold crystals and Tarot cards to college kids who wanted to shock their Protestant parents, scores of ridiculous tomes with “spells” in them for lovey-dovey Wiccans, and some herbal remedies for people looking to make an end run around the doctor’s office. I even stocked extensive works on Druid magic, all of them based on Victorian revivals, all of them utter rubbish, and all vastly entertaining to me whenever I sold any of them Maybe once a month I had a serious magical customer looking for a genuine grimoire, stuff you don’t

[snore]

I’m sorry, did I miss something? I don’t care! You can’t just dump information about his day job on my face and expect me to find it interesting. This book is about a Druid fighting an ancient Irish god and it starts with an infodump? These are long paragraphs of Atticus winging on about his life and I don’t care!

Finally the Plot starts, after Atticus reminisces about how having a stereotypical Irish name and being searchable on the Internet means people can find him if they want to, even if it never occurred to him that immortal supernatural beings even know what the Internet is, because the gods are stupid I guess. Anyhow some faeries attack him outside his bookstore on his lunchbreak.

It’s not so bad though because Atticus has a magical amulet that makes him deadly to touch for faeries!

Wait, did I not mention that before?

Well neither did Atticus.

That’s not quite deus ex machina because it’s the first chapter of the book, and this is the setup of this plot element, but that’s probably one of the first things I’d have mentioned in this introductory exposition dump, rather than that he helped kill half of Asia or that he knows Aramaic songs.

Right, anyhow, so five faeries jump Atticus at work.

AND THEN THEY FIGHT!

He barely dodges a sword attack and jabs a faerie in the face, and because of his cold iron amulet it kills that guy. He explains that he’s been training in unarmed combat (with vampires, because those are also a thing in this universe now). However, the action abruptly stops to describe the faerie hitmen who should, by all means, be beating the snot out of him while he’s studying them. Basically, they used glamour to disguise themselves as cross-country runners and their weapons (swords and spears) as brooms. Atticus explicitly compares them to Orlando Bloom’s portrayal of Legolas (I should make a pop culture reference drinking game).

Now logically, these guys would have chosen ranged weapons like bows, and sniped the crap out of Atticus the minute he stepped outdoors, instead of this up-close-and-personal thing where he has a better chance of fighting back. But aw, what the heck, a fight scene’s a fight scene, right? I’m not going to hold it against Hearne if he wanted a cool fight scene.

Atticus dodges two spear thrusts and then hits another in the throat, killing him. He blocks a sword strike to the skull, but that results in the sword hitting his arm instead, so he’s got an arm wound that “bit down to the bone.” He hits the guy who cut him though, and that guy goes down.

My cold iron amulet was bound to my aura, and by now they could no doubt see it: I was some sort of Iron Druid, their worst nightmare made flesh. My first victim was already disintegrating into ash, and the other two were close to realizing that all we are is dust in the wind.

I could do without the song lyrics, really. The title drop for the series was cool though, I guess.

I think it’s kind of disturbing though that he’s so nonchalant about the fact that to faeries he’s basically radioactive? They touch him, and they die. And he seems to take a certain pleasure out of it. I suppose with Atticus implying that he is apparently being attacked by faeries constantly it’s understandable that he’s not sympathetic to their plight, but it’s still a bit…disconcerting. I mean he even refers to the first guy he killed here as his “victim” which, like, he wasn’t—Atticus was the one being attacked, killing the faerie was just self-defense.

We’ll talk more about this specific power later.

Atticus kicks off his sandals so that he can get his feet on the ground. Because you see, Druids get their power from the earth, and so if he can heal his arm. He can’t heal it instantly (he says that will take time he can’t afford right now), but he can stop the bleeding. I’m a bit mixed on this. Because on the one hand, I like that the protagonist has healing powers that don’t work instantly. That means that any wound he sustains in a fight will actually hinder him to some capacity. But at the same time, we do know that it will be completely healed sooner or later so there might not really be any permanent wounds in the series.

I don’t want to constantly be comparing the series to Dresden Files buuuuut…. When Harry gets a wound, it’s not permanent, but it does stick for a while. He burns his hand in one book and that’s a thing for quite some time. In Iron Druid it’ll stick for…maybe a couple of chapters, is all.

Anyhoo, when Atticus falls to the ground to get some healing power, he also sends out a message to a local iron elemental that just happens to be around. The iron elemental will eat the faeries, but it’ll take a couple of minutes, so Atticus stalls by asking the remaining faeries if they meant to capture or kill him. One of them answers by demanding to know where the sword is. When Atticus asks for clarification, he specifies that he’s looking for the sword Fragarach, the Answerer, which is this book’s Plot McGuffin.

[To Kevin Hearne’s credit, he includes a pronunciation guide in the front of the book, so I can tell you that Fragarach pronounced “FRAG-ah-rah.”]

Atticus denies knowing what they’re talking about, and asks who sent them. The faeries point out that the guy who can see through glamour and has Celtic tattoos is probably the dude they’re looking for. Atticus counters that lots of people in the paranormal community could have both of those features, and that if he had a magic sword he’d have used it by now. He then suggests to the faeries that they’re just cannon fodder, and that they’ve been sent there to die.

The faeries are offended by this, as they were sent by someone of their own family, revealing that the villain of the book is…“Aenghus Óg?”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRfmFdaBdyk

Wait….the Irish god of love? Youth? Beauty? Poetic inspiration? That guy?

Aenghus is a really weird choice for a villain, but okay I guess.

Atticus tells the faeries that Aenghus Óg “tricked his own father out of his home” which is true (the story can be read in his Wikipedia article), but, like, his father (Dagda) was also a god so it’s not like he would have much trouble finding another. This is also after Dagda divied up the lands to give all his sons homes and somehow forgot to give one to Aenghus. So, it’s douchey, yeah, but it’s not as clear cut as “Aenghus screws over his family on a regular basis.” There’s another story in which Aenghus killed a dude because he trash-talked his brother Ogma; clearly family matters to him.

Atticus continues and points out that the way Aenghus would know if his faerie scouts found Atticus would be if they didn’t come back, because Atticus would obviously kill them. If they did come back, they clearly didn’t find him. The faeries realize that this is probably true, and that’s right when the iron elemental shows up.

The bars along the wall of my shop had melted silently apart behind them and morphed into jaws of sharp iron teeth. The giant black maw reached out for them and snapped closed, scissoring through the faeries’ flesh as if it were cottage cheese, and then they were inhaled like Jell-O, with time only for a startled, aborted scream.

I got a message from the iron elemental before it faded away, in the short bursts of emotions and imagery that they use for language: //Druid calls / Faeries await / Delicious / Gratitude//

So, uh, yeah. Fight’s over now.

I remember reading this and thinking that Atticus comes across as overpowered. And it sort of makes sense that the beginner’s mooks don’t cause him any trouble. He is, after all, immortal and in shape and he’s used to people trying to kill him. But it’s still… I dunno, too easy? It’s not just that he can fend them off, he kills them by touching them, he can heal from their attacks with no complications and he can call up an iron elemental to eat the faeries he didn’t kill. If it was one of those things I don’t think I would be bothered.

But Atticus has all of those things on his side.

It doesn’t read like a beginning fight. It’s not as if Aenghus is going to show up angry about his descendants being killed. None of them have angry family members or friends come to avenge them. None of them escaped to haunt Atticus through the rest of the story. Atticus points out that they’re cannon fodder, and…that’s about it. They’re there to be killed quickly and easily.

It’s not bad that a book begins with a fight that protagonist wins. It’s really not. But there are ways to do it, and this is not really it. The urban fantasy book Chasing Embers opens with the centuries-old hero fighting off an old enemy, and he gets out of it easily enough to fly away though it seemed as if he at least had to exert some effort. I don’t get that impression in Hounded. Yes, he gets wounded, but he tells the audience immediately afterward that he’ll heal it with no trouble at all other than he has to wait a bit.

Our hero is ambushed, and has no doubt whatsoever that he’ll come out of it okay. It might not be that bad if it later in the book the monsters and enemies get progressively harder and so this fight is a contrast: at first he feels nigh-invincible, but then as time goes on the villains get smarter and more powerful, so he has to adapt and doesn’t always do it as quickly. Except basically every fight in this book goes like this one. Maybe there’s a minor setback, but for the most part he stomps through everything.

So that’s our first chapter. Join us next time when the Irish deity of violent death drops into Atticus’s shop and proceeds to flirt with him.

Comment [20]

So the new God of War was released for Playstation 4 a couple of months ago, and it features the return of the series’s protagonist Kratos as he and his son Atreus explores the worlds of Norse mythology. The game is, surprisingly, not a revenge quest of any sort; the Plot is that Kratos’s wife has died and he and his son are fulfilling her final request of spreading her ashes from the top of the highest mountain in the worlds. Sure, there’s a lot of killing on the way, but the killing isn’t the point anymore.

For the most part the game has received high praise from critics, especially in regards to Kratos’s character development. For the first time in years, the main character in God of War is actually a likable person, and you don’t feel bad about playing as him. It’s actually rather touching to see Kratos bonding with his son and trying to teach him to learn from his mistakes over the course of the story instead of mutilating other people who are in his way with little provocation.

Weirdly enough, there are some fans of the original trilogy that take issue with both the new characterization and the critical praise it’s attracted. I’ve heard quite a lot of the accusation “This isn’t God of War anymore!” with people suggesting that the series lost its identity because it no longer featured an obsessively angry man screaming and violently murdering almost everyone he came across. I’ve also heard, “They’ve changed Kratos to a completely different character!” because they miss the old personality. For most other stories I’d understand this defensiveness against an extreme shift in direction, but for God of War it troubles me more than anything else.

The problem with these accusations of God of War not being the same is that, from a writing perspective, that’s objectively for the best. These people are essentially saying that they’re upset that Kratos is no longer murdering defenseless people who have yet to actually do something to deserve it. It’d be like if you got mad at your friend for no longer beating his wife because “It’s not how you used to be, it’s just not the same anymore.” These old school fans are acting like the new game commits the crime of not being manly enough, but that’s not what’s happened here. Kratos by the time of God of War III wasn’t just a testosterone-filled Macho Man, he was such a deranged monster that even the developers of the games didn’t like him anymore. He kills several gods for the crime of being in his way, and in doing so breaks the world, causing the sun to go black, the seas to flood, plagues of insects and disease to spread and storms to erupt unchecked.

I mean yeah, when it’s all done he feels bad about it, but only after he’s already killed Zeus and completely apocalypse’d the world. Nowhere on his quest does he start to think maybe he’s gone too far and should stop killing characters who at their core only want to defend their home and the world from a rampaging monster that keeps brutally murdering their family members and even carries around one of their heads as a trophy. Aside from giving “Hope” back to the mortals he doesn’t try to fix the world in any tangible way.

And I mean yeah, he feels bad about killing the girl who reminds him of his daughter, yeah he feels bad about killing the other guy who wanted to protect the girl who reminds him of his daughter, but this is all juxtaposed with him slaughtering gods and mortals who committed the capital crime of trying to defend themselves and their home. Feeling bad about being an omnicidal monster doesn’t count for anything unless it actually stops you from being an omnicidal monster.

So in a way, they’re right. The new game is not the same God of War, and it’s not the same Kratos. But that’s good, because the old Kratos was actually a monster by the end of it and making the player actively take part in his bloody rampages was plain disturbing.

Compare this to the PS4 God of War, in which Kratos deliberately avoids killing anyone who isn’t actively trying to kill him at the time. His son Atreus even convinces him (or rather, you, the player, who is controlling him) to go out of his way to try to help people on side quests. When Kratos finds an opponent who is down and helpless, he goes so far as to say to his son, who wants to finish the job, “He’s beaten, he’s not a threat anymore,” and try to let them live. Kratos doesn’t even kill the final boss of the game until he starts strangling one of their friends. It’s self-defense, more than anything. “We must be better,” he says, trying to show his son how not to make the same mistakes he did, not to be consumed by rage and bloodlust. There’s not only regret, there’s an active effort to be a better person and make the world a better place.

The change in tone and characterization isn’t the only thing I’ve seen people in a snit about. Some people argue, such as this YouTuber in this video rather angrily titled GOD OF WAR WAS ALWAYS DEEP YOU COWARDS!, that the entire series had always had depth and that Kratos had always had this level of awareness. The soft side of Kratos was always there, the argument is; after all, he feels bad about his dead family a lot, and he feels a paternal bond to Pandora (aforementioned girl who reminds him of his daughter) and doesn’t want to sacrifice her to kill Zeus like he’s been told to. Which…is a pretty stupid argument, because all of these supposedly “soft moments” are juxtaposed with Kratos unrepentantly murdering people right and left. As Yahtzee puts it in Zero Punctuation:

There’s a whole sideplot where you have to rescue a little girl and she reminds Kratos of his dead daughter and that he thinks he can be redeemed through her, all the while still holding the disembodied head of Helios, which he tore off to use as his own personal flashlight.

[Which makes it all the more disconcerting that Yahtzee himself said that he didn’t like how the new God of War was different than the last few, being yet another of the gamers claiming the series has lost its identity.]

It takes more than the protagonist muttering “What have I done?” to make an interesting and sympathetic character, people! Kratos’s entire “Revenge on Zeus!” plot is built on the fact that Zeus put him down because he wouldn’t stop going around Greece slaughtering people for no reason. This is something Kratos never apologizes or atones for, because right after Zeus kills him he gets freed from the Underworld and goes on a quest to kill the Fates so he can kill Zeus. Kratos doesn’t grow as a person, he just becomes angrier and more obscenely violent. Look, I’m more sympathetic to the protagonist of Arawn, and he’s the king of Hell! At least in that comic, Arawn executes this horrible violence mostly on people who are even more evil than he is, so you don’t feel bad about him doing it. But Kratos continues to get worse and worse and somehow there are people who think that this is a sympathetic character?

There’s a segment where the video talks about Calliope, Kratos’s daughter, who, in one of the games appears in the Underworld and Kratos acts like a doting father when he’s around her. Which…doesn’t make sense and doesn’t fit very well with Kratos as a character. Even before he goes full on ominicidal, Kratos was a Spartan military officer and had obvious issues with anger and cared more about conquest than spending time with his family. Claiming that Kratos was also a sweet, loving father and also a cold-hearted military man who refused to listen to his wife’s pleas to spend more time at home…isn’t good writing, and the video using it as an argument falls flat.

[That video I linked to earlier also declares that God of War did the nigh impossible by adapting Greek mythology into a story for modern audiences, working on the false assumptions that A) God of War is an accurate adaptation of Greek myths and B) no other piece of fiction has adapted Greek myth into a cohesive story for modern audiences.]

I haven’t even gotten to detailing all of the Sue-ish aspects of his character in the first few games (again). Let’s not kid ourselves, Kratos in the original God of War trilogy is a quite a Mary Sue. He goes up against the Fates, the embodiments of fortune and destiny, who can rewrite reality on a whim and travel through time, and still manages to kill them so that the player can feel macho about killing powerful women, I guess. Kratos dies several times and simply fights his way out of the underworld, because Kratos is so manly he can’t even stay dead. He has sex with countless women because we wouldn’t want to think that women wouldn’t throw themselves at a pale, ugly, scarred bastard with a permanent scowl on his face. Ghost of Sparta actually has a mini-game in which streams of women in a brothel throw themselves into his bed for a chance to sleep with him. In the same game Kratos fights, defeats, and ends up killing the Greek personification of Death. By the end of the Greek part of the saga he’s less a complex character and more a male power fantasy, but only written by and for men who haven’t interacted with other human beings in any meaningful way for years.

Put plainly, stripped of all the dressing: in the original series, Kratos is a man who’s so manly that women flock to be his lover, yet he’s also powerful enough to kill things that by definition cannot be killed. And yet some God of War fans are acting like replacing this with a likable and sympathetic protagonist whose reality doesn’t break to cater to his violent and sexual urges is a bad thing?

Call me silly, but the original God of War series doesn’t strike me as good writing.

And call me squeamish, but I don’t understand why there are people arguing that they’d rather be playing as a character that kills people as they’re begging for their lives. For whatever reason I’d rather play as a character who, while having a past full of doing unequivocally terrible things, is actually trying to do better and raising his son to be a better man than he was.

Comment [7]

I want to reiterate that you guys should go and check out my friend’s sporking of Tiger’s Curse over here.

Onto chapter 2!

So in the last chapter, some faeries jumped Atticus and they had a fight, but he defeated them because he’s got a Plot Device that lets him kill faeries by touching them. Also, he knows an iron elemental who shows up and eats the leftover faeries and never shows up in the Plot of this book again. There are no witnesses to this massive sword fight because…Reasons, I guess.

I looked around to see who might have witnessed the fight, but there wasn’t anyone close by—it was lunchtime. My shop is just south of University on Ash Avenue, and all the food places are north of University, up and down both Ash and Mill Avenues.

Look I get that maybe there wouldn’t be a crowd of people around, but there should be a risk of someone being around. No one was around? At all? Looking out their window, maybe? I’ve looked at Ash Avenue on Google Maps. It’s not not too out of the way. This is a nitpick more than anything else, because having witnesses would add another subplot to an already overstuffed novel, but it’s weird. Not impossible, mind you, but strange.

So Atticus goes back inside his shop after the fight, picking up weapons and flipping his sign to say ‘OPEN’ instead of ‘OUT TO LUNCH.’ He hasn’t actually had lunch, which isn’t a criticism but I’d be super hungry if I were Atticus.

Oh and his arm his fine.

Heading over to my tea station, I filled a pitcher with water and checked my arm. It was still red and puffy from the cut but doing well, and I had the pain firmly shut down. Still, I didn’t think I should risk tearing the muscles further by asking them to carry water for me; I’d have to make two trips.

Yeah, so a sword to the arm? It’s almost healed by the next chapter. I’m not saying I’d like the main character to be permanently maimed, but I thought it’d be cool if his injuries stuck around for a little longer. You don’t even have to discard the magic healing powers! Just slow it down a bit. As it is, I know none of his injuries will stick, so it just feels as if there’s nothing to really slow our hero down.

Atticus cleans his wound and takes the blood stains out of his clothes, and then a crow flies in and lands “on a bust of Ganesha.” Why Ganesha, the Hindu god of knowledge and Remover of Obstacles? [shrugs] I dunno. I mean I get this is a New Age store, and if you’ve ever been to one of those there are statues of Hindu gods out the wazoo, especially Ganesha. It’s possible that it’s because this character is going to be a remover of obstacles for Atticus in the rest of the story. If that’s the case I’d call that actually good writing on Hearne’s part. Or maybe it’s coincidence and I’m reading too much into it. Who knows?

Oh and there’s no mystery about who this is because immediately the text tells us who: the Morrigan.

It was Morrigan, Celtic Chooser of the Slain and goddess of war, and she called me by my Irish name. “Siodhachan O Suileabhain,” she croaked dramatically. “We must talk.”

“Can’t you take the form of a human?” I said, placing the pitcher on a rack to dry…. “It’s creepy when you talk to me like that. Bird beaks are incapable of forming fricatives, you know.”

[raises hand] Question: shouldn’t Atticus be used to Morrigan appearing as a crow? As we’ll find out this chapter, they’ve been associates for some time now. Him acting like it’s weird for her to talk as a bird doesn’t make sense considering they’ve known each other as long as they have. Even if he isn’t used to it, this wouldn’t be the first time to tell her this; it wouldn’t take much work to adjust this line to make it fit their context of their relationship.

He could say something like, “How many times do I have to tell you” or something like that. Not hard.

So the Morrigan gives Atticus a dire warning: Aenghus Og knows that he’s here in Tempe!

Admittedly, Atticus responds to this dramatic line exactly how I would: “Well, yes, I already knew that.” He also points out that in Morrigan’s capacity of a psychopomp for those who are killed in battle in Irish mythology, she should know that he knows because she would have taken care of the faeries right outside. The Morrigan said that she did, and that she passed their souls to Manannan Mac Lir, the Irish god who carries souls of the dead to the afterlife, according to this book (if that’s not accurate, don’t blame me, blame Hearne).

Also, Atticus keeps referring to the Irish gods as ‘Celtic.’ We had this discussion in the comments of the last chapter, that ‘Irish’ and ‘Celtic’ are not really the same. Yeah, Irish is a Celtic culture, but it’s not the only one. Normally I’d let it slide, but Atticus refers to Morrigan as “the Celtic Chooser of the Slain,” and Mac Lir as “the Celtic god who escorted the living to the land of the dead.” Does that mean there aren’t any other Celtic pantheons around? Are there no Welsh Celtic gods? Are there not any mainland European Celtic gods? Because while related, those aren’t the same as the Irish Celtic gods. Considering that the next book makes it clear that different versions of every god exist (there are both Greek and Roman pantheons, and every version of Coyote simultaneously exists), the Tuatha De Danann should not be the only Celtic pantheon.

The Morrigan assures Atticus that not only does Aenghus Og know that he’s there, he’s personally coming for his head and might be on his way right now. Atticus asks for the proof, and the Morrigan says that if he waits around for proof, it’ll be too late. At this point Atticus decides then that Aenghus probably isn’t coming at all, that this is “just some vague augury,” and constantly dismisses the Morrigan’s attempts to warn him.

To be fair in-universe, apparently this kind of thing happened before. One time the previous year, the Morrigan flew in claiming that Apollo was offended by Atticus being associated with the local university’s mascot (the Arizona State Sun Devils) and that he was riding over to fill him with arrows. But the actual augury she saw said something like he would be attacked by sharp projectiles, and the only thing that happened was some douchebag pierced his bike’s tires with some darts.

Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. I get that in-universe, Atticus points out that he doesn’t go to the university and so there’s no reason for Apollo to get offended, but…like, first of all the Greek god of the sun was Helios at first, not Apollo. Second, wouldn’t his beef be with the mascot, not with Atticus? This is supposed to portray Morrigan as either overprotective or easily alarmed, but it makes her sound stupid.

Anyhow Atticus asks exactly what prompted this visit, so Morrigan explains that she was talking to Aenghus Og after her trip to Mesopotamia—

“Begging your pardon, but the mortals call it Iraq now,

I should make a drinking game out of this. Every time Atticus says, “Actually in modern day, we say it this way!” take a shot!

Anyway Aenghus Og “told [her] to look to my friends,” which as far as veiled threats go, is pretty darn obvious. Atticus is surprised that Morrigan considers anyone a friend, but she says that while she’s been hanging out with Hecate lately, Aenghus probably meant him.

[Although in a preceding paragraph Atticus mentions the Morrigan is friends with Kali and Valkyries so I don’t know why he’s surprised she has friends?]

Atticus explains to us that the Morrigan and him have a deal: she refuses to come for his soul and take him from the world of the living because it pisses off Aenghus. They apparently hate each other that much. On the one hand, this translates to yet another way in which it’s hard to kill the protagonist. On the other, this is exactly the sort of passive-aggressiveness that I find hilarious from deities. Of course, we’re all hearing this second hand, and so the positive effect is lessened for me.

The Morrigan makes it clear that she wants to be as lazy about this as possible though. Instead of helping Atticus not die in battle, she always counsels him to avoid picking fights in the first place. At the Battle of Gabhra Morrigan explained that if Atticus gets decapitated and doesn’t die, that’ll make her look bad, so she told him to avoid getting killed at all costs. Essentially: I like you, and I’ll help you out, but if you put me in a position where it’s obvious to other humans that I’m picking a favorite, I’ll take your soul.

Atticus says Aenghus is a dick and might well be screwing with her, and she says she considered that, so she read some omens, and since that wouldn’t satisfy Atticus, she “cast the wands.” Atticus says that “She had actually gone to some trouble,” which I don’t understand because apparently “casting wands” means you throw down some sticks with Ogham writing on them to read the future.

That’s not the only way to read the future. Atticus mentions that some Druids used to read animal entrails which is…gross, and Atticus agrees, though I’m not sure why he would considering that was pretty normal in his day.

People today look at those practices and say, “That’s so cruel! Why couldn’t they simply be vegan like me?” But the Druidic faith allows for a pretty happy afterlife and maybe even a return trip or ten to earth. Since the soul never dies, taking a knife to some flesh here and there is never a big deal.

Alright I don’t know much about the Irish Celtic afterlife, but that sounds….silly? He doesn’t go into details, but from this quote it makes it sound like the soul can reincarnate or come back to the mortal world whenever they feel like. Which sounds fun in theory but could quickly get out of control. It’s too easy, which wouldn’t necessarily be bad for an afterlife, but it seems like that would be bad for the mortal world if Irish pagans just kept popping back in to have fun whenever they felt like it.

Moving on: if anything, Atticus should be very weirded out by the very idea of veganism. Ritual killing of animals is incredibly common in practices around the world, and historically there are very few people around the world who do not eat meat. I get that he’s adapted and all, but it should still come across as weird that in a world that, for thousands of years, ate meat without any problem, there are people who think it’s bad to eat meat.

[This isn’t a condemnation of veganism or vegetarianism; if you’re either, good for you! There are plenty of good reasons to not consume anything from the meat industry. But it should come as a bit of a culture shock to Atticus, is all I’m saying. So this if you’re thinking of arguing about how eating meat is bad/vegans are dumb, then go somewhere else. Shoo. Skedaddle.]

So ‘casting the wands’ is a Druid thing. There are twenty wants in a bag, and they’ve all got Ogham writing on them for the twenty native trees of Ireland, and each one represents a different thing. Basically, the magic-user will pick out five without looking, toss them to the ground, and however they fall can be interpreted to read the future. This doesn’t sound particularly accurate or helpful to me, but whatevs.

Morrigan tells Atticus that “Four of them were fell” and when he asks which trees were represented in the wants, “The Morrigan regarded me as if her next words would cause me to swoon like a corseted Jane Austen character.”

Uh… look, out of Austen’s work I’ve only read Pride and Prejudice, and there’s really not that much swooning. Atticus’s statement seems to imply he thinks Jane Austen wrote something like Harlequin romance novels, and that’s not really the kind of books Austen wrote? Maybe her other work has a lot of swooning and I just wasn’t aware, but it doesn’t seem to me like what you’d pick up from her work.

But right. Morrigan says the wands she picked (although she says it in Old Irish first) were Alder, Holly, Reed, Heather and Yew; respectively, that means the Warrior, Challenges, Fear, Surprise, and Death. Atticus asks for a clarification for where Alder and Yew fell in relation to each other, and she tells him that the Alder stick fell across the Yew, basically meaning that the warrior in question was going to catch a case of dead.

…You know, this should have been something Atticus did himself. Because that way, we get to see something a Druid does and how he works his magic, instead of being told about it by one of his friends who popped in to warn him. It’s enough detail that he might as well have done it himself, so I don’t know why it had to happen off-screen.

So Morrigan asks Atticus where he’s going to flee to (she suggests Mojave Desert, and Atticus thinks she might be trying to impress him by showing off that she knows some modern American geography, as European immortals don’t always care about how maps get redrawn), and he says he’s not sure that he wants to go anywhere just yet. He wants to think things over, and basically says, “I think you’re wrong.”

Essentially, the casting of wands relies on you having the right mindset, and can be interpreted in a number of ways. So Atticus thinks the ‘warrior’ in question could easily be Aenghus himself. He then says that since Aenghus never leaves Tir na nOg personally, it’s unlikely he’ll do so now, and that Atticus has dealt with everything the god of love sent before, so he’ll be fine!

I get this, but it also halts the drama to a stop. A goddess appeared in front of Atticus and told him he’s got to pack his bags because his immortal enemy is about to be on his doorstep swords blazing, and Atticus just keeps coming up with excuses for why he doesn’t take care. Oh, Aenghus said to watch out for your friends? That’s vague. She saw some bird signs? Well those are unreliable. You cast wands? Well you probably did it wrong, that’s all. If it happened once, I’d chalk it up to Atticus being overconfident (which he is), but it happens three times, so it’s like the author doesn’t want us to take the threat (which I remind you, is the Plot of the novel) seriously. Our protagonist refuses to take the actual Plot seriously, no matter how many times he’s told about it. Then why should we care?

Morrigan points out that there are ways of getting at Atticus other than sending big monsters. By doing… this.

The crow leapt off the bust of Ganesha and flew straight at my face, but before I could get worried about a beak in the eye, the bird sort of melted in midair, reforming into a naked, statuesque woman with milk-white skin and raven hair. It was the Morrigan as seductress, and she caught me rather unprepared. Her scent had me responding before she ever touched me, and by the time she closed the remaining distance between us, I was ready to invite her back to my place. Or here would be fine, right here, right now, by the tea station. She draped an arm around my shoulder and trailed her nails down the back of my neck, causing me to shudder involuntarily. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth at that, and she pressed her body against mine and leaned forward to whisper in my ear.

“And what if he sends a succubus to slay you, most wise and ancient Druid? You would be dead inside a minute if he knew this weakness of yours.”

So, uh, yeah.

You would think an immortal Druid would not be so easily seduced, that he’d not have been particularly bothered by a naked woman, or even a goddess, but nope! Like a college kid he’s entirely entranced and can’t help but try to grope her. It’s unclear if it’s because she’s magic, but mostly it seems like it’s just that Atticus is easily persuaded to do anything if he sees breasts. She slaps him across the face, and he says that he ‘snapped out of it.’

“Ow,” I said. “Thanks for that. I was about to go into full-on leg-humping mode.”

Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen!

The Morrigan points out that Aenghus doesn’t need any magic; he could easily hire a beautiful woman to seduce Atticus and kill him, though Atticus says Aenghus tried that already and it didn’t work. The same with succubi; his iron amulet would protect him from them.

And then stoners walk into the store.

No really.

… a pair of unfortunate college lads wandered into my shop. I could tell they were drunk, even though it was only mid-afternoon. Their hair was greasy and they wore concert T-shirts and jeans, and they had not shaved for several days. I knew the type: They were stoners who were wondering if I had anything smokable behind my apothecary counter… they would ask me if I had anything with hallucinogenic properties.

HA! Stupid college stoners! In their stupid Meat Loaf and Iron Maiden shirts!

They’re just here to die.

No really.

Because they get one look at the Morrigan, who I remind you is currently a super-mega-foxy-hot naked woman standing in the middle of a New Age shop, and, uh…

“Dude, that chick is naked!” Meat Loaf exclaimed.

“Whoa,” said Iron Maiden, who pushed his sunglasses down his nose to get a better look. “And she’s hot too.”

“Hey, baby,” Meat Loaf said, taking a couple of steps toward her. “If you need some clothes, I’ll be glad to take off my pants for you.”

This goes about as well as you’d expect.

To be fair, Atticus tells her not to kill people in his shop, but he clarifies that it’d be an inconvenience; it’d be a lot to clean up. Now I know you might be thinking that maybe he doesn’t want to straight-up defy a goddess, but after he convinces her not to kill them right then and there he doesn’t perform any efforts to save them any further. She declares to them that she will “feast on [their] hearts tonight” for the offense and they get spooked enough to leave. Atticus says he tries to convince them that they’re not worth the trouble, but he only says they’re “not much sport” and she agrees, but says she’ll kill them anyway.

Oh well, I sighed inwardly. I had tried.

Yeah, you’re clearly very invested in protecting your fellow man.

Those guys shouldn’t have made lewd comments at the Morrigan. Guys should not make lewd comments to women in public, period. Catcalling is terrible. Don’t do it! But that doesn’t mean they deserve to die for it. It certainly doesn’t mean that they deserve to have their hearts devoured by the Morrigan.

Furthermore, this is a dangerous precedent. Fun fact: if you’ve been insulted or humiliated, that does not give you the right to murder someone. I get that the Morrigan, who specifically doesn’t work on modern human morality, doesn’t give a crap, but Atticus should because he’s human, and the gods who he’s friendly with are okay killing people at the drop of a hat if they feel like it. Atticus himself was actually going to grope her, but he just got slapped. I get that he’s a friend of hers and she was making a point, but, like… Atticus more or less admitted he was going to hump her leg, but these two druggies make lewd comments and she’s going to eat their hearts?

Even practically, this is stupid, because those two guys could go home babbling about how a crazy lady in Atticus’s store promised to murder them, and then they turn up dead the next morning. That’ll lead suspicious cops right to his doorstep.

Does Atticus care? Not really. Here’s a running theme in Atticus’s life: he doesn’t actually care what happens to the people around him.

More importantly though, this bit is pointless. Who are these two guys? [shrugs] I dunno. No one cares. They’re just in the story to oggle the Morrigan’s naked body and then get shooed off so they can die off-screen. I think it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s just dumb. They’re straw characters you’ve seen in comedy bits, and they come in, interrupt the conversation to say stupid stuff, and then leave. Atticus barely cares that they’re going to get murdered. He doesn’t even say something like, “I should have locked the door.” He doesn’t try to prevent them from making lewd comments to the Morrigan, despite knowing exactly what kind of guys they are and how they’re looking at her. This bit goes like this: they walk in, oggle at the Morrigan, make sexual comments, and then leave after the Morrigan tells them she’ll kill them. It does nothing.

Atticus continues that he really does appreciate the Morrigan’s advice, but he wants to stay and fight Aenghus if he really is coming to get this whole feud over and done with. Except he’s lying. He tells us so in his narration. He isn’t ready to face Aenghus, he’s just convinced that the guy’s not actually going to show up because he’s actively ignoring the Plot. He doesn’t tell the Morrigan that though.

The Morrigan insists on seeing his magic amulet, and Atticus insists that she clothes herself first, and so she instantly gets a robe (and it’s black of course). She could have done that at any time, but she waits until after the college stoners leave to do it. Which, in-story she had no reason to know they would come in, but out-of-story the only reason she waits so long is so she can kill those two guys who never show up every again.

So Atticus shows her the necklace, and everything stops so he can describe it. It’s a charmed bracelet, it took him 750 years to make, and the iron amulet is bound to his aura (which he claims was a very painful process that took 300 years), which, as shown earlier, lets him kill Fae just by touching them. See, ‘cause in this universe, iron is the antithesis of magic, so beings of pure magic die when they touch the stuff.

Which makes this whole thing kind of perverse, yeah? He’s using magic to make himself into something with the same properties as anti-magic. I’d think the supernatural community would consider that kind of blasphemy. Sadly, no one does, because no one really comments on it that much.

The Tuatha de Danann are not, however, beings of pure magic, so iron and his aura don’t kill them, only messes with their magic. He says “They were beings of this world, who merely used magic better than anyone else, and the Irish had long ago elevated them to gods.” Which means that they were once essentially souped-up Druids that got deified? And that’s weird. I don’t know Irish mythology that well, but that description essentially means that Atticus is only not one of them because of some technicalities, as he’s incredibly powerful, a Druid, and immortal. It doesn’t directly make this comparison, but the text more or less tells us that Atticus is on par with the Irish gods, which is a great way for me to think your protagonist is overpowered.

He also clarifies that the Tuatha de Danann aren’t invincible. They can be killed, which is what happened to Lugh and Nuada. That’s why, apart from the Morrigan, they sort of avoided picking fights and stayed in Tir na nOg all the time.

But… alright this confuses me in a lot of fiction featuring gods, but if there’s an afterlife for the Druid religion, does that apply to the Tuatha de Danann? Lugh and Nuada are dead, but are they hanging around the Irish afterlife? And since Atticus already said that Druids could visit the mortal world again if they wanted after dying, does that mean that Lugh and Nuada could drop by for bacon and cabbage at the drop of a hat?

See, like I said, that statement about the Druid afterlife causes so many problems the second you start asking questions.

Right so the Morrigan is sooooooooo amazed by Atticus’s amulet, and he explains how you need an iron elemental for it to work, how it changes size for when he shapeshifts, and that he invented the magic behind it himself. Also later on the page he points to a part of the necklace and says it lets him breathe underwater. The Morrigan then demands that he teach her how to make one for herself.

Before we go on, let’s count how many powers our protagonist has!

-kills Fae with a touch
-can telepathically summon an iron elemental
-can shapeshift into animals
-make potions
-heal as long as he can touch the Earth
-breathes underwater
-has a magic necklace that shapeshifts with him
-does not age

Already I’m thinking that our protagonist is a bit overpowered.

Right, so the Morrigan demands that Atticus teach her how to make her own iron amulet, and he points out that it lets him breathe underwater, saying that it’s just one of it’s super special awesome powers. It’s valuable, and he asks what she’s willing to pay or trade for it. The Morrigan says she’s willing to not murder him for it.

Atticus is all like, “I knew you’d say that!” And he adjusts the deal so that not only will the Morrigan not kill him, she will not take him period. Meaning, if he gets killed, the Morrigan won’t take his soul to Manannan Mac Lir to be taken to the afterlife.

In essence, he’s asking to be completely unkillable. “True immortality” is how the Morrigan puts it. She’s hesitant, because that’s a lot to ask for, but Atticus says that the amulet will make her the greatest of the Tuatha De Danann. The Morrigan of course believes herself to be so already, though Atticus points out that the others would disagree, such as their queen Brighid.

The Morrigan agrees. She gives some BS about how other gods of death might take Atticus if he gets killed, but, like… okay, along with all those powers I listed above? Now he’s also unkillable. Add that to the list. Yes, he technically can be killed, but as we’ve noted he heals so fast that it’s hardly likely.

So the Morrigan gives one last warning: according to some of Aenghus’s human agents on the Intersnet, he’s sending Fir Bolgs after Atticus. They worked out who he was because his modern name, Atticus O’Sullivan, isn’t much of a change from his old Irish name, Siodhachan O Suileabhain. She tells him to change it.

Then she kisses him, makes her clothes disappear while she’s making out with him, and then turns into a bird and flies out, warning him to keep his amulet on him from now on and call her up if he needs her.

To recap: the Morrigan shows up in Atticus’s shop, tells him he’s in danger. He doesn’t listen, she decides to kill some stoners, then she agrees to let him be invincible if he teaches her how to make the ‘kill all magic’ amulet. Then she makes out with him and leaves.

I’ve only read the first two books, and this isn’t brought up in them, but I’m pretty sure the Morrigan is in love with him? She makes an effort to impress him with her knowledge of modern geography, she openly flirts with him (what else do you call it if you appear naked in front of a guy you know is interested for little reason) and then makes out with him. Naked.

Which… is another strike against this book, because not only is our hero a nigh-invincible badass who scoffs in the face of obvious danger, he’s got a mega hot goddess who wants to bone him.

I suppose by making him invincible, she removed some obstacles for him though. So hey! At least that bust of Ganesha actually did sort of mean something? Maybe?

Comment [16]

Chapter Three’s pretty short so we’re covering it and Chapter Four at the same time.

So last time the Morrigan, the goddess of violent death, appeared in Atticus’s bookshop to warn him that his old enemy Aenghus Og was coming to town to murder him, was sending Fir Bolgs, and that he was in danger. She also makes him even more immortal in exchange for the recipe for his Super Special Awesome iron amulet recipe, and makes out with him before leaving. Atticus, all the while, is not concerned about the Plot because he doesn’t think Aenghus Og will really get off his butt.

We open chapter three with Atticus mentioning that since the good ol’ days of ancient Ireland, he’s believed in the superstition that bad things come in threes. He’s had the faeries attack him, the Morrigan deliver bad news (not that he took it seriously), so he’s expecting something else bad to pop up and ruin his day. So he closes up the shop early and decides to bike home and—

Usually I took my time and enjoyed the ride: I would say hello to the dogs who barked a greeting at me or stop to chat with the widow MacDonagh, who liked to sit on her front porch, sipping sweaty glasses of Tullamore Dew as the sun set. She spoke the Irish with me and—

She “speaks the Irish”? Is that a thing anyone says? I’m genuinely asking here.

Sorry, carry on.

told me I was a nice young lad with an old soul, and I enjoyed the conversation and the irony of being the young one. I usually did her yard work for her once a week and she liked to watch me do it, declaring loudly each time that “If I were fifty years younger, laddie, I’d jump yer wee bones and tell no one but the Lord, ye can be sure.” But today I hurried, tossing a quick wave at the widow’s porch and churning my legs as fast as they would go.

We can’t go very far without the book reminding us that Atticus is extremely sexually attractive, can we? If it was one or two characters, that’s one thing, but so far we’re three chapters in, and we’ve already had the Morrigan kiss him naked, and now his old Irish neighbor tells him that she wishes she was young enough to have sex with him.

Here’s the thing: the widow MacDonagh isn’t in this scene. She’s not in this chapter. Not really. Atticus is describing his way home and his neighborhood, and he just decides to describe his old lady Irish neighbor and he goes on a tangent about how they like to talk and how she totally wants to have sex with him. It doesn’t have to do with what’s going on. Hearne easily could have left this description of the neighbor until she, you know, actually shows up, but Atticus can’t help but tell us everything in excruciating and boring detail, so here we are. Oh, and she wants to have sex with him.

Alright here’s a pro-tip, authors: if you’re writing a story, don’t constantly remind us how hot your lead is and how much people of the opposite sex want to have sex with him or her. I’m sure there are exceptions to that rule that you could make because writing is a varied and complex art, but in general I think it’s a good rule. Because it all it does is make me think that you’re writing a self-insert wish fulfillment character.

Do you remember that list of superpowers that Atticus has from last chapter’s sporking? Maybe add ‘Every woman so far wants to bone him,’ to that list, yeah? I imagine this instance is a joke, considering that the woman in question is an elderly widow, but given how Sue-ish Atticus already is, it’s still pretty egregious. If MacDonagh was written to say something like, “He’s a handsome young man,” I’d have let it go, but nope, she explicitly says if she was young she’d be having sex with him.

Atticus describes his house a bit [yawn], checks his magical defenses and realizes that there’s someone there in the house. He knows it can’t be a faerie or a human because they can’t break through his defenses for… Reasons. It’s magic. So he decides it must be a member of the Tuatha de Danann, and he’s a bit worried. Which he should be. His defenses don’t protect him from a god marching into his house? Or at least tell him when it happens? That’s a pretty shoddy defense system, my dude.

Atticus thinks that it could be Aenghus Og, but again Atticus refuses to believe that the bad guy would actually leave Tir na nOg to kill him so he dismisses that idea. So he asks his dog.

Meet Oberon. He’s an Irish wolfhound. He’s Atticus’s dog, with whom he communicates telepathically, and also the character Hearne identifies the most with, using him to put as many of his own quips into the story.

No really. The dog is the self-insert.

Anyhow he asks Oberon “How goes it, my friend?” and Oberon, who is pretty cheerfully chilling out in the backyard, reveals that a female someone is in the house, and he likes her because she’s friendly and compliments him, comparing him to the older Irish wolfhounds in the Middle Ages. This leads to Atticus talking about wolfhounds and how he adopted Oberon but it’s all boring so I’m skipping it.

What is important is that not a lot of people can talk to Oberon like Atticus does, and this intruder was able to.

When Atticus tells Oberon that the visitor was not invited, Oberon gets a bit worried asking “”, which, hey, full points to Hearne, this actually sounds like something a dog would get worried about and be ashamed of. Atticus assures Oberon that he’s fine, but that if their visitor turns hostile that he should kill her.

< I thought you said never to attack humans. >

She hasn’t been human for a very long time.

That’s… actually really good dialogue.

And then there’s a bit where Oberon calls her nice for an “inhuman,” and Atticus corrects him because that’s an adjective and the correct term is “nonhuman” and Oberon points out that English isn’t his first language and dear Lord this conversation should have ended with “She hasn’t been human for a very long time.”

In general, I don’t have too many issues with Oberon, but he tends to have make unnecessary dialogue so that Hearne can put his quips into the story. They’re not even bad quips! But they kill the tension. There’s someone in Atticus’s house right now! We don’t know who! We don’t know if she’s friend or foe! This should be super tense! They should only be saying what’s absolutely necessary.

But sure, let’s have some dialogue about Atticus correcting Oberon’s grammar I guess.

Oberon circles up front to join Atticus so they can enter the house together. They find nothing wrecked or stolen, but there’s a woman angrily failing to make a strawberry smoothie in his blender. See, because she’s an ancient goddess, she doesn’t realize that you have to plug things in. Once Atticus tells her to plug in the blender, she is much happier, and Atticus relaxes because this is one of the Irish gods that he’s on good terms with: Flidais, goddess of the hunt¹.

Chapter three ends with Atticus lamenting that he didn’t know it yet, but Flidais brought the third problem and he had no idea until it was too late. Because who needs foreshadowing when you can have the characters tell us things are going to happen!

Chapter Four begins with Flidais explaining how she learned about smoothies (because they don’t have those in Tir na nOg), and so she takes roughly two pages to say this: she was hunting with Herne, found a poacher, followed him to a smoothie joint, killed him and took his smoothie. That’s it.

Also Atticus asks if she was invisible while she was chasing the dude, and Flidais gets very offended because it implies she isn’t the Best Huntress Evah and Atticus apologizes. And then describes her outfit for Reasons.

It’s leather. I don’t care enough to type out the entire description Hearne gives.

Also Flidais has to be told what a parking lot is? Or at least what the word for it is is. And again, I’m kind of bothered. I really hate this idea in modern urban fantasy that the gods are all stupid old people who don’t understand modern society. Maybe it’s because I’m thinking of fiction like American Gods or even Percy Jackson and the Olympians wherein the gods have adapted to the modern world. In PJO they’re explicitly timeless archetypes who fit ideas rather than specific cultures and historical periods, so of course they don’t stumble around the modern world oblivious to the fact that they’re not in the Bronze Age, confounded by basic aspects of the modern world.

Here, and in too many other works of fiction, the gods are just stupid. They know nothing about modern technology. Flidais isn’t even familiar enough with the modern words to remember the name for parking lots. It just reeks of lazy writing to me. Have the gods really not spent a significant amount of time in the mortal world for the past hundred years or so? I know Atticus tells us that the Tuatha de Danann don’t get out much because they can be killed, but you know what? I can be killed and I don’t spend all my time in my own house.

“Well the gods are cowards!” Well if that’s the case then you’re not writing characters as much as making the deities into strawmen so you can bash. Because this characterization isn’t taken from the myths.

It’s dumb writing.

Anyhow, Flidais tells Atticus that she killed the poacher and hid the body she took the guy’s smoothie which leads us to this:

See, sentences like that are why I nurture a healthy fear of the Tuatha De Danann. Now, I will be the first to admit that human life was not worth much to my generation in the Iron Age, but Flidais and her kind are forever rooted in Bronze Age morality, which goes something like this: If it pleases me, then it is good and I want more; If it displeases me, then it must be destroyed as soon as possible, but preferably in a way that enhances my reputation so that I can achieve immortality in the songs of bards. They simply to not think like modern people, and it is because of them that the Fae have such twisted senses of right and wrong.

Hey

Hey

Hey

You’re a Druid. You don’t get to complain about how the social system that the gods are used to was weird and immoral and disconnect yourself from it. You were a part of that system. You upheld that system. Stories about the gods were passed down by the Druids. This preoccupation with reputation wouldn’t happen if the Druids didn’t keep the system running. So while yeah, the gods are problematic in their attitudes, don’t act like you have no part in it because you’re Iron Age and she’s Bronze Age.

Furthermore it isn’t as if there weren’t rules in the Bronze Age. The idea of murder being a way to break that law shouldn’t be new.

And Atticus doesn’t care much about human life either! The Morrigan told you she was going to murder those guys and after a weak protest you did nothing but shrug and say “Oh well.” Yeah the Irish gods might have screwed up rules about morality, but you’re complicit if you do nothing to stop them. Especially because you can! You would think that the Druids, the priests of the Celtic gods, would make it their responsibility to nourish a healthy relationship between the gods and humanity. But nope! It’s not his business. The gods are just dicks and there’s nothing he’s going to do about it.

[And yes, I KNOW that in this series Hearne characterizes Druids not as being priests of the Celtic gods, but as protectors and servants of the Earth. This isn’t actually explained outright until much later in the book. It’s weird and New Age-y but it still doesn’t free Atticus from being complicit in the deaths of the gods’ victims.]

Flidais asks what name he’s using now, and Atticus tells him that he goes by ‘Atticus’ these days. She points out that it’s Greek, and asks if anyone thinks he’s Greek, and Atticus answers with “Nobody pays attention to names here.”

Uh, yeah, they do. If you mean ‘here’ as in ‘this time period,’ I suspect you’re an idiot. When I went to the UK people told me they were surprised because my (Hispanic) name “wasn’t American,” because a lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic assume that Americans all have English names. If you mean ‘here’ as in ‘the US’ I also suspect that people would care. Atticus is a somewhat unusual name, and people will comment on it, though it’s not too out there so it’s probably not a huge deal.

Furthermore, Greek names are pretty common? And from someone who was used to the ancient world, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Greek became the de facto language of the educated for a while before Latin was, and so anyone who wanted their kids to sound educated gave them Greek names. You’ll still meet people today with Greek names. Alexander? Sophia? Anastasia? Nicholas? Georgia? Jason? Iris? They’ve been Anglicized, yeah, but they’re Greek names.

Atticus explains that people today only care about crude displays of personal wealth, and I’m compelled to point out that it’s not a new thing. Anglo-Saxon kings gave out gold bling to their thanes. Yeah, the currency is different, but it’s not a new concept.

Atticus decides that he wants some smoothie, and instead of saying so, or getting it because it’s his house, he stares at the blender and hopes Flidais gets the hint. She does, and offers him some smoothie, and he calls her considerate in reply.

I thought of the stoners who came into my shop earlier, probably already dead at the hands of the Morrigan, and how they would have been equally dead had they found Flidais in their kitchen. They would have seen her and said something like “Yo, bitch, the fuck you doin’ with my strawberries?” and those would have been their last words. Bronze Age manners are tough to fathom for modern men, by and large, but it’s fairly simple: The guest is to be treated like a god, because he may, in fact, be a god in disguise. I had no doubts on that score when it came to Flidais.

Alright let’s take this step-by-step:

ONE: Oh hey, remember the stoners from chapter two? Atticus tells us they’re probably dead by now. Just so you know. Those guys had their hearts ripped out and eaten. Not that Atticus cares.

TWO: And yes, Atticus thinks they would assume they’d say “the fuck you doin’ with my strawberries?” instead of, y’know, probably telling her to leave or calling the cops. Because that’s what normal people would do.

THREE: Yes, it’s commonly presented that in the ancient world rules of Guest and Host are sacred, but Atticus (and Hearne) are missing an important detail about this situation: that the guest is also supposed to act incredibly politely and not offend his or her host.

Flidais isn’t a guest. She wasn’t invited; she broke into Atticus’s house while he wasn’t there. It’s possible she didn’t see it that way, and Oberon let her walk around and talked to her, so it’s possible that she didn’t consider it a break-in. Alright, fine. Let’s say she is a guest by ancient standards. But then she took some of his food without asking and tried operating one of his devices that she didn’t really know how to use to begin with.

FOUR: Atticus, as host, shouldn’t have to ask for some of the smoothie. It’s his fruit, his kitchen, and his blender. Flidais should have asked permission to use it and drink the smoothie in the first place.

If someone barges into your house, eats your food and starts messing with your stuff, then you don’t owe them jack squat. Someone can’t demand you be a good host if she’s being an awful guest. Yes she’s a goddess so Atticus is smart to not offend her, but let’s not act like this is a guest-host thing.

The two of them go to the front porch to talk, and Atticus asks where she parked her chariot, and she explains that her chariot and the stags that pull it are invisible in a park nearby. She continues that she’s here to tell Atticus that Aenghus Og knows he’s here.

Except he already knew that, and he tells her that the Morrigan told him after lunch.

But then she adds that Fir Bolgs are coming.

Except he already knew that too. He doesn’t care.

But then she says that, gasp, Bres is also coming!

And finally, this gets a reaction and Atticus spits out his strawberry smoothie.

Also this is terrible writing. I mean, it’s not Angelopolis terrible because that’s a special kind of terrible. But it’s not great. This is a repeat of the whole “The Morrigan is proving that she knows bad things are going to happen!” bit from Chapter 2. It went like this, only longer.

The Morrigan says Aenghus is coming because he hinted so in conversation, Atticus doesn’t care. She says she saw omens, Atticus doesn’t care. She says she cast the wands, and then he seems to pay attention, but in the end he doesn’t care.

Same thing here. Flidais says Aenghus knows he’s here, Atticus doesn’t care. She says Fir Bolgs are on the way, Atticus doesn’t care. Then she says Bres is coming, and again, he seems to pay attention, but by the end of the chapter he doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t decide to pack up his bags and ditch town or try to hide or anything. Two goddesses have dropped into Atticus’s life to tell him that his life is about to go pear-shaped because the Bad Guys know where he lives, and Atticus doesn’t care.

Adding to that, it’s a terrible way to ratchet up tension. Nothing has actually happened since the first chapter, but people keep coming in to tell Atticus that things will happen. Instead of the Plot organically piling up and tons of independent problems getting stacked on top of the protagonist as the narrative goes on, like in Dresden Files or Skulduggery Pleasant, characters drop in to give Atticus a checklist of the bad guys he has to fight in this book.

[sigh]

So who the fudge is Bres, anyhow?

Bres was one of the meanest of the Tuatha De Danann alive, though he was not particularly bright. He had been their leader for a few decades, but eventually he was replaced for being more sympathetic to the monstrous race of the Fomorians than to his own people. He was a god of agriculture and had escaped death at Lugh’s hands long ago by promising to share all he knew. The only reason he had not been killed since then was because he was husband to Brighid, and no one wished to risk her wrath. Her magical powers were unmatched, save perhaps by the Morrigan.

So this more or less matches up with the majority of his Wikipedia article. That doesn’t mean it’s all accurate though. Someone feel free to correct it if they know better. The real problem is that Atticus’s description feels like a short article. Unlike with the Morrigan or Aenghus Og, I get no sense of history, no sense of the idea that he and Atticus personally know each other. It’s summing up his mythology without adding much to it.

And really, it’s another example of Hearne telling instead of showing us stuff. I’m four chapters in, and so often the action has stopped so that Atticus can turn to the audience and explain in-detail who characters are, how things work, or snippets of his own backstory. If he didn’t do this every time it wouldn’t be as egregious, but he does, and it halts the flow of every scene. There are really easy ways to avoid this, like having him explain these things to another character, or giving only the small bits that are necessary and letting the audience fill in the gaps. Hearne does none of this.

Anyhoo Flidais explains that Aenghus probably bribed Bres with something to make him come to kill Atticus². Flidais straight-up tells Atticus that she wouldn’t care if he killed Bres, because Bres “does not respect the forest as he should.” Which, uh, yeah I get the goddess of the forests (or not, look at the first footnote again) wouldn’t get along with the god of agriculture responsible for cutting down those forests to make fields, but if the gods are so terrified of getting killed that they hardly leave Tir na nOg, you’d think they wouldn’t encourage someone to go and kill one of their own?

Atticus does not have any good response to his guest essentially egging him on to kill one of her family members (which I imagine is also not a great thing to do as a guest, but no one asked me), so after an awkward silence she starts talking to Oberon. Oberon talks about how he and Atticus hunted bighorn sheep in Papago Park.

[You need a permit to hunt bighorn sheep, and less than two dozen people held those permits in the year that this book was published; not that anyone cares because Atticus shapeshifts into a hound to do it.]

Flidais is amazed at the idea of hunting sheep, because, well, they’re sheep, how can that be any fun? Sheep are slow and dumb. Atticus and Oberon explain that bighorn sheep aren’t like domesticated sheep, they’re bigger and harder to bring down. Flidais, astounded that she hasn’t heard of these before, decides she would very much like to hunt them because she’s apparently not hunted anything new in centuries (again, that’s dumb but let’s roll with it).

Atticus agrees, but he tells her that if they’re going to go hunting, they need to wait until after dark when the park closes so they can hunt without interference. Flidais agrees, but it’s a few hours until dark, so what are they going to do until then?

She decides to have sex with him.

No really.

Her eyes appraised me and I pretended not to notice, keeping my gaze locked on my bicycle still lying in the street. “You appear to be in the summertime of youth,” she said.

“My thanks. You look well as always.”

I am curious to discover if you still have the endurance of the Fianna or if you are hiding a decrepitude and softness most unbecoming of a Celt.”

I stood up and offered her my right hand. “My left arm was injured earlier this afternoon and is still not fully healed. However, if you will follow me and assist in mending it, I will do my best to satisfy your curiosity.”

The corner of her mouth quirked up at the edge, and her eyes smoldered as she placed her hand in mine and rose. I locked eyes on hers and didn’t let go of her hand as we returned inside and went to the bedroom.

I figured, to hell with the bike. I’d probably feel like jogging to work in the morning anyway.

That’s how Chapter Four ends.

So that happened.

Atticus has been told by not one, but two goddesses of his own pantheon that the bad guys are coming to punch his face in, and what is he doing now? Is he packing his bags? Is he rallying his allies and preparing his defenses? Is he digging a deep dark hole to hide in? Nope. None of those things. He’s planning a late night hunting trip and having sex. You can’t tell me this is about being a good host; nowhere in this scene does that excuse fly, and it certainly doesn’t here. The fact is that Atticus repeatedly refuses to take the Plot seriously.

How am I supposed to read this story as anything other than wish fulfillment? We’re in the fourth chapter of the first book in the series, and Atticus has already made out with a naked goddess and is getting into bed with another. Atticus is immortal, nigh-unkillable, heals quickly, can talk to his dog telepathically, breathes underwater, shapeshifts, kills his most recurrent enemies by touching them, is insanely attractive and has sex with goddesses.

I remember when I read this book for the first time at this point I was beginning to wonder what kind of book I’d picked up. It’s not just that there’s nudity and sex, it’s that they don’t serve much purpose in the story or make much sense. It’s not that the protagonist had sex, it’s that a literal goddess decides to have sex with him after sharing smoothies with him. It’s not that the Plot is vague, it’s that the protagonist doesn’t pay any attention to it until bad guys start popping up in his face. He’s overpowered and oversexed, and he doesn’t care about what happens to the people around him.

No, it’s definitely not in the same league as Angelopolis but it’s not very good. And yet whenever urban fantasy comes up this series is often mentioned in the same breath as Dresden Files. It’s baffling. Maybe the later books in the series get much better, but judging from the first few I’m kind of doubtful.

Join us next time, when Atticus explains why it is exactly that Aenghus Og hates him so much!

¹ Fun fact! She’s probably not really a goddess of hunting. That’s more of a New Age thing. But if gods are shaped by what people believe about them I guess she could have in-universe been retconned into being a hunting goddess? IDK, the whole ‘gods are shaped by belief’ thing raises so many questions once you stare at it for more than two minutes.

² Okay well actually they’re not sure that Bres is coming to kill Atticus, but c’mon, what else would he be there to do?

Comment [19]

Alright I’ll admit that I’ve been avoiding this. Why? Because a large chunk of this chapter is completely pointless info-dumping. It throws a lot of names and terms that are not relevant to the Plot, along with the actual story that is. My original plan was to fact-check everything in this book, but this contains a ton of nitty-gritty details of a battle and its players in Irish legends, and… I don’t care? I mean I care about the stuff, but I don’t care enough about this book to back-check everything Atticus says about the Battle of [checks Kindle] Magh Lena. Unlike with every other reference in this book, Hearne writes most of this section assuming the reader knows what he’s talking about.

The one time I want him to explain what he’s talking about and he barely does it.

Even disregarding that, this chapter doesn’t fill me with confidence in the way it starts:

Pillow talk in the modern era often involves the sharing of childhood stories or perhaps an exchange of dream vacations. One of my recent partners, a lovely lass named Jesse with a tattoo of a Tinker Bell on her right shoulder blade (about as far from a real faery as one can get), had wanted to discuss a science-fiction television program, Battlestar Galactica, as a political allegory for the Bush years. When I confessed I had no knowledge of the show nor any interest in getting to know it or anything about American politics, she called me a “frakkin’ Cylon” and stormed out of the house, leaving me confused yet somewhat relieved.

What am I supposed to do with this, Hearne? He’s using this as a segue into what Flidais talks about instead of usual pillow talk, but this is just… bizarre? It sounds like he’s making fun of nerds, but let’s be real here, science-fiction and fantasy nerds are exactly the sorts of people who are going to be reading this book in the first place. Heck, one of the books in the series stops everything so that Atticus can gush about how awesome Neil Gaiman is. How is this any different?

This also isn’t really how people are? I get that yeah, I’m sure there’s someone out there who would talk about Battlestar Galactica after sex to someone who has expressed no interest in it at all, but I don’t think it’s common. Most people I know who are that into niche nerd culture don’t open up about it to others until they know for a fact that the other person has at least a passing acquaintance with it.

This is a bit like the college stoners. He’s not writing what an actual person might sound like, he’s writing what a stock nerd sounds like.

Anyhow instead of usual pillow talk Flidais asks about “the ancient sword of Manannan Mac Lir, called Fragarach, the Answerer.” It annoys Atticus because “It kind of killed the afterglow.” She asks him if he still has the sword, and Atticus, for once showing some survival instinct, thinks it’s best not to say one way or the other. He says that Aenghus Og thinks he has it, and that’s what matters. Which is still a dumb answer, because, well, if he was really paranoid (as he says he is to Flidais when she calls him on this), he’d just say ‘No’ and that’d be safer. His answer just sounds like he does have it and just doesn’t want to say so.

Flidais tries to stare at him to make him uncomfortable enough to spill the beans, but Atticus claims resisting awkward silences is a Druid skill he was taught way back when, which is an oddly specific thing to be in the Druid curriculum, but okay.

She then asks how he got Fragarach in the first place. Atticus in his narration calls it “an appeal to my vanity” because he thinks that she thinks he’ll get carried away in the story and tell her where the sword is now. But he does it anyway, and he goes on a lengthy digression instead of the simple answer of “Someone dropped it and I picked it up.”

Yeah, that’s the story.

[sigh]

But in-detail, the answer is: during the Battle of Magh Lena, Conn of the Hundred Battles was trying to kill some dude named Mogh Nuadhat and Atticus was helping him do that. Conn didn’t have enough people on his side so he attacks in the middle of the night. Except the Fianna didn’t join the fight because they thought it was dishonorable or something, and Atticus compares this to the British being defeated by keeping strict regimented formations in the American Revolution and Flidais asks if this was before Finn Mac Cumhaill led the Fianna and Atticus says yes. And Atticus goes to help fight Mogh Nuadhat whose army includes seventeen thousand Gaels and two thousand Spaniards and—

I don’t know what’s going on.

See, the previous four chapters had the problem that everything was stopped while facts were being explained instead of woven into the story in a way that made the transition to this fantasy world easier. This is the opposite. Hearne is throwing a ton of terms from ancient Irish culture at us, and not telling us what any of it means. Being someone who isn’t familiar with Irish legends, history or mythology outside of a few details, this nigh-unintelligible. As a result, I have tons of questions. Why does Conn of the Hundred Battles want to kill Mogh Nuadhat? Why did Atticus join the battle on Conn’s side? Why does he join battles at all? Aren’t Druids essentially priests? It’s not unheard of for priests to join battles in many cultures, but it’s not exactly commonplace either. Who are the Fianna? Who is Finn Mac Cumhaill? Why does he matter? Why is Atticus so eager to “join the slaughter” as he puts it? Are we supposed to think he’s a sociopath? And why are there Spaniards here? Aren’t all the interested parties Irish? Why does anyone Spanish care?

And it’s not like this is plot-relevant and comes up later and becomes clearer. Other than him getting the sword and earning Aenghus’s enmity, none of this matters in the grand scheme of the Plot. It’s like if I started my spork by saying the reason I was late in sporking this chapter was because I was busy in Aguada fighting off evil hupias sent by Guabancex with the ghosts of Roberto Cofresi and Miguel Enriquez because I owed Maquetaurie Guayaba a favor. These words mean nothing to you. If Conn or the Fianna were name-dropped in casual comments, I’d let it slide, but the protagonist is telling a story that I’m supposed to care about. I shouldn’t have to use Google to get a clue about the backstory.

Basically what happened is that during this battle, Connie of the Hundred Battles had his hands slick with blood, and Fragarach, the Answerer, the sword that can cut through anything, slipped out of his hands and just so happened to fall at Atticus’s feet, so he picked it up, ran, and has had it ever since.

No really.

He has the sword by Crazy Coinkydink!

Flidais points out that it’s hardly likely that everyone was okay with him peacing out with the magic sword, and Atticus agrees. He admits he skipped a lot of details. Flidais tells him that in Tir na nOg, the story is that Atticus jacked the sword from Conn by drugging him or using magic illusions or something. She says the stories generally paint him as nothing more than a thieving thief, so Atticus gives more details. He’s running a New Age shop that sells stuff he admits is nonsense, but he cares about his reputation I guess.

Atticus rambles about “the pale glow of a crescent moon, the stars, and a few distant campfires” (WHY DO I CARE?!?) and that he “may have accidentally killed a man or two on my own side” (what a charmer, am I right?). But eventually he cuts to the chase and says Connie got Fragarach from Lugh, one of the Tuatha De Danann, and with the magic sword Connie of the Hundred Battles was able to conquerify most of Ireland, and that if he didn’t have it he’d be too scared to challenge Mogh Nuadhat. Basically, he paints Connie as a kind of megalomaniacal dickbag who let the power of his magic sword get to his head and let himself be manipulated by Lugh and Aenghus into taking over Ireland.

Or something.

You would think this would mean that Atticus thought the sword was too much of a temptation and led men into doing evil, so he’d destroy the sword or hide it away forever or something like that instead of running off with it. But that’s what a good protagonist would do, and we’re not exactly rolling with a good protagonist.

There’s a bit where Atticus was apparently bothered by the Irish gods trying to goad the kings of Ireland into conquering the island or something, because he says “they were supposed to have been removed from [human events],” but that’s a weird position for a Druid to take, isn’t it? A priest of the Irish gods insisting that the gods keep out of human business? It’s a bit opposite to your job, isn’t it?

But Atticus didn’t just pick up the sword for funzies, no. See, the Morrigan was there, and she told him to pick it up and bail. Connie of the Hundred Battles got surrounded and had to fight for himself. Atticus didn’t care much though, even though he started this battle on Conn’s side. Aenghus and Lugh started talking in Atticus’s head, demanding that he give the sword back, and the Morrigan demanding that he keep the sword. So he decides to keep it, earning the ire of both Aenghus and Lugh.

And then Conn’s lieutenants see that Atticus is running off with Fragarach and—

…tried to slay me and quickly discovered that, while Fragarach was a great sword in Conn’s hand, it was a terrible sword in mine.

That’s right. Atticus is so awesome that Conn of the Hundred Battles was nothing compared to him. He was so much better than Conn ever was with Fragarach.

[Also he’s killing the men whose side he was on at the beginning of the battle but that’s not really important, right?]

Anyhow the Morrigan tells him to bail, so Atticus swung the sword around in circles as he ran, dropping bodies like potatoes in a potato storm and got out of there. He even makes a ‘parting the Red Sea’ joke only for Flidais to reveal she doesn’t know who Moses is. And then Atticus stops and explains to Flidais who Moses is and the story of how Moses parted the Red Sea because now Hearne decides he needs to explain everything again.

While he was running, Aenghus Og appears in front of Atticus and demands the sword. The Morrigan as a crow lands on Atticus’s shoulder, tells him to buzz off, and Flidais thinks it’s hilarious that the Morrigan threatened Aenghus and says “Oh I bet he nearly shat kine!”

Oh and this:

I refrained from telling her that the modern expression would be “he had a cow,” because I liked the original better.

Take a shot!

There’s this whole argument conveyed between Aenghus and the Morrigan, which is settled because the Morrigan says that the battlefield is her jurisdiction, so what she says goes. Aenghus leaves in a huff but threatens Atticus. He tells Flidais what the threat was but he ends it with ‘blah blah blah’ in case you weren’t sure how seriously he takes this. So he gets away with it because the Morrigan favors him.

Apparently it’s not okay with the gods interfering in mortal affairs, unless it’s Atticus, huh? I get that he’s a Druid, and it was an argument between gods anyway, so maybe different rules apply, but it doesn’t even come up. Besides, we see that the Morrigan goes around helping Atticus and involving herself in mortal conflicts up to the modern day, and Atticus doesn’t mind.

And then Atticus explains that he decided to leave Ireland. The Romans were in power (he lists Antoninus Pius as emperor of the time), so it was hard as the Romans didn’t exactly like Druids (that at least is true, yeah), so he went to the Germanic tribes. He “fathered a child, picked up a language or two, and waited a couple of generations for people in Ireland to forget about me” and then—WAIT what he has a kid?!

What happened to Atticus’s kid? Did he have more over the centuries? And he just… let them stay mortal while he skipped happily throughout history? That’s a massive bomb to drop in the middle of exposition and then not follow up on.

Flidais asks how long he’s had Fragarach since, and Atticus refuses to answer instead of denying he has it like a smart person would. He insists that he’s kept up his sword skillz though, and she asks who his practice partner is, and he tells her it’s Leif Helgarson, an Icelandic Viking. Not a descendant, like Flidais first asks; an actual Viking. How? Why, he’s a vampire of course.

Yup, that’s right! Not only are mythological deities, Druids and faeries all in this setting, but vampires are too! Why? [shrugs] I dunno. I guess Hearne thought you couldn’t have urban fantasy without vampires.

Flidais is disgusted by vampires, and actually jumps out of the bed, saying “You dare consort with the undead?” Atticus objects to the word ‘consort’ because it makes it sound like he’s banging his vampire friend. And because it reminds him of a line from Romeo and Juliet, Atticus says “Zounds, consort? Wouldst thou make me a minstrel?” Which of course Flidais doesn’t get so Atticus stops and explains the reference to Shakespeare.

I might make “Atticus stops and explains references” another drinking game.

I don’t get this. Flidais seems to view vampires as unclean abominations. Why? [shrugs] I dunno. It just seems as if in every fantasy book Hearne read, the gods view vampires as disgusting evil things, a sort of perversion of the natural or supernatural order they stand for. Like in a few RPGs there’s this whole thing between clerics and undead, and divine power has an effect on undead. But here? There’s no indication as to there being any sort of negative relationship between deities and undead. It’s just there, and it’s never explained.

Right so Leif Helgarson is Atticus’s lawyer. No really. And he’s in a law firm with a pack of Icelandic werewolves. No really. Helgarson is his attorney at night, and the werewolf Hauk is his attorney during the day. No really.

Flidais is again astonished the the werewolves didn’t kill Helgarson because werewolves and vampires hate each other. Why? [shrugs] I dunno. Again, I think Hearne just read in every urban fantasy or horror book that werewolves and vampires hate each other and decided that they do in his book too. There’s not a reason, they just do. Atticus explains that these get along though, because they’re not in the Old World anymore. That’s right, the main reason that this vampire and those werewolves get along is because they’re

But Atticus also points out that they also have a common enemy: Thor. If you remember, in this universe, Thor is such a raging chuckmuffin that people will stop and mention how much they hate him in completely unrelated conversations. What he did to Leif, the vampire, isn’t clear, but he’s ticked off enough he kills carpenters just because they use hammers. Yup—the vampire kills innocent bystanders because he hates hammers, and he’s friends with the protagonist. Great guys Atticus hangs out with, huh?

Oh and some point Thor killed some of the werewolf pack, so they fled to Arizona and regrouped there. So Atticus explains that aside from silver, lightning bolts also kill werewolves, because again Atticus wants to explain obvious details to us like we’re all idiots.

[Nevermind that silver killing werewolves is a modern invention by Hollywood and not actual mythology but moving on…]

Flidais observes that there’s a lot of random stuff in this Arizona town, and Atticus says that over here they’re out of the way of most faeries and gods and stuff, aside from Coyote, which also prompted Atticus to explaining to Flidais that he’s a Native American trickster god that hangs around.

Flidais then asks what I’ve been wondering which is (I paraphrase) “Hey, since there’s a bunch of Christians in this country, doesn’t the Christian God have any jurisdiction here?” And Atticus basically says that since there are so many denominations that can’t agree on what Jesus looks like, he can only really manifest as Himself crucified and that’s painful so He doesn’t do it.

Um.

What?

Look, when you tell people around the country, “What does Jesus look like to you?” most of them aren’t going to think of Him crucified. Yes, different people are going to disagree on things like race and skin tone, but for the most part American culture has a pretty agreed-upon image of what Jesus looks like, for better or for worse. There’s not that much variation.

I wasn’t too fond of the take on Jesus that the American Gods show did, because it raised a bunch of questions about worldbuilding and wasn’t consistent in-context when you thought about it, but it makes much more sense than “Jesus in America can only appear as a crucified man.” In that show, there are hundreds of different incarnations of Jesus representing the views of every single denomination of Christianity, all of whom are slightly different. People, religious or otherwise, tend to talk about Jesus as a guy who you talk to or talks to you, which isn’t generally imagined as a man nailed to wood.

Atticus goes on to say that Mary appears more often, but that she mostly just looks serene and makes people feel more chill, and calls him “child” even though he’s older than her. Which… uh, like, my man, that’s not how Marian apparitions tend to go? Just Google Marian apparitions. They tend to involve Mary telling people to do stuff, like building a church (Guadalupe) or to give important messages (Fatima). Even the ones where she doesn’t say anything generally get people to convert or have miraculous cures (Zeitoun). Not quite sitting “around and looking beatific and full of grace.” I get that those examples aren’t in the US, so in a world where religious figures are shaped by belief the US version might be different than others, but it wouldn’t make sense for her manifestation in the US to be wildly different than everywhere else in the world.

Also—of course Mary calls Atticus a child. Because he is a child. He doesn’t take responsibility, he does whatever he feels like without thinking of the consequences, uses magic to make his life easier at every turn, and he’s still ready to jump in bed with every attractive woman who passes by. That’s a child’s view of how one should act.

That and Mary is kind of a mother figure in the Christian religion. Jesus straight-up tells His disciple while he’s dying, “Behold your mother” (John 19:27).

Flidais asks just how old Atticus is anyway, which is a weird way to get this information to the reader, but he answers and says he was born in the reign of King Conaire Mor and that he was 200 or so when he stole Fragarach. Without details this still tells me nothing.

Oh and Flidais got back on the bed with him and starts straddling him, “vampires forgotten.” Despite being repulsed by the idea of touching someone who has been anywhere near undead, she crawls back into bed with him shortly afterward, and she “threw a leg across my body and then sat up so that she knelt astride me.” She then starts feeling up his chest, and Atticus puts his hands on hers, in a seemingly affectionate way, but really because he thinks she might try a binding on him. He says it’s not that he has reason to think she would, “it was merely [his] customary paranoia.” But if you’re a guy who is paranoid and convinced that anyone might start doing magical bindings on you when they get the chance, maybe you wouldn’t be having sex with people you don’t absolutely trust?

Consistent writing? What’s that?

Over and over again Atticus tells us he’s paranoid, but there’s not much to back up that claim. If he was paranoid, would he stay put when he finds out Aenghus is coming? Would he run his own store instead of staying even more from people’s view with some minimum-wage job like a janitor? Would he have his own house and help his neighbor with her yard instead of having an off-the-grid hideout or a small apartment? Would he have multiple sex partners instead of avoiding any intimate contact because Aenghus has tried to have a lover kill him in bed before? Would he be involved in the local supernatural community at all or keep to himself? All of Atticus’s actions are those of a man who is completely confident that no one’s out to get him. If he was trying to hide from his ex-high school classmate, then yeah, good job, but he hasn’t done any extreme measures that suggest he’s as paranoid as he claims he is.

Flidais tells Atticus that Aenghus sees Fragarach as rightfully his. Why? What claim does Aenghus have on it? He didn’t make it. His name’s not on it. Nobody gave it to him. In fact in the story we were just told, he didn’t even want it for himself. Aenghus Og was okay with the sword belonging to Connie of the Hundred Battles as long as Connie did what he and Lugh wanted. What use does the god of love have with a magic sword anyhow? Flidais says Aenghus thinks it’s his “birthright” but there’s no information given as to why he thinks that.

Again, it becomes obvious that Aenghus Og is a really weird choice for a villain. The guy’s not given any character development to show us why he’s evil. There are ways to make it work, I guess; there’s a scene in the Hellboy comics where Aenghus shows up, for instance, and he’s implied to be a coward too scared to fight for the good of the world, which makes sense for the god of love (I say, once again, with only passing knowledge of Irish mythology), and that could be developed into outright villainy, but for him to be a megalomaniac? Why? It’s like Hearne decided he wanted a character not typically seen as a villain to be his antagonist, but he didn’t bother to do the work for it to make any sense.

“The people here,” I said, “have a saying: Possession is nine-tenths of the law. And I have possessed it for far longer than any other being, including Manannan Mac Lir.”

Take a shot for another “The kids these days say this!”

Look why does this matter? It’s a modern expression that he knows doesn’t have any value with the Irish pantheon. It’s just another worthless, “The humans say this now!” thing.

Flidais encourages Atticus to actually stay and fight Aenghus. If Aenghus doesn’t show up, the Irish gods can all declare him a coward. That would force him to get off his butt and chase down Atticus.

“I will stay still then,” I said, and smiled up at her. “But you can move if you like. May I suggest a gentle rocking motion?”

Oh right, she’s straddling him. [sigh] Look last chapter ended with Atticus going to have sex with a goddess, and this chapter ends with the implication that they’re going to have more sex. Why even write a book if your protagonist isn’t going to have sex with goddesses, am I right?

This book isn’t anywhere near as bad as Angelopolis but that’s a low bar. That’s the lowest of bars. I’m baffled as to why this series comes up as a recommendation for urban fantasy fans. We’re five chapters in, and Atticus has fended off an attack with no effort, gained invincibility, smooched one goddess, had sex with another (twice!), and refused to care about the Plot. Atticus is as Mary Sue-y as it gets, guys!

So join us next time, as Flidais, Atticus and Oberon go hunting bighorn sheep, and our pwotagonist almost cares about someone else.

Almost.

Comment [23]

Hello, friends. Just a reminder that you can go here to check out my friend’s ongoing sporking of Tiger’s Curse.

Located just north of the Phoenix Zoo, Papago Park is an odd formation of isolated hills surrounded by teddy bear cholla, creosote, and saguaro. The hills are steep red rock and riddled with holes, fifteen-million-year-old remnants of ancient mudflows that petrified and eroded over the ages. Now the hills are playgrounds for children in one part of the park, a challenging day climb in some others, and, in a fenced-off area on zoo property, home to a score of bighorn sheep.

This is a good description, and it makes me think Hearne knows what he’s talking about. I would, from reading this paragraph, believe that he’s been to this place. So good job to him, because this is a great way to open the chapter. But then it veers into ‘and then there’s this little preserve for bighorn sheep on zoo property and that’s where Atticus goes to kill bighorn sheep.’

And that’s… not exactly great? Alright full facts: bighorn sheep are not an endangered species, hunting in and of itself is a perfectly natural thing and a fine past time, especially for someone from the distant past, and this is pretty close to the natural habitat of bighorn sheep. You do need a permit to hunt them, and given that Atticus never mentions it he probably doesn’t have one, but other than that, there’s nothing else overtly morally wrong with hunting bighorn sheep with his dog.

He’s a poacher, which would make him the villain of a straight-to-home video kids’ movie, but again that’s not really big time evil or anything. I’m too worn out to hold that against him too much.

But he’s also killing them in a place specifically meant to be for viewing bighorn sheep? It’s on zoo property, but it’s not part of the actual zoo, but it’s by the Arizona Trail where people hope to see them. And Atticus notes that the bighorn sheep in question aren’t always frolicking in a place that’s visible, but they could be. So tourists can come in the morning and possibly see the corpse of a sheep there. Unless Atticus and Oberon take the kill back home, that is, but we have no indication that Atticus skins, guts and butchers his own animals for meat; as far as I know he just leaves the bodies there for people to see in the morning after Oberon eats his fill. And Papago Park doesn’t have that many predators from what I understand, so an animal corpse that’s been brought down by hounds is going to be really obvious.

So there’s that.

When he goes hunting with Oberon, Atticus turns himself into a wolfhound as well (it’s one of his four animal forms) because Oberon likes hunting “the old way,” even though Atticus notes that wolfhounds are bred for hunting wolves and for battle, not for hunting prey animals. It’s also really difficult for wolfhounds because the terrain is rocky and full of cactuses, which again makes me wonder if there’s any reason it’s set in Arizona other than because that’s where Hearne’s from.

Oberon’s ready to go and kill things when they arrive. He also has an argument with the stags that pull Flidais’s chariot, saying that if they “were not under the goddess’s protection,” he would eat them. They’re not impressed, and are basically like, “You wanna go? Come at us, bro” (that bit is paraphrased). Which is kind of amusing, and makes me wonder if I’d be happier if the dog was the main character.

Flidais parks the chariot by Hunt’s Tomb and so they get ready to hunt. Atticus turns into a dog, and we get a information on how Druid shapeshifting works, which isn’t egregious here because it makes perfect sense to explain it right now. Basically, a Druid can turn into an animal at will (later it specifies that each Druid gets a maximum of four animal forms) with no regards to time of day, and that it isn’t painful like it is for werewolves. He doesn’t like to stay transformed into an animal though, because mentally he finds it a weird to be an animal and eat as animals do. For instance, when he turns into an owl he feels gross eating mice whole. And again, credit to Hearne because this makes sense.

Hearne’s writing in this chapter is actually okay. It’s worrying me. When’s the crap coming back?

When Atticus transforms, he says “something was different” and that his mind “felt befuddled, and I was more than a little bloodthirsty.” He begins drooling over killing a sheep. He knows that something feels wrong, but instead of turning back into a human and figuring it out he just leaves it, and the narration acknowledges that he was wrong to do it. This conflicts with the narration constantly telling us that Atticus is paranoid and careful, because he keeps making reckless decisions. Well here’s another: he feels something wrong right when he transforms, but he does nothing about it.

Flidais rips the fence away (which is vandalism), and whistles for the dogs to go hunting. And then she rips up another fence and says “Now go, my hounds,” and Atticus says “as she said it I felt as if I was her hound, not a Druid anymore, not even human anymore, but part of the pack.” He tells us that he’s aware of magic around them that isn’t his, but he dismisses it because his Super Special Awesome Amulet should protect him from it, right? There’s no way that anything bad could happen by turning into an animal in front of the goddess who has control over animals, right?

Oh, right, Flidais can control animals. Atticus doesn’t explain that until it becomes important.

Yeah, Atticus sure seems paranoid, am I right?

There’s a couple pages of them finding a bighorn sheep, and then chasing it to Flidais, who shoots it with her bow. It’s an alright scene, I guess. It goes down easily because Atticus and Oberon have been here a lot, and they’re used to it. It’s not boring, but it doesn’t really feel like it adds much to the overall story or understanding of the world.

But then this happens:

But it seemed those recent visits had not gone unnoticed, unfortunately: As I reached the site of the kill, where Flidais was already gutting the animal and Oberon was standing nearby, a park ranger suddenly appeared, holding a flashlight and a gun. He demanded loudly that we freeze as he blinded us with a halogen glare.

OHES NOES!!! THEY HAVE BEEN CAUGHT!! And the crappy writing is back.

“He demanded loudly that we freeze”? Hey, Hearne, how about give us some dialogue instead of summarizing what characters are saying?

This park ranger surprises the snot out of our characters, who never saw him coming. Flidais flips out and throws a knife into his shoulder, making him drop his flashlight. Realizing he’s dealing with dangerous people, the ranger opens fire and hits Flidais in the arm. In a rage, she orders Oberon and Atticus to kill him. Atticus jumps up, but then realizes that this is a terrible idea he stops himself and turns back into a person. And then he realizes: Flidais, the goddess of animals that he does not trust, was mind-controlling him while he was an animal! Who would have guessed???

Oberon however cannot turn into a human being, and he goes on with the killing. Atticus yells at Flidais to stop, but it is too late; Oberon has already ripped out this guy’s throat.

Atticus? What happened? I taste blood. Who is this man? Where am I? I thought we were hunting sheep. I didn’t do this, did I?

Yup. Oberon doesn’t remember any of the hunt. Which means Flidais just took a dog with near-human level intelligence, and used him to murder a dude. This mind-raping from Flidais actually achieves the intended effect of being disturbing, and I feel heaps of sympathy for Oberon right now, who is just confused and shocked over what’s going on. Too bad any emotion in this scene is ruined by Atticus’s reaction.

Atticus explains that when you’ve seen enough death, you kind of get over the emotional bits and just assess the situation, which in and of itself is not a bad reaction, staying cool under pressure and all. But again this makes me think of our protagonist as a sociopath, because his immediate concern upon thinking this out is not “HOLY SHIZ WE JUST KILLED AN INNOCENT MAN!” Nope, Atticus’s concern is now he’s going to inconvenience him and his dog.

No really. His first words after it happens?

“That was not necessary!” I shouted, but carefully kept my eyes on the corpse. “We could have disarmed him. His death will cause me and my hound much trouble.”

Yup! His problem isn’t that an innocent man is dead, or that Flidais used Oberon to murder someone, it’s that he could totally get caught. Flidais is wondering why they don’t just hide the body, and Atticus has to impatiently explain that These Days (take a shot), crime-solving is much more complicated and the humans have technology to track stuff like DNA. And of course Flidais has never heard of DNA, because the gods are stoopid, tee-hee!

I hate that trope.

I ground my teeth and heard the short yips of Coyote on the desert air. He was laughing at me.

Of course he is, because you’re a twatwaffle! You say that you don’t trust Flidais, but not only do you have sex with her (twice!), you bring your dog to go hunting with her and turn into an animal, which she has complete control over.

[Coyote doesn’t appear until the next book so him laughing here is just… there. It doesn’t do anything other than establish that Coyote exists in this setting and interacts with Atticus sometimes. It should have been cut.]

Oberon’s still freaking out over having killed a dude, though Atticus assures him it’s not his fault. The dog still feels sick though. Again, I like the dog better than Atticus. Flidais points out that someone should not have been able to sneak up on her, the goddess of hunting, so Atticus goes and studies the body.

He was a young Latino with a wispy mustache and a pair of thick lips.

Look, I’m not trying to say that’s racist, but Hearne immediately goes for stereotypical Latino features. And I’m not editing out the rest of the description! That’s all the description we get for what the man looked like: thick lips and a wispy mustache. Not hair color or length, body type, or any other distinguishing features. He doesn’t check his pockets for ID to get a name or anything. Atticus takes one look at him, says he’s Latino and that he’s got a wispy mustache and thick lips.

That makes me a little bit uncomfortable.

Oh, he has an earring, but that’s not described until Atticus says that he “saw traces of Druidry in a diamond stud in his left ear” which is supposed to explain how he was able to be a stealth ninja to the goddess of hunting. He asks Flidais if she can identify the magic of origin, and notes that if she tries to lie and say the magic’s actually Voudoun when it’s clearly Irish, then he knows she’s in on whatever just happened here. Or something. She tells him though that it’s clearly Tuatha de Danann magic, so they conclude that the park ranger was clearly under the control of one of the Irish gods and Atticus assumes it was Aenghus Og.

“I’m sure it was Aenghus Og himself. He gave the man a cloaking spell and then broke it abruptly as he was about to speak, ensuring our surprise and the man’s death. It is the sort of puppetry Aenghus enjoys.”

Wait, what? Yes, him sneaking up on you was weird, but the park ranger was… doing his job? Stopping people from poaching in the park. Why would a random Hispanic park ranger be making deals with Irish deities? And why would Aenghus want Atticus framed for murder? What would that do for him? Wouldn’t it be easier to just murder Atticus? This subplot is introduced basically to add more complications to the story, but it doesn’t really make much sense in the grand scheme of things.

At this point, for Reasons, Hearne tries to justify making Aenghus the villain of the story:

I had looked up Aenghus Og on the Internet once to see if the mortals had a clue about his true nature. They describe him as a god of love and beauty, with four birds following him about, representing his kisses or some such nonsense. Who would tolerate four birds flapping about his head, constantly letting loose their bowels and screeching? Not the Aenghus I know. But some accounts provide a better picture of his character by also telling of his deeds, such as taking his father’s house from him by trickery and slaying both his stepfather and his foster mother. Or the time he left a girl who was hopelessly in love with him and who died of grief a few weeks later. That’s more the kind of man we are talking about.

No, the Celtic god of love isn’t a cherub with cute little wings, nor is he a siren born of the sea in a giant clamshell. He is not benevolent or merciful or even inclined to be nice on a regular basis. Though it pains me to think of it because of what it says about my people, our god of love is a ruthless seeker of conquest, wholly self-serving, and more than a little vindictive.

Let’s take a look at this, step-by-step, okay?

ONE: Atticus shouldn’t have to use the Internet to see what mortal perceptions of Aenghus Og are. Has he not been reading Irish literature? At all? Books of mythology? I mentioned Aenghus Og appears in the Hellboy comics, albeit briefly, but he also appears or is referenced in lots of other books and poems by Irish authors, like “The Song of Wandering Aenghus” by W.B. Yeats, James Stephens’s Crock of Gold, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Pat O’Shea’s Hounds of the Morrigan. We might be able to excuse this with Atticus not being that much into the arts, but then the next book reveals that he has all of Shakespeare’s plays memorized. The third book shows that he’s a fan of Neil Gaiman. He’s definitely into the arts. Which means that knows the Bard like the back of his hand, reads modern English fantasy writers today, but hasn’t become familiar with any of the famous Irish authors of the last two hundred years? It’s weird because in a later chapter he goes to an Irish pub in town, and he’s got an Irish wolfhound, and he goes by an Irish name and proudly wears Druid tattoos, implying that Atticus is very proud of Irish heritage, but he’s not that familiar with Joyce? With Yeats? The guy also works at a New Age bookshop for a living, and Yeats was all over that occultist shiz as a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. No, really. And yet Atticus has to go on the Internet to know what people think about Aenghus? That’s kind of BS.

Essentially, Hearne has written a character that fits a list of Irish stereotypes, but he cares nothing about Irish literature.

TWO: I’m pretty sure that the ‘four birds following him around’ is an artistic thing? Like, it’s how you depict him in a way that he’s easily recognizable no matter the artist or style. That way someone who isn’t good at recognizing faces but knows that feature can look at a picture of the Irish gods and say ‘Hey, Aenghus Og is the guy with birds around his head, so I can tell it’s that guy!’ I don’t think anyone actually imagines a bunch of birds flying around the guy’s head, in the same way that people don’t actually think Saint Paul walks around heaving a massive sword.

And wait a minute: aren’t gods limited to manifesting in a way that reflects people’s beliefs? The story used that as the explanation for why Jesus can’t manifest as anything other than a crucified figure. So say that it was true that everyone imagines Aenghus Og with birds around his head. Then according to the rules already set down, he would have to have that feature, because that’s apparently what people believe about him. One could argue that the Tuatha de Danann are different because in this universe, they were real life people who were deified. Except that doesn’t work because Jesus is also generally agreed to have been a real life person by historians. Obviously historians disagree on that resurrection business, but that’s not the point I’m making, and please don’t let the comments dissolve into an argument about religion. The point I am making is this: if in this universe Jesus has to appear in a way that believers of Christianity imagine and all agree on, so does Aenghus Og.

THREE: Your description of birds is… not flattering. You’d think an immortal Druid, who is supposed to be all connected to the Earth and stuff, would not be that rude about birds? I get it, but I feel as if an immortal Druid would not be that crass about nature.

FOUR: TMary can correct me on these things (as I’m going off of basic research and Wikipedia), but as I said in Chapter 1 Atticus (and Hearne) are taking Aenghus’s “crimes” out of context. He tricked his father out his house; okay, yes, but again, his father (Dagda) had divvied up the land and not left any for Aenghus in the first place, so he trick Dagda out of his house so he had a place to go. And Dagda, also being a god, could probably find another place to live. Screwing someone out of a house when they already screwed you out of one isn’t particularly treacherous. It’s his own father, so it’s a bit sketchy, but not like ‘supervillain’ sketch, more like ‘con man/antihero’ sketch.

He killed his stepfather, yes, but his stepfather killed his foster father, Midir. Getting revenge on the man who killed the man who actually raised him isn’t generally seen as an evil act in fantasy fiction, especially not when it’s set in ancient Ireland. That sounds more heroic when put in-context.

Aenghus killed his foster mother, alright, but she had cursed his lover and drove her off when she found out that she was with Aenghus. Which is not great, but if someone puts a malicious curse on your girlfriend I don’t see why you’d do anything nice for her.

A girl falls in love with Aenghus and then dies of grief? How… is that on Aenghus? He’s not obliged to love her back. In any case, the one account of this story I can find here, and in that Aenghus actually did love the girl in question, but she had converted to Christianity and refused to go back to paganism and Aenghus. So that relationship didn’t work because she changed belief systems that didn’t allow for their love to work. That’s still not on him.

So out of context, Atticus drops these on us to paint Aenghus Og as a maniac who kills family members and screws over people for kicks, when the actual stories he’s referencing don’t make him out to be a particularly bad guy, especially compared to other mythic deities. I’ll admit that on short notice my sources aren’t the best, so maybe I’m wrong on all of this, but that doesn’t change that it’s all presented without context. So all of Atticus’s claims are immediately suspect.

FIVE: The second paragraph there references Eros/Cupid and Aphrodite/Venus, as if they’re the ‘nice’ gods of love, when a passing knowledge of Greek mythology would tell you that they’re not that nice. Up until Psyche, Eros was basically his mother’s hit man shooting arrows of love at whoever she was ticked off at. And Aphrodite helps to start and continue the Trojan War, endangering and slaughtering thousands of people, wiping a civilization off the map.

Aenghus sounds pretty tame in comparison to Aphrodite.

The point of these paragraphs is supposed to be an explanation as to why the Aenghus of the book doesn’t match real world legends and myths about him, but it just falls flat. None of it adds up. It still doesn’t give him a motivation or backstory, it just handwaves it all by Atticus saying, “He’s a dick! Trust me on this.” It’s a personality Hearne invented from scratch, but he’s trying to act as if this makes sense. It doesn’t.

So then Flidais and Atticus hear sirens, and they decide to leave before the police show up. Flidais offers to kill all the cops for him, but she says it in a way that proves she knows Atticus would disagree. Atticus informs us that she would actually do it too, and not lose any sleep over it. He tells her get stab happy, mainly because he’s worried it might draw attention to himself rather than because he has any problem with her slaughtering people just doing their jobs.

Instead Flidais uses magic to bury the body. Atticus thinks they’ll have it out in no time, because he thinks investigations are like in CSI, I guess, but it’s the best option they’ve got right now. It’s noted that Flidais has more difficulty with the magic than she would in the Old World because she’s

Yeah apparently the gods have to work harder to use magic in America. It would make a bit more sense if anyone outside of Ireland the Tuatha de Danann have trouble exerting their power, and the further away they are from it the more effort they have to put into it. But the way it’s phrased makes it sound like the she’d be fine doing this in anywhere in Europe, it’s just the Americas that causes them trouble.

They escape to Flidais’s chariot, just avoiding the cops. No really, Atticus tells us that they can hear the police car doors closing, which means that they wasted a lot of time not getting out of there when they had the chance. The stags mock Oberon, and the chapter ends with Flidais being frustrated that in her “first new hunt in an age of man” that “it was ruined by Aenghus Og.” Atticus tells her (and the audience) that he’s out of patience.

[He also tells us that Flidais is a sociopath, but he was the guy who only got upset at a man’s death because it might get him in trouble.]

And so ends our chapter. Join me next time, when Atticus finally picks up this magic sword everyone’s been going on about.

Comment [15]

Welcome back! I fully intended to get this done before November, and in truth the majority of this was written in October, but then I didn’t get around to finishing and editing it, and then NaNoWriMo happened, and one thing after another didn’t give me a lot of room to get this sporking up.

My friend’s continued her Tiger’s Curse sporking though! So go check that out!

Now’s the part of the book when Atticus is meant to take the Plot seriously. Remember that there were supposed to be monsters coming to attack Atticus? Well Atticus only just now remembered. I understand if you forgot, what with him having sex with Flidais, explaining how he stole the magic sword, and went on a hunting trip in which Flidais mind-raped his dog into killing a dude, who was apparently working for Aenghus Og in a ridiculously circuitous plan.

With much apologizing and simultaneous thanks for the gift of her company, I suggested to Flidais once I returned home that if I were to be attacked shortly by a paraty of Fir Bolgs, I had much to do in the way of preparations. She was only too happy to take the hint, and her leave.

See this doesn’t add up with what he told us earlier. Because in a previous chapter Atticus told us that he had to be roundabout in telling Flidais what he wants in his own house because she’s a goddess and guest rights and all of that demand he be incredibly polite; Atticus can’t tell her to do anything and he has to walk on eggshells suggesting that he wants her to do something as simple as letting him drink his own smoothie in his own kitchen before she’ll pick up the hint. Right now, we’re being told that Atticus just about tells her that she needs to leave so he can prepare, and she’s fine with that. It’s not consistent at all.

Flidais gives him her blessing, and she pats Oberon on the head, though Oberon “tried to recoil,” an action that makes sense given that she mind controlled him into killing some dude. She leaves, and Atticus notes that “We may have her blessing, but we wouldn’t have her bow at our back,” meaning she’s not helping them to fight the bad guys coming. Again, given she murdered some dude, why would you want her help anyway? He suggests that she can’t be seen taking sides with an enemy of the Tuatha de Danann, but her showing up at his house to warn him of oncoming enemies, having sex with him, and going hunting with him is okay? If the Morrigan can pop in at any time, don’t expect me to believe that none of the other Irish gods know about this.

Oberon approaches, “head down, tail between his legs,” because he’s still upset over what happened. He apologizes, though Atticus tells him that it wasn’t his fault and that Aenghus and Flidais are the ones to blame in all this. He promises to never go hunting with Flidais again. Atticus says that the reason he was blindsided was because he’d never hunted with her in animal form. Then we go off track.

There’s a bit where Atticus says he and Flidais went hunting together in Ukraine, and that she’s the one who taught him how to shoot from horseback so he could join the Golden Horde under Genghis Khan. I know I mentioned this before, but Genghis Khan killed enough people to lower the human race’s carbon footprint. And Atticus willingly helped him do it. Genghis Khan did other things too, so I’m not saying he’s the worst person in history, but as far as we know Atticus wasn’t on board for any of that—all he’s told us is that he fought in the Mongol army, and we’re not given a reason why. But this is also the guy who killed men on his own side in battle the second they tried to stop him from running off with their leader’s magical sword, and who doesn’t care that the gods kill people as long as it doesn’t inconvenience him. So it’s entirely possible he decided to join the Khan’s army to kill people for funzies.

And then Atticus says Oberon has to take a bath, and of course the dog doesn’t want to, and then Oberon asks about Genghis Khan’s whores, and Atticus has to clarify that he said ‘hordes’ not ‘whores’ but Genghis Khan had both and this is really light-hearted dialogue considering they’re supposed to be preparing for battle and Oberon was freaking out about killing a guy two minutes ago. I’d be more forgiving if this dialogue had to do with their preparations, but it doesn’t. It’s just another segue into telling us a famous historical figure Atticus has ties to and for Oberon to make funny comments.

I had to see to my preparations for the Fir Bolgs—the full extent of which was nothing more than a good night’s sleep.

Oh, I’m sorry. Did I give you the impression Atticus was taking the Plot seriously now? Because he isn’t. The monsters are coming and all he’s going to do about it is go to sleep. He says that his house is too well-protected for them to come onto his property, but that’s not why they’re not going to bother him there. It’s because they know it’s too well protected, so they’re not even going to try to attack him until it’s convenient for the plot.

Atticus wakes up and tells about the omelet he made for breakfast, the sausages he cooked for Oberon, and the coffee he and his dog drink (Oberon likes with Irish Creme Coffee-mate and ice). Yup; he cares more about telling us what he had for breakfast than the trauma of last night, or the oncoming monsters that day. He’s also not interested in knowing that coffee, and caffeine in general, is really bad for your pets.

Oberon then asks how Genghis Khan drank his coffee. So we could get… this:

After my bathtime story, he wanted to be the Genghis Khan of dogs. He wanted a harem full of French poodles, all of whom were named either Fifi or Bambi. It was an amusing habit of his: Oberon had, in the past, wanted to be Vlad the Impaler, Joan of Arc, Bertrand Russell, and any other historical figure I had recently told him about while he was getting a thorough cleansing.

Uh…

It’s not really explicitly addressed in this book, I think, but Oberon is clearly smarter than the average dog. He’s pretty much at human-level intelligence. Yeah, he cares more about loyalty and protection than your average human, and he’s more interested in dog activities, but he has conversations with Atticus about history and English grammar. So I think it’s safe to say that he’s around human level intelligence.

Other dogs? No indication that they’re as smart as Oberon in-universe. So Oberon’s desire to have an actual harem of female dogs (specifically poodles), dogs that are not of the same level of intelligence as himself is… disconcerting. I get it, he’s a dog, and dogs like to bone. But giving this a minute of thought makes it all very strange. He’s a being that understands the concept of consent and his hypothetical harem doesn’t. I don’t know quite what to do with this, other than tell you all it makes me uncomfortable.

A being of human-level sapience…wants a bunch of sex slaves of an animal intelligence level. It’s like if Atticus, in dog form, decided to mate with several female dogs.

Alright Oberon, I’m revoking my sympathy for you.

Atticus tells Oberon that Genghis Khan preferred tea, so he makes his dog some tea while he decides “it was time to make myself a target.”

He walks out into the backyard and uses his “connection to the earth to review my domestic defenses.” He can do that, I guess. He pretends to water the plants in his planter boxes, until he gets to the last one which has “a long package wrapped tightly in oilskin” in it.

“Oh look!” I said in mock surprise. Oberon recognized my tone and didn’t bother to turn his head. “Somebody has hidden an ancient magical sword underneath my herbs. That’s so silly.”

What? He had Fragarach the entire time? I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you.

Atticus has acted as if whether he had the sword or not was some great secret, and it’s really not. The minute he pulls it out of its hiding place he loudly makes a sarcastic comment about it. And yeah, he’s checked his magic defenses, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that someone could hear him and report it. We’ve seen that the villain isn’t above using ordinary humans to do his dirty work.

And hey, is it just me, or does this story follow the opposite of normal structure? The hero begins the story with cool magical powers, gets near-invincibility from a goddess in the second chapter, and already has the magical McGuffin that everyone’s after before the story even begins. Atticus even already has a solid job and a nice house. He doesn’t grow or gain anything over the course of the narrative; he’s already got it all! I’m not saying that a protagonist has to start the story as a noob with no skillz, but at least not have him be at the top of his game, completely in control of every situation. It would be like if you were watching Highlander but Connor McLeod didn’t have a love interest, or fear of getting close to people, and didn’t care that the Kurgan had showed up to lop off his head because he already had a magic Kurgan-killing gun that he could pull out of his armpit at any time.

He can be immortal! He can have magic skills! He can have a magic sword! But all of these things from the get-go? Along with near-invincibility and sex with goddesses? If Atticus were a remotely likable character, then I’d want to see all the stuff that happened before this, where he learned all this magic and such.

Oh and Atticus uses this time to explain to us some more about Druid powers.

This was my most vulnerable time, because while the sword’s location was now revealed, there were three bindings and a cloak on the sword to prevent anyone—including me—from using it. The bindings were my own work, and it’s pretty much all a Druid can do. We bind elements together or unbind them: When I shapeshift, I am binding my spirit to an animal’s form. Summoning mist or wind—that’s a form of binding too, as is camouflaging myself or allowing Oberon to hear my thoughts. It is all possible because we are already bound with the natural world by living in it. We could not bind anything if the strings connecting us to all of nature were not already there. And because we see these connections and know that seemingly disparate elements can in fact be closely related, Druids have a better grasp of divination than most other magical practitioners. Our knowledge of nature makes us superior brewers of medicines, poisons, and even potables. We’re able to run tirelessly by drawing on the power of the earth, and we heal fairly quickly. We’re useful to have around. But we don’t shoot balls of fire out of our hands, or fly upon brooms, or make people’s heads explode. That sort of magic is only possible through a radically different view of the world—and by binding one’s spirit to extremely unsavory beings.

Alright this is the best explanation we’re going to get about what makes a Druid a Druid in this universe and why they’re better than every other magic user in the setting. Their magic is better because they’re bound to the earth, and they understand connections between things better than anyone else. This goes back to my earlier point: Atticus is already a master of apparently the best magic system in the universe, so he has no room to really grow. He already knows everything he needs to know.

Also? This sounds like BS. “Binding lets me shapeshift”? How does that work? The way he describes it makes it sound as if he’s possessing an animal body, like Granny Weatherwax does in the Discworld series. But that’s explicitly not what Atticus does. He turns himself into animal. It’s also a pretty big stretch of the word ‘binding’ to say “binding lets us have super endurance and healing and divination and wind-controlling powers.” Hearne’s stretching the definition of ‘binding’ to include too many things. It’s like if I said, “My superhero controls water, and since there’s water everywhere he controls the planet. And also because humans have water in their bodies he also controls people’s brains.”

I’d give this some room if not all Druids were meant to be good at all of these things. Like maybe if some Druids are better at shapeshifting, and some at potions, and some at making wind. That’s what Dresden Files does with wizards—yes, in theory wizards have education in many forms of magic, but they tend to have talents in only a handful. But I’m getting the impression that Atticus is a master of all of these things, and it’s indicated that Druids tended to be as a rule.

This also raises the question: why is Atticus the last Druid? Why aren’t there more? Presumably they’re all dead. But according to Atticus, they can heal fast, be eternally young, and make themselves stronger and faster than any other ordinary humans. Basically, they should be magic potion-making Wolverines)#Healing_and_defensive_powers running around the Celtic world. Then why are they all dead? I guess yeah, alone, some monsters could gang up on them, or if a group of deities hated them enough they could kill all the Druids. But without an explicit explanation, this doesn’t really make any sense.

And it could have been something actually interesting! What if there was some sort of betrayal? What if there was some villain out there that killed all the Druids? What if Atticus angsted about being the last of his kind? What if it was a mystery he was still trying to solve? But no, it’s just an incidental thing that he’s the last Druid, he doesn’t really care about it, and it doesn’t really drive the Plot in any tangible way.

Anyhow.

Atticus explains how there are bindings on Fragarach, to keep it in good condition, to prevent anyone from drawing it, and to prevent anyone from detecting it by magic despite it being a powerful magical artifact. He explains that the cloaking spell is NOT his work, as apparently that’s not a thing Druids can do (but turning invisible and controlling the winds is???), but he got it from a “friendly local witch named Radomila”, which doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a paranoid guy would do, but okay. He made a deal with her so that she did that spell, and in return he went to Mendocino, California, turned into an otter, dove into the water and picked up “an ornate golden necklace set with several large rubies, which were clutched in the hand of a buried skeleton she had stunningly accurate information on.” Atticus has no idea what she wanted it for, but doesn’t care, saying “That’s witches for you.”

I know I keep bringing this up, but he really doesn’t come across as the slightest bit paranoid. He had a powerful witch do something to his most valued possession, the thing that the gods are willing to kill him over, and in return he gets her something that he doesn’t have the slightest clue the significance or power of. And he doesn’t care.

Apparently the cloaking spell will only come off if he pours his own tears on it? Then there’s this quick digression about how Atticus always tears up during Field of Dreams and then how his own father wasn’t like the dad in that movie and was apparently abusive, but he tries to pass it off as a joke, but again this is entirely pointless and has nothing to do with anything, so why is it here?

Bindings banished with a drop of blood pricked from my finger and a bit of spit—

Wait, what?

Atticus goes from telling us about his dad and Field of Dreams to how he already got rid of the bindings (but not the cloaking spell; I have no idea if that’s still on or not) with his blood. I got whiplash from how quick that shift was.

So he pulls out the sword, admires it and waves it around, and then he straps the sword scabbard to his back. Which… alright, I don’t know if you’ve ever strapped a sword to your back and tried to draw it, but I have and it usually doesn’t work. I suppose it might work if you made a custom sheath for it, and Atticus has had the time, so we’ll let it slide.

Atticus tells Oberon they’re going to the shop; he wants Oberon by his side at all times from here on out. He also casts a camouflage spell on the dog, so that if any authorities are seeking Oberon they won’t find him, and to be able to take enemy faeries by surprise if they show up.

Also, Atticus admonishes Oberon not to sniff anyone’s butts. And on the way out, the widow MacDonagh asks if he’ll be coming back, and Atticus replies “A bonny young lass like you need not ask a man twice.” I mean it wasn’t necessary to include that in this sporking, but I just want us to know that the stereotypical Irish speaking thing is still going.

At the store, his employee Perry is working. He’s a cheerful goth guy, but Hearne capitalizes the word ‘Goth.’ That doesn’t look correct to me, but I’m not sure. There follows a description of his store, the tea counter, and the kind of stuff they stock and sell, and that there’s a spell to prevent shoplifting, and he asks Perry to play guitar music, and I don’t care. This is all boring.

It’s when Hallbjorn Hauk, Atticus’s werewolf lawyer, walks in that something actually happens. “Hal,” as he’s called, comes in with “a dark pinstripe suit” which is pretty conspicuous for a guy in a New Age shop, but no one comments on that. He picks up the nearest newspaper (they sell those at the New Age shop, I guess) and the headline is about the ranger who was killed in the park.

Also they have this conversation in Irish accents. No, really:

“Now, tell me, lad,” he said in his best faux-Irish accent tinged with ancient Icelandic, “would y’be knowin’ anything about this spot o’trouble here?”

Casting off my American accent, I replied in kind: “I’d be knowin’ more than is comfortable, just between me and my attorney-client privilege.”

Thing is, besides the “spot o’ trouble” in there, I defaulted to reading this in a Southern accent, so this bit sounded more like a John Wayne movie in my head. Point is, Hal thinks Atticus knows something about it, especially because he heard Coyote’s laugh the previous night. Why? I dunno. Like I said Coyote’s not in this book.

So they agree to meet for lunch to talk things out at Rula Bula, Atticus’s “favorite hangout” and of course, an Irish bar that has “the best fish and chips in thirty states.” I would skip over this, but because Atticus thinks about this assertion for a lengthy paragraph afterward that I’m not going to relate to you because really, who cares? I’m going to go ahead and say that while fish and chips is by no means a bad meal, it’s really not that special of a dish, and most of the time it’s just… well, fried fish and fried potatoes. It’s not much to write home about. It’s not even really a signature Irish dish, as far as I understand, nor is it Norse like Hal, so I don’t know why either of them are so into it.

Hal leaves. We get some descriptions of his customers coming in, I still don’t care, they buy stuff, and then the Plot—I mean, a witch walks into the store. Atticus goes ahead and tells us, as if we’re idiots, that she wasn’t wearing a Halloween costume: “no black robes or pointy hat, no hairy moles growing on the end of an oversize nose.”

Yes, Hearne, we guessed she wasn’t the Wicked Witch of the West. I get that he wants to make sure that we get that the magical beings in his book aren’t the same as common pop cultural images, but I think your Average Joe can probably guess even from pop culture that not every witch is a shrivelled old crone. Or maybe it’s an excuse so Atticus can describe what she does look like, which he does in more detail than I care about. It’s not necessarily an obscene amount of information, but after saying she looked like a college student and had on makeup and lip gloss, did we really need all of this?

She was wearing a white bebe tank top and a pair of oversize white-rimmed sunglasses. She carried a pink cell phone in one hand along with a jangling key ring. Her tanned, silky legs were bare beyond a pair of turquoise cotton shorts that strained at the boundaries of modesty. Her feet were slipped into a pair of pink flip-flops, her toenails painted pink with golden glittery sparkling in it.

Did we need all of this detail? We don’t get that much detail for most character descriptions? Keep in mind, I skipped some of it to get to that paragraph, but it’s still weird amount of explanation of everything she was wearing. Compare this to his friend/lawyer Hal, who is also described in this very chapter:

He was dressed in a dark blue pinstripe suit with a white shirt and pale yellow tie. His hair, as ever, was immaculately styled in a Joe Buck haircut, and the dimple in his chin smiled sideways at me. If I didn’t know he was a werewolf, I would have voted for him.

…I’m not sure why he wouldn’t vote a werewolf for office. Racist.

But my point stands. Hal, who is Atticus’s friend and lawyer, is given less detail than the witch that walks in. I suspect because Hearne wanted the chance to describe a hawt woman as much as he possibly can. Is that an unfair assumption? [shrugs] I dunno. You decide.

Atticus knows from her aura (what how does that even work) that she’s a witch, and he can tell from her eyes that she was older than the twenty-one she looked.

…the eyes behind those sunglasses were definitely older than twenty-one: She had seen things that separated her from the young and stupid.

…that’s another of those comments that makes me wonder if Hearne knows his audience. Atticus feels exactly like what a dumb young person would think makes a good protagonist, and yet here he’s calling young college kids stupid? And that’s a huge portion of the people who’d pick up this book? And Atticus is no bastion of intelligence himself, so it’s a bit hypocritical.

So this witch walks into the shop and asks for Atticus by name, and then she requests that he makes her a magic potion. An anti-love potion to be exact, one that will make her unattractive to a specific person.

“I am one of Radomila’s coven,” she said, extending her hand to shake. “The youngest, actually. My name is Emilia, but I go by Emily in America.”

Uh… why? Emilia isn’t that weird of a name in the US. There are plenty of Hispanic women in the country, so it wouldn’t be out of place. It’s not weird where I live. I suspect that Arizona, being closer to Latin America than where I live, has got tons of Emilias. Why she should feel the need to change her name to be more Anglicized is beyond me. It’s not even that ‘Emilia’ is even that foreign of a name. This book was written before Game of Thrones got big, so I guess she wouldn’t have been as famous, but Emilia Clarke is an English woman? The idea that someone moving to the US in modern day had to change her name from ‘Emilia’ to ‘Emily’ is stupid.

She shakes his hand, and Atticus tells us it’s probably to get a gauge of how magically powerful he is. Of course, being a Druid (and more awesome than other magic users, of course), it’s not a good gauge because he draws power from the Earth, so right now he’s not exerting a lot of power, but whenever he wants he can just call up ALL THE MAGIC. Or something.

We also get some info on Radomila’s coven, which is a group of thirteen witches in town, and Atticus actually considers them pretty powerful and worth staying on their good side. Of course he also adds as an aside that he could probably totally beat Radomila in a fight, because we can’t forget how much of a Mary Sue our pwotagonist is, can we? Yeah, witches could beat him, but only if they team up and use the goddess they have on their side.

Atticus finally asks why Emilia is coming to him for help, considering she’s part of an entire coven of witches fully capable of making potions. She gives some answer about how none of them actually wants to make the potion for…Reasons. I’m not skipping anything, they’re deliberately vague about why they want him to be the one to make the actual potion. Atticus again asks about it, and she responds with “I pray you do not fence with me. I know full well what you are, Druid.”

Well. That was putting the cards on the table. I took another look at her aura, which was largely red and tossed about with the desire for power. She might be older than a century after all. College students these days didn’t begin their sentences with “I pray you,” and they thought fencing was selling stolen car stereos.

Atticus, you’re an idiot. Most major universities have a fencing club, for starters. So when fencing comes up among my friends, most of them are more likely to think of sword fighting than selling stolen goods.

“And I know what you are too, Emily of the Sisters of the Three Auroras.” Her mouth formed a tiny O of surprise at my use of her coven’s true name.

Hey if Atticus has dealings with the witches’ coven, why would she be surprised at him knowing its name? That’s not precisely hidden information. The supernatural community in Tempe seems to be very close together, they would all know each other. This should not be surprising.

Emily says that if Atticus does the Thing, the coven will owe him big time. He asks if she’s authorized to hand out favors for an entire coven, and she pulls out the relevant paperwork (signed in blood, of course) to prove it. And I just realized that this conversation involves boring paperwork. Way to write a thrilling novel, Hearne.

So Atticus agrees to make this potion of anti-attraction, with the payment of a favor at some point, his usual fees, and if she follows his instructions. He tells her to come back tomorrow at the same time, and every day for a week, and that she has to pay him ten thousand dollars.

No really.

“Tomorrow you will bring me a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars.”

Her eyes widened. “Outrageous!” she spat, and she had a point. I never charged more than two hundred dollars for my apothecary services. “That cannot be your customary fee!”

“If the Tempe Coven is unwilling to take care of your paramour’s libido on its own, which they could do far more simply than I, then I am owed danger pay,” I said.

His reasoning here isn’t bad: if you’re pulling me into some drama that your own people don’t want to get involved in, then I can charge more for putting my neck on the line. What’s setting me off is the actual amount: ten thousand dollars. This is a man who is, as far as everyone knows, just some recent college graduate type who owns a New Age shop. He occasionally sells antique books, yeah, but if he deposits a ten thousand dollar check into his bank, isn’t that going to raise some flags? Wouldn’t you, as a banker, be suspicious if someone whose finances you worked suddenly gained ten thousand dollars when he works in a business that is not that exceptionally profitable? Yeah his lawyers are supernaturals, but are his bankers? If he got in cash he could hide it better, but he doesn’t, he specifically asks for a check.

And as we see later on, the cops start investigating him because they think he’s involved with the death of that park ranger. And wouldn’t it be really suspicious if a guy you were investigating for murder suddenly gained ten thousand dollars out of nowhere?

Emily reluctantly agrees, and Atticus says he’ll begin as soon as he gets the check. They shake on it; Atticus says that they could spit and shake hands, but that’s dumb because giving a witch your spit, blood or hair is giving her control over you since she could use that in a spell. She leaves, and she says goodbye to Oberon, proving that she can see through the magic used to hide him.

The chapter ends with Atticus wondering if it was a good idea to make this deal in the first place (it wasn’t), and talks about how he’s totally done potions like this for college girls seeking to get rid of exes or stalkers. And like, I get that this has a mundane use, and sometimes there are guys who will not listen to reason. But I’m kind of bothered by the idea that Atticus is selling magic to ordinary college kids who don’t know what powers they’re dealing with? It seems incredibly irresponsible on his part, considering he’s an immortal Druid.

Wait a second: this man is an immortal Druid, who has fought gods and monsters, rode with the strongest armies on Earth, survived two thousand years…and now he sells magic drugs to college kids.

That’s just pathetic.

This chapter is really long, and easily could have been split up: Atticus says goodbye to Flidais and picks up Fragarach, and then a second chapter for him going to the shop and meeting the witch. Considering exactly how painstakingly described random bits of worldbuilding are, it’s near insanity that Flidais leaving is basically written as “And then she left. Bye!”

We get tons of details about how the Druid powers work, but they don’t make sense as they’re all shoved under the label of ‘Binding.’ We get information about the witches; but at this point it’s weird that yet another faction is being shoved into the Plot and made important when we already have the Irish gods, Fir Bolgs, faeries and werewolves in the mix. I guess the first Dresden Files introduced a lot of characters to be involved in the Plot, but that’s a mystery story, so it makes sense that Harry goes around asking different people what’s going on. Here they just sort of wander into the Plot for Reasons.

Furthermore, any interesting ideas are dropped with little fanfare. Atticus could be an interesting character, but Hearne absolutely refuses to let him be one. We found out in an earlier chapter that Atticus has had at least one child, but what happened to the kid is never mentioned and never made important. We find out here that he had an abusive father, but this doesn’t get elaborated on and is not at all a part of his character. We’re told repeatedly that he’s paranoid but he keeps taking stupid risks; in a good book, this could be written as him trying to find something new and exciting in an immortal life by taking stupid crazy risks.

Instead it’s just there. Hearne throws tons of stereotypically cool traits to Atticus, and instead of fleshing them out to make an interesting characters he’s flatter than pancake.

Join us next time, when Atticus goes to his favorite Irish bar, talks to his lawyer, and gapes at the hawt bartender.

Comment [13]

Well hello, friends! We’re back for another sporking!

As you can imagine, Atticus is still not in any rush to prepare for the oncoming monster attack, because he’s not really in a rush to do anything. And it makes sense considering the threat doesn’t show up in this chapter either. We start the chapter with Atticus informing us that he’s had “quite a busy morning,” but at lunch time he’s going to Rula Bula, the Irish pub in town where he’s to meet his werewolf lawyer, Hal.

He has to tell Oberon (who I remind you is magically camouflaged) not to sniff trees or fire hydrants on the way. He’s upset about that, but Atticus cheers him up by telling him that he can torture his neighbor’s cats.

No really.

You can play around at the widow’s house. You can chase her cats in camouflage and totally freak them out. Heh!

Oh, now that sounds like a good time! I can sneak up on that calico one and bark right behind it. It’ll hit the ceiling.

Oberon told me about his plans to just put his paw down on the Persian’s tail and watch what happened.

I get that he’s a dog, and this is something a dog would love if he had the power to be invisible. At the same time it’s a little weird and petty. Considering Atticus is supposed to be friends with his neighbor (who is always referred to as either ‘the widow’ or with the word ‘widow’ before her name), it’s a not great that he’s letting his dog terrorize her cats.

I know I’m probably taking this too seriously, so let’s move on to the next bit.

Hal Hauk had already secured a table inside Rula Bula near the window, and he had ordered a pint of Smithwick’s for each of us. I was both pleased and disappointed by the gesture, for it meant I wouldn’t get to go to the bar myself and take a whiff of the barmaid.

That’s not as creepy as it sounds.

Nah, brah, it’s pretty creepy.

So the deal is this: the bartender at the place is Granuaile, a super mega hawt Irish redhead. Atticus is convinced that she’s not human. According to him, “her scent was my only clue” because she “gave off an ineffable scent that was not quite floral, more like a pinot grigio and mixed with something that reminded me of India, like saffron and poppies.” So Atticus is determined to figure out what she is, and instead of asking her or minding his own business he’s been racking his brain to find out.

He’s ruled out a few options; she’s not Fae, because he can see through glamours and she doesn’t have one, nor does she seem to care about his magic iron amulet. She’s not a vampire because she works during the day and in this universe vampires can’t go out in the day (which wasn’t a thing until the movie Nosferatu came out in 1922 but okay). She’s not a werewolf, and not a witch. Atticus says she’s not a demon because apparently those always smell of brimstone, which is dumb, but we’ll talk about demons later. So Atticus is convinced she must be some kind of goddess going incognito, albeit a non-Irish one because he’d recognize an Irish goddess right away.

I’m a little unclear how this rules out all the options, but more than that I’m unclear why he’s decided she’s supernatural. There is no mention of performing supernatural feats, or any sort of magic. She’s just incredibly beautiful and smells weird. Somehow this is evidence that she’s somehow supernatural. It can’t be that she has a weird perfume. No, clearly this woman must be a goddess.

Oh, and did you think Hearne declined to describe just how hawt Granuaile is? Well you clearly haven’t been keeping up with how this book works, friendo!

She was a mystery to me, and a beautiful one at that. Long locks of curly red hair cascaded over her shoulders, which were always covered in a tight but otherwise chaste T-shirt. She did not earn tips from her cleavage like many barmaids do, but rather depended on her green eyes, her pouty lips, and the light dusting of freckles on her cheeks.

You know what, I’m cutting off here, ‘cause screw it, you get the point, right? It’s most of the description anyway.

There’s nothing wrong with an author going to extreme lengths to describe his or her characters. But in this book you’ve seen how this level of attention is only paid to female characters, and they’re of course the ones that are obscenely hot. You could argue that Atticus paying this close attention to women’s looks and not men’s is a character flaw rather than the author’s personal preferences, but that doesn’t really make Atticus look very good in my eyes. He’s a two thousand-year-old Druid, and he’s still drooling over college-aged women? Really?

Granuaile smiles at him, making him wonder if she knows who he really is or not. He walks past the bar, leading her to ask why he isn’t sitting with her. Oberon teases Atticus about his crush, and Atticus flirts with her a bit until Hal reminds him he’s there for a reason and he will be charging him for his time there as his lawyer. Oberon even slips in a jab about how Atticus is hypocritical because he always tells Oberon to stay away from poodles at the dog park.

Hal, being a werewolf, can smell Oberon there, and seeing that Atticus has a sword slung across his back (which apparently no one else notices?), freaks out because he realizes that it’s Fragarach, the McGuffin that everyone’s after. He asks Atticus if it was a part of the park ranger getting killed, and then asks if he needs to tell the rest of the werewolf pack. Which is creatively called “the Pack.” The Druid tells him the sword wasn’t part of it, and that the Pack doesn’t need to get involved.

Atticus insists that he needs to talk to Leif (the vampire lawyer in the firm) as soon as he wakes up tonight. Hal asks how he’s going to get paid, because, fun fact, Atticus sometimes pays Leif in blood. Yup, turns out that vampires really dig that two thousand-year-old Druid blood, and since Atticus can just heal himself he doesn’t really mind. Apparently there are no downsides to this whatsoever; Leif just gets extra powerful. Atticus thinks it might because Leif is hoping to fight Thor one day. Or something.

[Also when Atticus asks Leif to be sent over, “Hal looked up as if I had just asked him to lick up vomit.” Why? I dunno. I think this is part of the whole “vampires and werewolves don’t like each other” thing but it’s not really explained why. They just do, because that’s what they’re like, I guess.]

They order fish and chips, and an extra plate for Oberon, neglecting that it’s really not that great an idea to feed your dog a fish with too much oil, like, say, one that’s been fried.

Atticus tells Hal most of what happened, but leaves out the Morrigan because… Reasons. Hal asks what the fudge Fir Bolgs are anyway, which is a good question because they’ve been mentioned at least twice now and we still haven’t been told. Atticus explains that because of glamour they’ll look like bikers. But really, “they’re giants with bad oral hygiene and a predilection for wielding spears.” They’re hired muscle for the Tuatha De Danann these days.

In truth, Atticus is less concerned about them posing a threat to him as much as causing damage and making a bunch of noise, which might bring the authorities into it. He asks what he should do, and Hal tells Atticus that he should basically just do what he’s already doing. Then he should lie, say his dog ran away, and after a while say he’s adopting a new dog, then undo the camouflage and pretend he’s a new dog who just happens to look exactly the same.

And also not go hunting in a public park anymore, which Oberon whines about, but that’s common sense. You shouldn’t have been doing that in the first place.

Hal asks if the police have shown up asking questions yet, and Atticus says they haven’t, but he’s sure they well because he thinks Aenghus is behind this whole thing in the first place.

[raises hand] How?

No really, how? How is Aenghus Og tricking the police department into doing his dirty work? Is he appearing in disguise? Does he have his agents there in disguise, working as cops? Is he bribing them? Is he threatening them? Has he controlled them all along?

I don’t need all the details, but you can’t just say “The police department is investigating Atticus because they’re under the influence of the Irish god of love,” and not give us any clues as to how that works. For all we know, Aenghus is just beaming into the police department and handing out pamphlets.

Atticus asks Hal “what to do if I don’t want to lie.” This throws Hal for a loop, wondering if Atticus is growing a conscience.

Hal stopped chewing and regarded me steadily for a few seconds. “You don’t want to lie?” he said, completely off his guard.

“Of course I do! I just want to know what else I can do that I haven’t thought of already. That’s why I pay you, Hal. I mean, shit, come on.”

I’m not sure why this comes up, considering it’s not really discussed after this brief exchange. They never come up with a plan that doesn’t involve lying, and really there’s no reason to. It’s as if Hearne wanted this bit of dialogue but it doesn’t make any sense to be here.

Atticus: What if I don’t want to lie?
Hal: You don’t want to lie?
Atticus: Well obviously I want to lie, but let’s imagine a scenario!

…what purpose does this serve? Atticus has to lie about his name and identity all the time anyway, so why should he even consider this?

Oh, and after this exchange, Hal tells him “You really sound like one of these modern kids. I have no idea how you do it.” Take a shot. But really, look at the above dialogue in the blockquote and tell me if that really sounds like “The kids these days.” ‘Cause it doesn’t look like it to me.

What they end up actually discussing is what would Atticus do if he didn’t have magic powers. Basically, the plan Hal comes up with is saying that the cops need a warrant to search his house, and if DNA testing comes up, Atticus should protest that testing his dog’s DNA is against his religion.

I looked at him as if he were trying to sell me the ShamWow and the Slap Chop for only $19.99 plus shipping and handling.

Yeah. Guy blends into modern times like a chameleon, I tell you.

Atticus tells Hal that it’s complete BS, Druids don’t care about DNA testing as “We didn’t know what the hell DNA was in the Iron Age.” Hal shoots back that it’s hardly likely the cops know that, and he’s glad to get that tidbit about the Iron Age. Turns out, Hal doesn’t know exactly how old Atticus is, and has been trying to guess for ages, and Atticus hasn’t told him and is trying to keep it secret.

Which…isn’t bad character writing. It sounds like something that would actually happen in a friendship between two supernatural beings. I just hate Atticus so I’m not invested.

Hal acknowledges that claiming religious rules for his dog is probably not going to work, but it might buy him some time.

…you know, I’ve said this ten times over, at least, but if Atticus is truly as paranoid as he claims, he’d just get up and leave town. Or at least disappear from public life. He has magic enough to change his appearance with glamour or something; that’s all he had to do. But instead he’s coming up with a convoluted plan with his lawyer and how to avoid the law.

Even ignoring his whole “I’m so paranoid!” claims, he clearly doesn’t care about legality, so why is he bothering? None of this matters! It’s all for show! He doesn’t need to outsmart the cops legally, he just needs to not be there when they look for him!

Anyhow, he asks Hal where the next time the Pack is going to be hanging out and wolfing out next full moon, and Hal invites him along if he’d like. We get some explanation of his status in the wolf pack; apparently another werewolf named Magnusson doesn’t like him because of wolf politics BS, and there is some weird talk of alphas and how Magnusson would “have to be submissive to me”¹. Basically Atticus when he turns into a hound is “friend of the Pack” which means his a guest outside the hierarchy to avoid causing too many problems and just—

[sighs]

All right, guys? We do know that this whole ‘Alphas’ thing is nonsense, right? Despite what all the werewolf media you read/watch will tell you, wolves don’t actually build their social interactions this way. At all. At least, not in the wild. What we think of as the ‘Alpha Male’ and ‘Alpha Female’ of a wolf pack tend to be the parents of the other wolves in the pack. Because they’re family units. So unless Hal is actually the father of the other wolves in the werewolf pack, they don’t need to be submissive or bow to him or anything. Same for Atticus.

Writers of werewolf fiction tend to not actually read anything about wolves. More to the point, this is yet another example of Hearne just copying his werewolves from other urban fantasy authors. The social structure, the weakness to silver, the turning on the full moon? Despite Hearne insisting on his faeries being different than the Hollywood image, his werewolves fit Hollywood ideas to a T, instead of the actual mythological creatures.

This is pointless anyhow, as Atticus says it falls close to Samhain, a holiday he celebrates, so he can’t join them. So we got a digression about Atticus’s role in the Pack… for no reason.

Great.

Hal covers the bill, Atticus leaves, and flirts with the bartender again on the way out. Oberon points out that it’s entirely possible that she doesn’t like him, she’s just doing that because, you know, it’s her job to be nice to customers, but then he suggests that it’s easier for dogs because they can sniff each other’s butts to see if they like each other. The reason I bring this up is that it’s another instance where this book is this close to making a good point.

Atticus goes back to the store, and there is Emily/Emilia, waving her check around. She wants this potion made right away. Atticus “made a show of examining it carefully, because I knew it would annoy her.” Or because he’s a dick, basically. It clears his once-over though, and so he makes the potion.

Then we get this bit of dialogue with Oberon:

We are not being very nice to each other.

So I gathered. But why not? Isn’t she the sort of female you normally find attractive?

If that was really what she looked like, sure, I said. But in reality she’s probably pushing ninety or so, and besides, I don’t trust witches.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Let’s start with how Oberon points out that Emily/Emilia looks like the sort of girl that Atticus usually finds attractive (and presumably, sleeps with, as it’s indicated he has a pretty active sex life). She looks about twenty-one. This isn’t news to you guys, I imagine, but I want to spell out that this means that Atticus’s type is usually the age of the average American college student. Now that’s an adult, but isn’t just… a little bit sleazy, you think? That this Druid who is thousands of years old prefers to have sex with women who have just entered adulthood?

It’s also inconsistent in how Atticus acts. Despite this woman being very attractive, Atticus acts like he’s not bothered by it at all, because she’s a witch and they’re dangerous. Which is fair! But when the Morrigan shows up in his shop naked, he can’t help but ogle her. I suppose the Morrigan was naked, and an actual goddess, but the impression from that scene and the dialogue in it is that Atticus simply cannot help himself around beautiful women. He admits in that chapter that he’s almost humping her leg, and says so aloud, until she slaps him; here, he’s acting like a beautiful woman is no big deal because he knows she’s a witch and doesn’t trust her. And yet despite that he’s okay flirting with the Morrigan, an actual violent goddess of war that has brutally murdered people for less? And then he has sex with Flidais, despite admitting that he doesn’t trust her completely.

And hey, what’s the first thing that Atticus says when Oberon asks why he’s not attracted to Emily? It’s because that’s not really what she looks like, she’s actually old and ugly. And also, she’s a witch and he doesn’t trust them. Her untrustworthiness comes second to the fact that she’s ugly. Atticus is that shallow.

This shouldn’t be that much of a surprise either; we saw that he didn’t trust Flidais entirely either, but he was more than happy to have sex with her and go hunting alone with her, because she’s a hot goddess.

It isn’t even as if any of these female characters need to be sexualized at all, either. But they are, and for whatever reason the fact that Emily’s attractiveness if faked is counted as more important than whether or not she can be trusted. Looking at his track record, this is where Atticus draws the line; it’s not that she’s untrustworthy, or that she’s dangerous. The reason Atticus isn’t nice to her is because he’s not sexually attracted to her, because she’s ugly.

[The widow is a different sort of example, in that she’s old but still a sympathetic character, but she also admits she wants to have sex with Atticus and helps him because it’s convenient for the Plot.]

So Atticus is sure that Emily is going to try something, though he doesn’t know quite what yet. Oberon tells him that he should just call off the deal if he’s sure something’s up, but Atticus, as “paranoid” as he is, doesn’t do that, and doesn’t even offer an argument as to why he’s not following this good advice. He finishes the potion, sets it out, and Emily drinks it. Like, full-on chugs it.

And when she’s finished, in the last sentence of the chapter, Emily tells him that the man the potion’s targeted towards, to render impotent² “none other than Aenghus Og.”

Uh… okay? What does this accomplish, exactly?

No, really. Emily’s acting like this is a thing that will ruin Atticus’s life. And it isn’t great for him, true, but she is the one that took the potion. She paid for the potion. By check, which means there’s definitely a paper trail. When Aenghus Og gets whammied with impotence, or just not being interested in her (seriously, which does this potion do?), and he gets upset, who is going to be upset with? The one who made the potion, or the one who went out of her way to get it and paid ten thousand dollars for it? Or both? Either way, Emily’s on some thin friggin’ ice.

Wait, how would he know Atticus made it? Doesn’t Atticus himself tell us that the witches could do stuff like that themselves? If I got whammied by some curse from a witch, I’d probably assume it was the witch or her coven that were behind it.

And hang on, Aenghus Og is the Irish god of love. Shouldn’t this potion be in his domain, sort of? Shouldn’t he be… I don’t know, immune, or resistant to its effects? You’d think being a god relating to the subject, would make it a different effect?

This whole thing makes no sense at all.

[sigh]

At least I’m not reading Angelopolis again.

Join us next time, where Atticus kills a god with almost no effort whatsoever.

¹ A secret group of friends where some of the guys have to “be submissive” to others in the group? Boy, has that not aged well.

² Wait, I thought this was just to make her unattractive to an individual man? There’s a huge difference between making someone unattractive to a specific person and rendering him impotent.

Comment [11]

We’re back! I know I’m late, but the beginning of the year is always a bit hectic for me, and I just had a birthday last Wednesday. And now we pick up with more of this nonsense. If you’re tired of it though, check out this Tiger’s Curse sporking, maybe?

I also just realized this book has a similar plot to John Wick. This book came out years before that film did of course, but it’s the same sort of plot shape, though admittedly it’s a common enough plot shape: a retired badass warrior type is brought out of retirement when his old life catches up with him. Thing is though, John Wick and many other stories with that Plot are actually good. As we’ve pointed out, Atticus has no drive other than to keep his life running as normal as he can. And even then he’s not proactive about it. He’s not going off to go kill the guy who ruined his life, he’s just waiting for each threat to arrive and beating them as they do so.

There’s no agency! There’s no thrill! He’s not trying to rescue someone, or save the world, or defeat a great evil, or learn about the universe, or anything! You don’t need a complex motivation, or even an epic one, to make a good story, by any means. The recent God of War was, at its base, about a man and his son going to spread a loved one’s ashes off the top of a mountain. But they have a goal, and there are stakes because even though they have a simple endpoint there are a ton of obstacles that get in their way and we’re invested in their journey because they’re likable characters.

Here? Nah, that’s for losers, apparently. Atticus doesn’t want the magic sword or immortality; he’s already got it. He doesn’t want to kill Aenghus Og—it just so happens that Aenghus Og is in town and wants to pick a fight with him. Atticus doesn’t want to run away from him either; he’s all too happy to sit on his hands until the villain shows up on his doorstep. He doesn’t want anything! He’s not out to do anything! Atticus is the opposite of a well-rounded protagonist!

Anything that could be a Plot is played as such a non-issue that it’s laughable. Atticus is the last of the Druids? Well that’s just a fun fact that goes nowhere. There are vampires, werewolves and witches in town? Well it’s okay because they’re all on good terms with Atticus. An Irish goddess appears? Well it’s okay, she doesn’t want anything other than to talk and make out/bang.

Why did anyone like this book?

Right, I was going to talk about this chapter, wasn’t I? Right after it was revealed Atticus was making an impotency potion aimed at Aenghus Og?

Now, that was a pretty good bomb to drop on me.

Except, like I said in the last chapter, it makes no sense! Atticus says that this proves that Aenghus is here, in town, fonduing the local witches, and that’s unusual, but the fact that you suspect he’s controlling the police department and random park rangers means you already know he has a presence in town. That’s more than just sending people after you like he usually does.

Now this does raise a red flag of, “Oh snap he’s working with witches!” And as Atticus mentioned, he wouldn’t like to fight the whole coven at once, and so if Aenghus is with them then them teaming up is a bad sign. This is an actual threat.

Instead though, this is presented as “Atticus now made a potion that makes Aenghus impotent, and in his humiliation he’s honor-bound to kill him personally.” Which is dumb, because as I outlined in the last sporking, even if he made the potion, Emilia’s the one who actually drank it, knowing what it was. Heck, she commissioned it made! She paid ten thousand dollars for it! Wouldn’t that put her right at the top of Aenghus Og’s hit list, right next to Atticus, if not ahead of him?

Atticus realizes that Emilia’s going for a terrified reaction, and instead acts like he doesn’t care.

“So you’ve come to me to make him wilt like lettuce?” I said. “You could have done the job yourself by shedding that skin and showing him what you really look like.”

…

“Wilt like lettuce”? I know he’s Irish, not Mediterranean, but Atticus makes references to travelling around the world and lettuce in ancient Egypt was considered an aphrodisiac and associated with fertility deities and virility. That’s like… the opposite of what he’s going for here. I guess not everyone knows that, so I’m not exactly docking points, but Atticus is meant to be oh so educated about the supernatural world and mythology, and he doesn’t know this?

I mean… there’s that whole thing (WARNING: link includes account of Egyptian gods fonduing) we fans of Egyptian myth like to call “the Lettuce Incident” after all.

Anyhow after that insult, Emily slaps Atticus, as she should. Atticus worries about this because if she uses her nails to draw blood, and with that she could do all kinds of painful magic to him. This happened to some friend of his back in the days when there were other Druids and his heart exploded. The witch that did it got away.

That’s a way more interesting story than what we’re getting now. But that charming backstory is just summarized, so that Atticus justifies hitting her back and breaking her nose. He does say “I sort of felt like an asshole even though she had planned to do much worse to me,” and, like, I get it, but Atticus has been pretty terrible up until now anyway, so I’m not inclined to be sympathetic to either party.

Atticus spells out that he was defending himself from possible escalation of bodily harm to himself. Emilya (you know I like this spelling; let’s stick with it) says her coven’s boss will hear about it, and Atticus points to his store’s security cameras which he insists will prove to the head witch, Radomila, who attacked who first. So she storms out angrily.

Atticus scoops up some of her blood that she left on the floor when he broke her nose and uses it to cast a quick binding that reflects any spells Emilya would have used against him. He does this casting in the parking lot right in front of her parked car, so she can angrily curse him and Atticus can watch her get wounded by her own spells. She drives away with broken ribs while giving Atticus the middle finger.

[Why Emilya didn’t try to kill Atticus is beyond me? If it bounced back she’d be dead, yeah, but then the coven would have more reason to go after Atticus, and she’d have revenge that way. Unless she wants him alive?]

Also when she gives him the finger, he says it’s “a gesture that had zero cultural relevance to me” which is stupid because he constantly uses common American English slang, phrases and cliches. He’s basically an American at this point. It doesn’t matter that he’s an ancient Irishman—he knows exactly what it means.

There’s some boring bit of Atticus and Oberon alone in the shop, and he promises to go hunting with Oberon somewhere far out of town, and then a couple of customers come in. And then gets a phone call from the witches’ coven in town. A witch named Malina Sokolowski asks about what happened (all the while not saying too many specifics out loud because a Muggle customer is in the shop).

Basically, she says if Atticus still considers his contract with Emilya valid, which he does, she’ll accompany Emilya next time she gets the tea. Atticus clarifies that he did not attack first and that she’s screwing an old enemy of his. Malina clarifies that they’re not not allied with Aenghus Og, but that they’re trying to humiliate him. Or something.

Anyhow this conversation wraps up and Atticus deals with a guy in his shop looking to buy some pot. He goes on a rant about how he doesn’t understand drug addicts, which is dumb because, in case you forgot, Atticus sells magic potions to college kids. No, it’s not pot, but he’s still selling some questionable stuff, including impotency potions, to college kids.

Our protagonist is a two thousand-year-old Druid, who fought with the Golden Horde, evaded execution by the Romans, talked with the most brilliant scientists of history… and now he sells magic drugs to college kids.

I don’t know if there’s anything overtly wrong with the scenes that played out in this chapter so far. Yes, Atticus breaks a woman’s nose, but she was planning worse harm on him. Yeah it’s convenient that the witch is there for Atticus to watch as her curses bounce back on her, but it’s easier to see those effects if they’re on-screen. The coven does side with Emilya, but Atticus does have proof that this whole thing is her fault and is okay with continuing his business because of it.

But… the problem remains that runs throughout the entire novel: Atticus is always in control of every situation. The times we’ve seen him lose his cool are A) when the Morrigan got naked in front of him, and B) when Flidais made Oberon kill a park ranger. Look at what’s happened here:

-Emilya tells Atticus that his potion is going to bring Aenghus Og’s wrath on him. He’s very surprised, but he manages to pretend he isn’t.

-She slaps him to draw blood and cast a curse, and he sees exactly what she’s doing and hits her in the face first.

-She accuses him of starting a fight, and he explains his cameras will have recorded who did what first.

-Atticus happens to have exactly what he needs in order to shoot her attacks right back at her.

-Someone from her coven calls, and has a very civil conversation with him where he makes it clear that there isn’t going to be a major conflict between the two entities and he can prove it’s not his fault.

At no point does he lose his cool. And yeah, he’s a two thousand-year-old Druid, so we can justify this as him learning to be careful and keep his emotions in check. But it makes for a boring story if he’s never really thrown off guard. It feeds into the larger problem that this story is about a character who has basically already ended his Hero’s Journey—at this point, he has everything he wants and needs, and is doing the motions of a fantasy hero. He doesn’t have any serious problems to contend with because he already knows how to deal with everything.

Right now you might be thinking, “Wow, for a guy who was sure there was a bad guy attack coming in, it sure seems like it’s been like a day and no bad guys have attacked.” And you’re right! The Plot’s not going to bother Atticus with silly inconveniences like breaking down the walls of his shop or something. Because now it’s closing time and he goes to mow his neighbor’s lawn. You remember the neighbor, right? The little old Irish lady who spoke like a Lucky Charms box? The one who likes to watch him work in her yard because she totally wants to bone him?

“Ah, yer a fine boy, Atticus, and that’s no lie,” she said, saluting me with her whiskey glass as she game out to the front porch to watch me work. She liked to sit in her rocking chair and sing old Irish songs to me

I cut off the quote here because it makes my point: she’s still an Irish stereotype. In case you were wondering. There’s a bit that specifies that the “old Irish songs” are old for an ordinary mortal, not for him who’s been alive for two thousand years. Which is kind of a ‘duh’ but when has that ever stopped Hearne in this book?

So after that he sits on the porch with the Leprechaun and she talks about “her younger days in the old country,” when she was “running around the streets of Dublin with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells.” And she adds that she hadn’t met her husband yet at that point. As if we care.

I had Oberon stationed as sentinel on the edge of the lawn, close to the street.

Oh yeah, there’s supposed to be a bad guy attack, isn’t there?

I know we’ve given these examples a lot, but let’s reiterate: monsters and malevolent gods are going to be attacking Atticus at his house, and what does he do? He’s mowing his neighbor’s lawn and then he listens to her prattle on about her youth. Who cares? By all rights he should be fortifying his position, but again, Atticus doesn’t care about the bad guys. Why should he? After all, he’s always in control.

Furthermore, if he’s expecting trouble, shouldn’t Atticus be staying away from his elderly neighbor that he’s friends with? That’s putting her closer to the line of fire, which you’d think he wouldn’t want to do. He should be staying in his own house—which is fine, as he says he’s magically fortified it—and then tell Mrs. MacDonagh to stay in her house for a while to be safe.

Since he’s not a sane person, Atticus doesn’t do that, and Oberon lets Atticus know that a stranger is walking from the north, and that he “can smell the ocean on him.” Atticus knows exactly who this is, so he grabs his sword and approaches. Without telling the Leprechaun what he’s doing either.

“Excuse me, Mrs. MacDonagh,” I said, “someone’s coming and he might not be friendly.”

“What? Who is it? Atticus?”

I couldn’t answer yet, so I didn’t. I kicked off my sandals and drew power from the widow’s lawn even as I walked toward the street and peered northward.

And that’s the last dialogue he has with her until the end of this encounter.

I’m not suggesting that Atticus tell her exactly what’s going on, but he hears there’s an enemy coming, and instead of giving even a cursory explanation that someone bad is coming for specifically him, he just walks off saying that the approaching stranger “might not be friendly.” He also doesn’t tell her to go inside, that there’s going to be a fight, that she should lay low, or anything of the sort. He just walks off with his sword.

And I’m unsure as to whether or not she can see the sword.

He also says that he “couldn’t answer yet.” But he totally could, because it’s implied he knows exactly who the stranger is. When Oberon says that he smells like the ocean, Atticus responds with “Uh-oh. That’s not good.”

One of the charms on my necklace has the shape of a bear on it, and its function is to store a bit of magical power for me that I can tap when I’m walking on concrete or asphalt.

Are we still keeping a list of Atticus’s powers? Put that one down too.

Atticus acts like he doesn’t know who this guy is despite again, having implied knowing who he was when he showed up, but it’s Bres. It’s totally Bres. He shows up as a tall guy in clanky bronze armor. Atticus takes some time to tell us that the armor’s ugly too, being too heavy and probably incredibly hot and tight. Just… imagine uncomfortable leather and bronze armor. It’s so ugly, that Atticus calls his helmet “beyond ridiculous” and assumes “he must have been wearing it as a joke.”

He opens with: “I greet you, Siodhachan O Suileabhain,” he said. “Well met.” Then he grins, and Atticus “wanted to slay him on the spot.” Like, I get it, there are some obnoxious douchebags who evoke that reaction with just a smirk, but this guy just rolled up and said hi. He hasn’t done anything! So Atticus saying he wants to kill him because smiled, when he still acts like he doesn’t know who this is, doesn’t do anything but make Atticus sound like more of a violent sociopath.

Atticus also keeps his magic see-through-glamour vision on, because he’s worried that Bres might try something.

Finally Atticus tells us that it’s Bres, and insults him to his face by saying that he would rather have not seen him at all, and makes a joke aloud about his costume belonging in a Renaissance Festival.

[Also they tell us he smells like fish, despite being a god of agriculture, probably because of his being of Fomorian descent. Atticus hasn’t told us what a Fomorian is though, so this means absolutely nothing to us.]

Now I get that Bres isn’t here for a smoothie. I know, and Bres knows, and Atticus knows, that Bres is here to start trouble. But after telling us that he has to be so sensitive and polite around gods, for Atticus to turn around and start insulting Bres to his face knowing that it will end in violence strikes me as a bit odd.

And Bres hasn’t done anything. At least, not to Atticus in-story. If you know some Irish mythology, you’ll know that when Bres was king, he enslaved the Irish gods to the Fomorians. But weirdly this book doesn’t explain that to us, like it over-explains so many other details. I’d bet that this book assumes you know nothing about Irish mythology, with how it portrays Aenghus Og as a cackling supervillain and paints his deeds as villainous without context. So without that information all we know is that this big dumb brute of a god shows up, and Atticus keeps insulting him to his face for no reason. But then this book drops things like ‘Fomorians’ and that whole account of a battle from Irish mythology and doesn’t explain jack.

Bres says he’s there “at the request of an old friend,” which Atticus takes as another opportunity to insult his wardrobe.

“Did he request that you dress like that? Because if he did, he’s not your friend.”

Isn’t Atticus so witty? Isn’t he? ISN’T HE?! LAUGH, DAMN IT!

Get used to these jabs at Bres’s wardrobe.

Mrs. MacDonagh asks who the fudge this person on the street in front of her house is, and Atticus just says it’s “Someone I know. He won’t be staying long.” And in that same paragraph he turns around and telepathically tells Oberon to flank Bres—grab his leg and pull when he gives the signal, so that Bres is on his back.

Of course Bres is there on the demand of Aenghus Og. He wants the magic sword. Atticus asks him why he isn’t there himself, and Bres tells him Aenghus is actually around.

That was calculated to ratchet my paranoia up a few levels. It worked, but I was determined it would not work in his favor.

YOU KNEW THIS ALREADY YOU TWIT.

You knew he was using the local law enforcement. You knew he was making deals with the coven of witches and having sex with at least one of them. Basically, Atticus, you had every indication that he was in town and keeping tabs on you, and now you’re acting like this is new information. It isn’t.

Atticus wonders why Bres is involved at all, and asks about the armor, which Bres doesn’t answer. Bres gives the usual: give him the sword or die. Atticus asks why Aenghus wants the sword anyway, as last time it was given to a mortal to use as High King of Ireland. As Ireland doesn’t have a High King these days, what’s the point?

[That was not meant as a pune.]

…yes, our protagonist, a supposedly clever, immortal man, just asked in all sincerity why someone would want a magic sword that can cut through anything.

Atticus is not a bright man.

So Atticus waves Fragarach, the magic sword, in his face. But because it’s magically cloaked, Bres doesn’t believe it’s really it. Or maybe he does and he’s stalling for time. In any case Bres does this thing where he moves forward to attack Atticus, but still casts the illusion of standing still calmly. Atticus knows what he’s doing because he can see through glamour. Atticus changes the plan to Oberon (who has been magically camouflaged this entire time, BTW) and tells him to lie behind Bres, so he can push him over and he’ll trip on Oberon.

When Bres strikes, Atticus dodges, disarms him, roundhouse kicking him so he falls backward over Oberon. And then Atticus kills him (and insults his armor again as he does).

Now to be fair, this guy just tried to kill him. But this is a god. This should be a boss fight, where Atticus has to expend quite a lot of effort, skill and power in taking him down. Instead, Atticus uses his amazing martial arts skillz to take him down and kill him over the course of a couple of pages. The fight in the very first chapter was more difficult for Atticus. I think we’re meant to find this impressive but it just reads as lazy writing.

And oh, it gets lazier.

See, Mrs. MacDonagh was sitting on that porch the entire time¹, and saw Atticus kill the guy. She’s terrified, and asking if he’s going to kill her next. Well, actually she does it with the stereotypical Irish accent:

“Ye killed him.” Her voice quavered. “Are y’goin’ to kill me too now? Send me home to the Lord so I can be with me Sean?”

Hey, if I have to read this stupid accent, then you do too.

Atticus, instead of being worried about someone he considered his friend being terrified for her life of him, is just like, “I have no reason to kill you.” Yeah, that’s reassuring. If you saw one of your friends kill someone in front of you, even if it was self-defense, would that make you feel better? That your friend is completely calm and tries to logically explain that you’re not a threat?

Even though he calls it self-defense, the widow points out that she didn’t see it that way. Which she didn’t, because, y’know, glamour. Atticus insists that she just didn’t see everything and points out his sword lying on the ground. She admits that maybe she heard him threaten him, which doesn’t make me think she heard it as much as she’s trying to stay on the good side of the man who just killed someone else in front of her with a sword.

He calls Bres “an old enemy of mine” but this is just confusing, because as far as this little old lady knows, he’s just twenty-one. So Atticus makes up some bullshimflarkus about how this guy had beef with his father, and that it’s a sort of family grudge and has been chasing him for years. She wonders why he didn’t buy a gun for self-defense then, like most Americans with the means and are scared for their lives might do.

I grinned at her. “Because I’m Irish, Mrs. MacDonagh. And I’m your friend.”

Hey, fun fact! There are Irish gangs. And they have guns. It’s heavily implied that Mrs. MacDonagh’s youth was involved in some of this gang-related activity. So I’m wondering why the heckamajigger Atticus thinks Irish people are more inclined to swordsmanship in their illegal feuds.

I modulated my expression to earnest pleading and clasped my hands together.

Well that reads “manipulative as all get out.”

Mrs. MacDonagh, for once acting like a rational human being unlike everyone else in this book, is still unconvinced, so asks what the feud was about. Atticus says it’s about the sword, claiming that his “Da” stole it from this man’s private collection and he was still mad about it. Why? Because “It’s an Irish sword…and it didn’t seem right, him being British and all.”

And just like that, MacDonagh switches her tune and helps him bury the body in her backyard.

“Ah, well then ye can bury the bastard in me backyard, and God damn the queen and all her hellish minions.”

Yes, two seconds ago she was fearful for her life and suspicious, but because this guy mentioned that his enemy was of the one nationality on the planet that she has problems with, she decides to help him, no questions asked. See, it JUST SO HAPPENS, and it’s not been mentioned until RIGHT NOW, that MacDonagh’s deceased husband Sean was IRA, and was killed by the Ulster Volunteer Force during the Troubles in Ireland.

Oh yeah, we just dropped the Irish Troubles in this Plot.

[rubs forehead] I need a drink.

I don’t want to do this. This is barely related to this book at all. But fine; Hearne did it, so I guess we have to.

Let’s talk a bit about the Irish Troubles.

“The Troubles” or “the Northern Ireland Conflict” refers (at least these days) to a period of violence from the 1960’s up to the year 1998. It can also refer to earlier periods of Irish history in which there was violence, but they have the same thing in common: they were centered around the question of Northern Irish independence. This is when Ireland’s relationship with Great Britain reaches boiling point. Paramilitary groups (or terrorists, depending on who you ask) like the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Volunteer Force were either formed or hit international headlines in this period, due to violence perpetrated that went beyond the borders of Northern Ireland into the UK and even into mainland Europe. Riots, bombings, executions, killing in the streets, segregations, arrests without trials—you name it. This was one of the worst things to happen in Irish history, and to this day there are still people with not-so-fond memories of the Troubles. In parts of Ireland, Catholics and Protestants (who largely correspond to the two sides of the conflict) still mostly live geographically separately to this day.

And Hearne just dropped it into his book out of Plot Convenience. It’s not brought up until right it becomes relevant. It’s kind of played as a joke, as it’s just another eccentricity with Mrs. MacDonagh and a reason for her to make more “jokes,” this time about hating English people.

Is it just me, or is this grossly offensive? This strikes me a bit like bringing in the September 11, 2001 attacks, or a KKK lynching (or any violence grabbed from international headlines for my non-American readers) out of nowhere to explain why a side character is willing to act a certain way for one specific scene. It’s incredibly insensitive and lazy. If this had been mentioned earlier in the story, I’d have more sympathy, but it’s not—we’re hearing about how MacDonagh’s husband died right now for the first time. Imagine writing a novel and the protagonist needs to get out of a jam, and it JUST SO HAPPENS that his or her friend is willing to help out because that friend had a loved one die in a famous violent conflict that in real life people are still tense over. It makes me very uncomfortable that it’s used as a casual motivation pulled straight from the author’s armpit, just so the Plot can be easier for Atticus.

‘Cause that’s what this is! It would be actually interesting if Atticus’s mortal friends thought he was a murderer because he couldn’t explain away what happened with Bres. But that would make things difficult and we can’t have that, can we?

Also why the heck would she agree that Bres is English? Didn’t she say she heard him threaten Atticus? And would Bres be talking with an English accent? I very much doubt it, considering the prevalence of Irish stereotypes.

AND, I feel the need to point out, Atticus just says he “felt ashamed for pushing the widow’s buttons like this” which is funny because I never got the impression he had any shame.

So anyhow, Mrs. MacDonagh’s terrible accent offers to get him some lemonade while Atticus buries the body. Oberon pushes the head along (it’s too heavy in the helmet to lift), and again I’m wondering if no one else witnessed this? It’s a fairly nice neighborhood, as I understand it. The text assures us it’s gotten dark, but this takes place over, what, fifteen minutes? It’s incredibly convenient that no one’s watching this, isn’t it?

So then the Morrigan shows up, in crow form. Atticus tells her he’ll talk to her in the backyard, and hauls the body over “in a fireman’s carry.” Wait a minute—you’re telling me that his Irish wolfhound had trouble carrying the armored head by himself, but Atticus can pick up the heavily-armored body over his shoulder with no problem?

We can chalk this up to ‘Druid powers,’ as they can enhance their strength if they want to, but it’s not mentioned here.

So the Morrigan changes to human form and berates him for killing a member of the Tuatha De Danann. Atticus says he’s just defending himself, but the Morrigan points out that he can’t die—remember, he made that deal at the beginning with the Morrigan that she wouldn’t take his soul to the afterlife? He can’t use the self-defense argument if he’s invulnerable.

Atticus replies with pointing out that he may survive, but he may have been wounded, and had to live the rest of his life being disemboweled or something. Which is still a weak argument, because A) he has healing powers, and B) he still went out of his way to stab and behead a downed opponent, so it wasn’t really self-defense anyway.

The Morrigan demands that Atticus tell her everything that happened. Upon hearing it, she agrees that Bres was stupid and deserved to die and that his armor was ugly. She does point out though that Bres’s wife Brighid will be upset and probably want Atticus dead. Atticus tells her that if they point out how much of an idiot Bres was, then maybe Brighid won’t mind. Morrigan considers it possible.

Yes, Atticus and the Morrigan decided that maybe a goddess won’t mind that you just killed her husband, by virtue of saying whenever she shows up, TO HER FACE, “Well you’re husband was stupid anyway, so it’s no big loss.”

Because we can’t make Atticus break a nail or something, the Morrigan decides to clean up the body for him, so while she does that Atticus goes and gets the garden hose to wash the blood out of the street. The old lady comes out and asks “Have y’buried the fecking tea bag already?” And Atticus is surprised at the swearing but says he’ll get to it, he’s just washing the blood out of the street, so MacDonagh says she’s turning in so she can watch Wheel of Fortune, promising that she won’t tell anyone about what just happened.

Oberon suggests that maybe television is what desensitized the old lady to violence, but Atticus points out that it was probably more with living in Ireland during the Troubles. And then Oberon asks what the Troubles were, and Atticus just gives us this:

Freedom. Religion. Power. The usual. Would you mind standing sentinel again on the edge of the lawn while I do this?

And that’s all we’re getting on the Troubles. That’s the only explanation we’re getting. Because it’s not important to the book at all! It’s just a sidenote to explain why a little old lady’s okay with Atticus killing a guy in front of her house! The climax of centuries worth of imperialism, oppression, violence, religious persecution and political tension? It gets five words of explanation.

The chapter ends with Oberon warning Atticus that there are several heavy footsteps coming their way. Presumably, these are the Fir Bolgs that Atticus was warned about.

[sigh]

So to recap: Atticus finds out Aenghus is in town (twice), he breaks a witch’s nose but the coven doesn’t care too much, he kills a god with no effort, his neighbor helps him hide it because of a previously-unmentioned grudge against British people due to the Troubles, and he should be able to worm his way out of being in trouble for killing a god because that god was an idiot. And more bad guys are showing up.

¹ Though apparently NO ONE ELSE IN THIS SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD witnessed this event.

Comment [12]

Welcome back! Sorry for the delay; I’ve been busy. Had a long depressed period, I started playing an Assassin’s Creed game from four years ago, re-read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, the new season of American Gods began, my brother got married, Saint Patrick’s Day happened… yeah, it’s a lot.

So now we’re back with Atticus and Oberon. He’s about to be attacked by monsters. He yells “Time to go home!” and makes a dash for his house because “I had to get away from the widow’s house or she could become a casualty.” Which is weird, because he didn’t feel this way about a Fomorian god appearing on the street in front of him. Look, if your characters act as if mook monsters are more deadly and likely to cause collateral damage than literal GODS then maybe you should rethink this worldbuilding?

As they dash, Atticus tells Oberon (who is still magically cloaked) that when the Fir Bolgs arrive for the fight, to go for the Achilles tendon, then dash away before they can do anything. The Fir Bolgs themselves appear, and though with their glamours they look like “nine assholes in Harley-Davidson riding gear” they are, in reality, almost naked and waving spears and shields around.

Uh… why? If a bunch of bikers ran around chasing a guy, wouldn’t you be alarmed? Yeah, it’s more subtle than half-nude giants with spears, but not by much. It’s still pretty obvious that they’re up to no good. The idea should be to avoid drawing attention, and it doesn’t do that at all!

So Atticus gets back to his house, but there’s someone already there! Only it’s Leif, his vampire lawyer. And of course, Leif agrees to get into a fight he had little reason to expect to take part in because… Reasons. Admittedly he is reluctant to do it, but Atticus offers him another glass of Druid blood when it’s over, and the Fir Bolgs are seriously almost right on top of them.

Also there’s this:

He grinned, his fangs lengthening as he smiled. “I have not had my breakfast yet.”

“Look at it like an all-you-can-eat buffet,” I said.

Okay, but there’s like nine of them.

It’s not that the book doesn’t give reasons for Leif to involve himself in this, it’s that I don’t think they’re good ones. By all logic, Leif should say, “Yeah, no, I’ll sit this out to make sure I don’t die.” Yeah, he’s a vampire, but their opponents? Are also magical creatures. Imagine if one of your friends/clients asks you to help him fight off nine gangsters to the death. It doesn’t matter if you’re a badass or not, Atticus is asking him to help fight off nine giants, and Leif agrees because he’ll get some food out of it.

It shouldn’t be this easy. But of course, it is, because this is Hounded and we can’t have this be too difficult for our protagonist.

So Leif leaps at the lead Fir Bolg’s throat and takes him down.

We get a description of Atticus’s tattoos lighting up as he absorbs power from the Earth. And by “a description,” I mean too much description:

I drew power from my front lawn, exulting in the feeling as it coursed through my cells after channeling through my ancient tattoos. The intricate knotwork traveled from the sole of my right foot, up the outside of my ankle and right side, until it snaked over my right pectoral muscles and around to the top of my shoulder, where it fell like an indigo waterfall to the middle of my biceps; there it looped around five times until it threaded down my forearm, ending (if Celtic knots can be said to end at all) in a loop on the back of my hand. The tattoos were bound to me in the most intimate way possible, and through them I had access to all the power of the earth, all the power I would ever need, so long as my bare foot touched the ground. In practice, that meant I would never, ever tire in battle. I suffered no fatigue at all. And if I needed it, I could whip up a binding or two against my enemies or summon up a temporary burst of strength that would allow me to wrestle a bear.

Two things:

ONE: I know I’ve harped on this a lot, but Atticus is overpowered. He never gets tired of battle as long as he’s touching the ground? I mean, that’s not an uncool power, and in a decent narrative I’m sure that would mean that he’d get challenged by snipers on rooftops or something. But you know how this book goes, so you know that’s not going to happen. All the enemies are going to fight him on the ground, where he’s strongest and won’t ever get tired.

TWO: That’s… an awful lot of description of how the tattoos run across his skin, isn’t it? I know we haven’t seen this before, but I would have thought something like “That tattoos leading from my feet up to my chest and arms lit up with magical power” would have worked? As it is, it seems as if Atticus is very concerned with explaining to us precisely how those tattoos run across his body, which is just weird.

I hadn’t been in a scrap like this since I’d waded into the mosh pit at a Pantera concert.

Who?

Anyhow Atticus puts his back to a tree, and then he points at a Fir Bolg and says “Coinnigh” which holds the target in place by opening the earth under him and closing it again around the feet. Except the Fir Bolg in question apparently is moving forward too fast, and so he actually ends up breaking off his feet with the momentum? That seems… unlikely to me, but that’s what happens, so he falls to the ground screaming.

Real fights don’t look as pretty as the ones you see in movies. Those are choreographed, especially the martial arts ones, to seem so beautiful that they are practically dances. In true combat, you don’t pause, pose, and preen. You just try to kill the other guy before he kills you, and “winning ugly” is still winning. That’s what Bres failed to understand, and that’s why I got rid of him so easily.

Just a mo.

First off Hearne, don’t lecture us about how “realistic” fights go when you just had one of the mooks rip off his own feet. I’m sorry; I don’t buy it! I don’t care how heavy, strong or fast he is, that’s a hard pill to swallow. Maybe it is possible, but it seemed more as if you’re just writing in a bloody action set piece and you wanted to get rid of another one of the enemies before he bothered the protagonist.

Secondly, do you watch martial arts movies? Because there’s pausing and posing, yeah, but preening? That’s not common in movies I’ve seen, for people to go out of their way to make themselves look good. They tend to look good anyway, because they’re actors and in makeup and all, but I can’t think of a single instance in my head where in the middle of a fight scene a character stops to make sure he or she looks good and straightens the outfit. If it does happen, it’s certainly not the norm. Like with the Jane Austen example in a previous chapter, it seems like Hearne is satirizing what he thinks is a common trope in a specific form of media, and it’s… not a Thing.

Thirdly: No, that’s NOT how Bres died. He was trying to be practical, remember? His plan was to use his glamour to make you think he was just talking while he tried to kill you, and you just happened to see through it. It was absolutely nothing about him trying to face you in one-on-one combat; his entire plan hinged on you not realizing the level of danger you were in.

So three Fir Bolgs are poking spears at him. I wasn’t planning on quoting too many details because I don’t care, but… let’s talk about this language, shall we?

If I rolled forward, beneath their thrusts, they’d just stomp on my dumb ass.

That meant that I had less than a second to do some impossible shit.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t swear in books, okay. Just because I’m making an active effort to swear less in my writing, doesn’t mean everyone else has to. But here it just reads so amateur. I’m cherry picking, yes, as it’s not as if he’s swearing every other word, but it sticks out. As if Atticus (and Hearne by extension) is trying really hard to sound like a hip adult. You ever encounter someone, online or in real life, who thinks the secret to being cool or funny is just adding swear words to sentences? There are ways to do it, for sure, but this ain’t it.

Yadda, yadda, Atticus cuts three spears, but they still stab him in the shoulder and gut, he binds another one with earth and that one does not rip off his own feet, and he kills some Fir Bolgs, I don’t care…

I wished I could do one of those ridiculous fairy-godmother routines, where you just wave a wand, some sparkly lights fill your vision, and then everything is all better, but my magic doesn’t work like that.

It kind of does though? Atticus goes on to explain that he doesn’t heal instantly, but reading this book it’s clear that he heals pretty fast, considering a bad guy hacked into his arm with a sword in the first chapter and he mostly had to deal with it feeling a bit sore for the next few hours. He can shapeshift, make amazing potions, heal himself, is immune to death and has super strength and endurance. So no, his magic isn’t quite ‘wave a wand and everything’s fixed’ but it’s pretty darn close.

I’m tired of how when we talk about urban fantasy there’s a tendency to be like, “_Dresden Files_ does it better!” but… Dresden Files does it better. Harry Dresden is a good wizard, but he’s more of a brawler, magically speaking. So he can call up fireballs well, but more subtle stuff, like healing and invisibility? Not his strengths, and he has to work harder for those and can’t do them on the spur of the moment.

Atticus doesn’t have those limitations, really. He’s really good at melee combat, casting spells, healing and shapeshifting all on the fly. Again, yes, he’s immortal so he’s had practice, but it makes for a really boring protagonist who can do everything and has no troubles in battle. The best the bad guys could do is slightly inconvenience Atticus. At no point in here does he act like he’s at risk of actually getting killed.

So right, they kill all the Fir Bolgs. I could do a play-by-play, but I don’t care.

Oh and there’s this one Fir Bolg, who is going to try to whack off Atticus’s head, and so Atticus compares him to a golfer? And there’s this:

I put some earth power behind it, so I was fairly launching myself at the Fir Bolg’s would-be Phil Mickelson.

Who?

So this, and the Pantera concert comment above, I kind of wanted to add to the ‘Atticus makes pop culture references to seem kewl!’ count, but I had no idea who either of these were before Googling them. Was it a time thing? Are these Arizona things? This one is, because Mickelson went to the university in Tempe, where the book is set. But he’s certainly not the first person to people’s minds when you try to name a famous golfer.

I don’t know.

Moving on…

I cast camouflage on myself and my sword, and then I crept up behind the two immobilized Fir Bogs and stabbed Fragarach up into their kidneys. Cowardly? Bleh. Tell you what: Let’s debate the meaning of honor and see who lives longer.

You. You’ll live longer, no matter what, because you’re an ageless superpowered Druid who, oh yeah, IS IMMUNE TO DEATH!

Atticus feels the need to remind us that being practical instead of being “honorable” is smarter, but, like, duh. I don’t think your audience needs constant reminders of that. You can establish this character trait without spelling it out every time he does something “dishonorable” in a fight. And it’s incredibly hollow from a guy who made a deal with the Morrigan in the first chapter to prevent him from getting killed.

So there are nine giant corpses in the street and yard in front of his house. Atticus decides he can’t “ask the earth to swallow these guys” (that’s how he usually gets rid of bodies), because there wasn’t time and he thinks that he’s already asked too much of it already?

Uh, dude? It’s the Earth. I don’t know if it has those kinds of limitations. He talks as if the Earth is a sort of entity here, but it’s not like he talks to it, or it talks to him. They do each other favors, I guess? Anyhow, he can’t move soil around that fast.

But he hears police sirens! Ohes noes! The cops are on the way!

As if on cue, I heard sirens in the night air, and that drew my gaze to the parted living-room blinds of my neighbor across the street, whose large round eyes were staring fearfully at me as if I was the bad guy. Great.

You and your friend just slaughtered a bunch of giants (who were glamoured to look like bikers) in front of him! How did you think that was going to look, you shisno?! It doesn’t matter if they attacked first, seeing a guy and his friend wiping out nine bikers with a sword in front of my house would freak anyone out!

Atticus asks Leif, who is currently pigging out on the Fir Bolgs’ blood, to help him hide the bodies. Atticus tells Leif to go inside his house and get changed into his own suit, and bring out a fresh shirt for him (because there was apparently no blood on his pants?). Then to use his “freaky memory thing” on his neighbor across the street, as that guy was the one that called the cops.

And? Are you saying no one else in this neighborhood called the police or witnessed these events? Again, this is an American suburban neighborhood, as far as I can tell. People can be oblivious, but a battle in the street is kind of hard to miss.

Atticus uses his magical super-strength to drag the bodies and stack them in the back of his yard away from his driveway and then uses magic to camouflage them. To be clear: he doesn’t bury them, or even take them to the backyard, behind his house. Those bodies are still in his front yard, in a stack, just not near the driveway and not visible to the ordinary mortal. If someone came snooping through his yard, or a kid ran through there on his way to a friend’s house, he would discover those bodies. He even says later that people can still run into them “If they went snooping around the east side of my lawn”! And yet he’s not too worried about that.

The bodies that are in the street though? He can’t do anything about it, because Reasons. He says that his amulet’s power will drain too quickly if he tries to drag those away too, but that seems like an odd limitation right out of nowhere. So he just casts camouflage over them and the blood and calls it a day. You would think a car would run over the bodies if it drove on the road, but this doesn’t seem to occur to Atticus.

And he magicks his sword to be invisible too.

Leif returned in a minute, wearing a suit I had bought at the Men’s Wearhouse.

Why should I care where you bought the suit?

The narration also tells us that it doesn’t quite fit on Leif, as he’s a bigger guy. This book has a weird preoccupation with people’s clothes and fashion, actually…

Leif takes the bodies out of the street. Which Atticus just said he invisible’d? I don’t know how he saw them then. And then Leif goes to the neighbor, Mr. Semerdjian and mesmerizes him into forgetting all about it. And yes, the mandatory “Jedi Mind Trick” comment is there.

Atticus apparently doesn’t get along with Mr. Semerdjian?

He had held me in deep suspicion from the day I moved in, because I did not own a car.

Or maybe it’s because you look and claim to be twenty-one years old, and yet you don’t go to college, own a large house, always hang out with your expensive lawyers, own your own New Age store, sells herbs to college students, and constantly do things to draw attention to yourself like leave in the middle of the night to go hunting and entertain mysterious visitors. And given that you haven’t told us how long you’ve been living here, he might have picked up that you’ve been pretending to be twenty-one years old for years.

Also how does the “vampire hoodoo” that Leif do work? All we’re given is that he looks into the neighbor’s eyes and says “Look into my eyes. You didn’t see anything.” That’s it! We’re told that he can do that and accept it because he’s a vampire. We’re not really given any context as to how being a vampire works in this universe. Like with the werewolves, Hearne assumed that it’s fine to copy and paste the pop culture cliches onto his creatures without doing anything new. It doesn’t matter that Leif having this power wasn’t previously established until it was Plot-necessary, you’re supposed to presume he has it because, y’know, vampire.

Speaking of powers never previously established:

As they wailed down the street, I muttered a little something to magnify the scent of local plant life, which would hopefully mask the scent of so much spilled blood.

Yeah. That’ll work.

Three police cars roll up, “alerting all my other neighbors that the noise they had been ignoring was something to worry about after all.” No, duh. I think they’d have worked that out before the police arrived.

Six officers come out, with their guns out; one orders them to freeze, one orders them to put their hands up, and a third tells Atticus to drop the sword. And that’s where the chapter ends. Will Atticus face serious consequences for his actions?

Comment [17]

Oh hey Camp NaNoWriMo is probably still kicking me in the butt while you’re reading this, even though it was last month. But at least I’m writing! And my friend running the sporking of Tiger’s Curse finished it. So go check it out here!

[Also I’m realizing that maybe I should have sporked the last chapter and this one together.]

So when we last saw Atticus and his vampire lawyer/friend Leif, they were being surrounded by cops after having killed the Fir Bolgs sent to attack him. Oberon is still invisible, in case you still care. The cops were pointing guns at them and had demanded that they freeze and put their hands in the air.

What does Atticus think of this tense situation?

How can one freeze and put their hands above their head at the same time? Do they teach cops to shout contradictory instructions at suspects at the academy for some sinister purpose? If I obeyed one cop, did the other cop get to shoot me for resisting arrest?

Ah yes, that’s how he deals with it—by not really caring that there are men pointing guns at him and snarking like a douchebag.

I get it, really—he’s fought monsters all his life, he’s an immortal Druid, so why should he care much about some cops? At the same time though, we can’t take this seriously if the main character does. So when a problem arises and Atticus doesn’t seem to care, we don’t either.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Leif said smoothly. Neither of us raised our hands. “I am an attorney for Mr. O’Sullivan here.” All the cops looked at him standing there serenely in his suit and got real quiet.

See, this is played as “Ha! We got them there!” Like Leif being a lawyer is this trump card to stop the stupid cops from getting in Atticus’s way. And it sort of is, but it’s also really sketch? His neighbor calls the cops to report a disturbance, and when the police arrive there’s already a lawyer on site? You know what kind of guy stereotypically keeps his lawyer around all the time? Hint: it starts with ‘c’ and ends with ‘-rime lord.’ Atticus acknowledges that they probably think he’s guilty, but like with everything else, he doesn’t care.

I know that there’s a lot to talk about, especially these days in the US, when it comes to the police and how they act and how they use or abuse power. Let’s not delve into that here. But here’s the point: if the police tell you to do something, what you don’t do is act like a cocky twit and expect everything to be fine.

Leif says there’s no sword, and no disturbance, so they can all go home. One of the cops (who is named Benton) asks why Atticus has a lawyer there if nothing’s going on, and Leif insists that he’s Atticus friend as well as lawyer.

I am here because Mr. O’Sullivan is not only my client, he is my friend. We were simply standing here, enjoying the autumn evening and discussing baseball, when you drove up and pointed your weapons at us.

Yeah, ‘cause that doesn’t sound the least bit suspicious, does it?

At Benton’s request, they show their hands to display that they aren’t holding weapons or swords, so the cops put away their weapons. They obviously want to start poking around to get to the bottom of things, but Leif stops them, pointing out that they don’t have probable cause. Benton counters with the fact that they showed up because of a 911 call, which is probable cause.

“A crank call that clearly has no basis in fact.

Okay we all know Leif’s lying, duh. But really? The 911 call claiming that there was a sword fight going on outside in the neighbor’s yard was a crank call? That’s not really how crank calls tend to go, y’know. Especially not by an elderly man like Atticus’s neighbor, Mr. Semerdjian, who would know that it’s illegal and he could get in trouble for it? I know he’s got to cover his butt somehow, but Leif’s cover story is really, really bad.

We really shouldn’t care about this whole business. Hero doesn’t want to get tied down with the police and all, so he and his lawyer come up with some BS explanation to move attention away from the supernatural shenanigans. The Flash did something similar in its fourth season, and while I don’t think it was done well, it mostly worked and I sympathized with the characters.

[points to the book] Not so here. Because while we know that this was a case of people attacking and Atticus defending himself, the fact is that both Atticus and Leif are murderers. Leif kills people all the time, sometimes because they happen to have hammers and it reminds him of Thor. Atticus doesn’t blink when the supernatural beings around him straight-up say that they’re going to kill someone, and he’s killed people for funzies in the past (read: killing warriors on his own side when he got Fragarach, working for the Golden Horde).

So instead of us reading a scene in which our sympathetic morally-gray hero is covering up the truth because he has to, it reads as a scene in which two immortal murderers avoid justice yet again.

And also harass a senior citizen. See, Leif goes on to say that Mr. Semerdjian, the “elderly Lebanese gentleman across the street…has a long history of harassing my client over imagined trespasses.”

Benton doesn’t buy this, but he’s kind of stumped because there’s not really much he can do. It leads to this because good character writing isn’t something this book does well:

“Haven’t you got anything to say, mister?” he sneered at me. “Why did we get called out here?”

“Well,” I said, “I cannot say for certain, of course, but it might be because Mr. Semerdjian across the street there really doesn’t like me. You see, about three years ago my dog escaped and pooped on his lawn. I apologized and cleaned it up, but he’s never forgiven me.”

Yes, really. Atticus’s explanation for the reason Mr. Semerdjian supposedly called 911 to report that his neighbor was having a deadly sword fight in his yard was because he’s mad that Oberon pooped in his yard.

And! As Oberon points out in a telepathic conversation with Atticus right after this, Atticus actually ordered Oberon to do it! Meaning that if this really was the beginning of the feud with his neighbor, Atticus is the one who started it.

Hang on; if he’s lived here at least three years, then that means Atticus has been a man that has looked to be twenty-one years old for those three years. He’s claimed it too; when the old lady is told about his “feud” with Bres, she’s confused because she thinks he’s twenty-one. I know I’ve mentioned that we don’t know how long he’s been pretending to be twenty-one, but here we get confirmation. And obviously, that don’t add up.

The other option is that Atticus said he was he was eighteen when he moved in. Which is also really unlikely. How many eighteen-year-olds own nice houses in suburbs by themselves, while also owning a New Age shop?

Mr. Semerdjian has plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Atticus, but it’s all played as ‘Well he’s just a fuddie-duddie who hates everything fun.’

So Officer Benton grudgingly packs up and leaves, going across the street to Mr. Semerdjian to get a statement from him. Atticus asks Leif if there’s going to be a problem, but Leif assures the Druid that the neighbor’s still being mind-controlled, so it’s all good! The vampire asks how he’s planning on disposing of the bodies, and Atticus admits he doesn’t know yet. Leif offers to have it taken care of after they drag the bodies to Mitchell Park for another glass of blood.

“How would you take care of it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I know some ghouls. I make a couple of calls, the guys come over for dinner, problem solved.

“They can put away nine whole giants? There’s that many ghouls in town?”

“Probably not,” Leif admitted. “But whatever they do no eat tonight, they’ll take the rest to go.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “You mean like a doggie bag?”

The vampire nodded with a thin trace of a smile. “They have a refrigerated truck, Atticus. These are practical guys. I employ them often, and so does Magnusson on occasion. It is a satisfactory arrangement for everyone.”

HO-LY POPE he’s got guys to dispose bodies on speed dial. We understand that, right? That Leif has killed a lot of people, and these ghouls just clean up the bodies after he drains them of blood? And that there have apparently been occasions where he’s killed enough people that the ghouls have had to take some to go? And we’ve been given no indication that he’s one of those friendly Dexter kinds of serial killers that targets vicious criminals, or one of those suave, cool assassins that populate thrillers. All we’ve been told is that Leif hates Thor so much he sometimes kills carpenters because they also use hammers and remind him of the Norse god of thunder. So Leif is a serial killer.

One of our main character’s best friends, and his lawyer, is a serial killer. And that’s just fine, apparently.

It is difficult to make a serial killer into a sympathetic character. Some writers have difficulty with that. One of the many issues I had with season one of American Gods was that we’re presented with Bilquis, a goddess of love who eats people while having sex with them. Well there’s more to it than that but we’re going to leave it there. In the book, she has a grand total of two scenes, and the man we see her do this to is a rich jerk who hired her as a prostitute. In the show, Bilquis has an entire subplot dedicated to her, and the first victim we see on screen is a lonely middle-aged man whose kids just convinced him to start dating again. And we see that she’s been using Tinder to get victims, and that she’s happy to seduce whoever happens to be sitting next to her on public transportation to get what she wants. Essentially, she’s a serial killer.

Except the show doesn’t play it like that. Despite having plenty of morally ambiguous or outright immoral characters, Bilquis is quite explicitly painted as being a victim herself. Not being as widely worshipped as she once was is because she’s a Strong Powerful Woman, and The Man can’t stand that! It has nothing to do with her eating people, no sir-ee! The Man was just JEALOUS!

Apparently no one in the development of this show stopped and thought that maybe a character who keeps eating innocent people might not be the best way to discuss institutional sexism?

Except Hounded doesn’t even make that much effort! Leif regularly kills people, and we’re not even given some stupid moral about why it’s okay! And now he’s got a bunch of corpse-eaters on speed dial.

There is a context in which you could make a sympathetic character who has the phone number of a body cleanup crew. John Wick comes to mind again. But this isn’t it. Because again, we haven’t been given sympathetic circumstances as to why Leif knows these guys. We’ve been given unsympathetic circumstances.

Oh and Mitchell Park, where they’re handing off the bodies?

It’s, uh, not exactly in the middle of nowhere. Sure, maybe the bodies are cloaked with magic, but they’re still loading heavy objects into a big truck. That’s going to raise some eyebrows. I know, this is fantasy and all, but when the earlier bits of the chapter are all about lecturing us about how “real” sword fights are done, then having this little inconsistency with the real world feels pretty blatant.

Leif says if he takes that deal he’ll take those three glasses of blood now because Atticus is marked for death. Which is fair, or at least as fair as a dishonorable, murderous, blood-sucking leach like Leif can be. Atticus doesn’t like the idea, and tries to wriggle out of it: one glass tonight, the other two tomorrow night? Leif points out that he has a healing factor so it shouldn’t be a problem, but Atticus says because he’s wounded right now he can’t quite do as much as he usually would. But if he’s so wounded, why isn’t he screaming in pain?

Because he’s blocked out his pain receptors, that’s why.

That’s… not a good thing, guys.

There’s this whole thing in Dresden Files (DANG IT I brought it up again) with the Winter Knight, the human warrior who serves the will of the queens of the Winter Court of Fae and there’s a lot going on with that in the books, but the main point I’m getting at is that they’re really strong and don’t really feel a lot of pain. And it’s hypothesized that they’re not actually supernaturally strong or resistant, they’ve just got their natural strength inhibitors and pain receptors turned off. Which sounds good for an expendable berserker warrior (which the Winter Knight is kind of meant to be), but in the long term it’s pretty terrible. Pain is good! Well, not good, but it’s an indicator that you’ve been hurt and that something’s going wrong with your body.

I get that Atticus did it as a temporary thing while he’s healing, but he’s two thousand years old, and he can’t deal with the pain while his arm is healing? Really? If I was on the hit list of a god, I’d want to keep all of my senses on as much as I could.

Leif is still skeptical about his chances, but Atticus reassures him, being all like, “Nah man, it’s good. I got warning about the Fir Bolgs and Bres, and I killed those guys, so I’m a BOSS at surviving.” And Leif’s all like, “Waitaminute whattaya mean Bres is dead? Bres, the former king of the Tuatha De Danann, Bres?”

Atticus feels stupid for having said that, but he admits that yes, he did it, and so now Leif insists on the three glasses of blood up front, because Brighid is going to smite him. And they act, for once, like this is a big deal! Unlike before, where the Morrigan and Atticus agree that if they just explain that Bres was stupid and terribly dressed, then Brighid won’t mind. No, Leif is sure that Atticus is dead meat, so he asks for the blood as soon as the cops clear out.

There’s a bit of a disconnect though? Like Leif acts like it’s a big deal, but no one else does? The guy who isn’t even Irish is the one who thinks this means bad things.

Here’s the last line of the chapter:

Whoa. He had ghouls on speed dial. My lawyer kicks so much ass.

No, he’s a serial killer. That’s not cool, man. Your lawyer is a serial killer with the means to cover up his murders; that’s disturbing! I get that in a story about a charming anti-hero this might be a fun addition, but Atticus isn’t a charming anti-hero. He’s a villain. No really, let’s systematically go through this:

-He stands by to let humans get killed by gods.
-He will happily kill people on his own side of a battle if it gets him what he wants (like a magic sword).
-Said magic sword that he knew was being used as an unstoppable weapon that caused chaos in Ireland, and he took it for himself.
-He associates with at least one serial killer.
-Are we counting the Morrigan? If not, it’s still incredibly sketch that he’s BFFs with the Irish god of violent death and warfare that goes and kills people for insulting her.
-His worries about killing are centered around being caught rather than actually doing something immoral or hurting people.
-He fought and killed with the Golden Horde for no discernible reason.
-He can kill faeries by touching them using a type of magic that distorts the very nature of magic itself.
-Frames his neighbor for harassing the police.
-Manipulates another neighbor into helping him cover up a death.

None of those are things a good guy does! And all together, they spell a pretty grim picture of Atticus. Which narratively wouldn’t be that bad—villain protagonists are a thing! And they’re certainly allowed! But this story isn’t being told as if Atticus is a villain protagonist—it’s acting as if he’s a pragmatic, charming and rough-around-the-edges anti-hero. Which he’s not. He’s just an evil bastard.

Join us next time, as Atticus and Oberon talk about Genghis Khan some more and lie to the police again.

[sigh]

Comment [6]

So my friend who sporked Tiger’s Curse? She’s now doing the sequel in her sporking, which you can find right here.

Atticus wakes up in his backyard. See, realizing he needed to heal, especially after giving so much of his own blood to his lawyer¹, and he needs to be in touch with the ground to do that, he’s in his backyard. I know his property is magically protected and all, but isn’t sleeping outside when you know people want you dead monumentally stupid? Because all Aenghus Og has to do is hire a sniper to climb up on another rooftop while he’s asleep and give Atticus a high-speed lead injection. It would not be difficult, considering Aenghus is an immortal god who apparently has infiltrated the Tempe law enforcement. Am I meant to believe that hiring a professional gunman is beyond his capabilities? Heck, this close to the university, he could hire a college student to do it.

And wait just a minute: Atticus needs to be in contact with the soil to heal, so he has to sleep outside if he’s really wounded? Here’s a man who is immortal, has incredible magical abilities, connections with the supernatural community, and no problems with wealth, and he can’t build a room in his house with just one spot that’s not covered with flooring? Like, he couldn’t have this spot in his basement that’s just bare earth for him to heal in? He has to sleep outside?

Just to remind you, this man has gone on and on about how paranoid he is, and yet he didn’t prepare for the possibility that he might need to spend a night healing himself. If it had so much as rained then he wouldn’t have been able to sleep. As it is, this guy who keeps insisting that he’s insanely paranoid feels entirely comfortable sleeping in his yard without any sort of tent or shelter while his mortal enemy is in town and actively seeking his demise. He mentions a camouflage spell, and that’s it. No other protections.

This man is an idiot.

So all his wounds are healed. The worst he has to worry about is a little pain, but it’s fine—all those injuries he got in the fight with the Fir Bolgs? All gone now. Not that it’s a surprise, but it’s just a reminder that nothing has consequences for the protagonist of this book. He and Oberon have breakfast and talk about Genghis Khan some more, because we need those jokes, I guess.

Also Atticus insists that they “have to make sure the widow is okay. We left her house rather abruptly last night.” Since when is this an issue? You didn’t care when a literal god walked up to her house to pick a fight with you. You left to fight the Fir Bolgs, supposedly out of concern for her, but she’s still your neighbor, and you didn’t check in on her after the fight or after the cops showed up and started waving guns around. But now we’re acting as if he’s oh so concerned about her?

Oh and this:

Fragarach was lying where I left it on the kitchen table.

Have you ever been so paranoid that you left a magic cut-through-anything sword that the bad guys are willing to kill for on the kitchen table overnight?

And this from Oberon:

I think that you should start with getting me a sufficient number of French poodles, and you can find those in the classified section of the newspaper.

Because he thinks all French poodles are female, and he wants to have a harem, remember? The fact that Oberon is of human-level intelligence and wants to have sex with a bunch of animals that aren’t isn’t meant to be troubling at all.

Atticus goes outside to get the paper and observe how his lawn looks. He dispels the magic cloaking it, and the fact that there are now visible bits of gore all over is apparently not a big deal? Seriously, “messy patches of gore” are just A-okay! He tries to spray it away with a hose, and it doesn’t all go away. But he decides that if anyone asks, he’ll come up with an answer and it’ll be fine.

Maybe that giant animated jar of Kool-Aid met his untimely end here?

The Kool-Aid Man is a pitcher not a jar. I recognize that this isn’t a big deal, but if you’re going to make stupid pop culture references, at least get them right. In any case, joking about it doesn’t change the fact that he’s got splotches of blood in his yard, and he doesn’t have an explanation, and he’s not worried about it at all.

This man is dripping with paranoia, I’m telling you.

Atticus and Oberon talk about invading Siberia or something while he cooks breakfast. Atticus declares that

Oberon’s ability to distract me from life’s worries was one of the reasons I adored him.

I’d accept this comment if it weren’t for the fact that Atticus doesn’t have any worries. People are out to kill him and he slept in his yard without any sort of covering except a cloaking spell. He left his magic sword that the bad guys are after out on the kitchen table. He hasn’t even come up with an excuse for their being red patches in his yard yet.

Then Atticus reads the paper. The headline is about a Park Ranger that got killed by a dog. And they guess that it was done “by a large dog, possibly an Irish wolfhound.” Atticus is all like, “There’s no reason they’d know what the breed of dog was from the body/wound, so obviously they’re getting help from someone else.” Which, uh, duh. We know that Aenghus Og is in town, and that he’s using the local law enforcement.

Someone’s coming to the door though! And it’s the cops. Two, rather. Atticus steps outside on the front porch to talk to them. They are Detective Carlos Jimenez from the Phoenix police and Detective Darren Fagles from the Tempe police. They have a conversation which I imagine Hearne thought was very witty.

May we speak to you inside?”

Ha! He asked to come inside anyway. Not gonna happen, buddy. “Oh it’s such a nice morning, let’s just talk out here,” I said. “What brings you to my door today?”

Jimenez frowned. “Mr. O’Sullivan, this is really best discussed in private.”

“We’re plenty private right here.” I grinned at him. “Unless you’re planning to shout. You aren’t going to shout at me, are you?”

“Well, no,” the detective admitted.

“Great! So why are you here?”

It’s supposed to make Atticus sound clever, but it just makes him sound obnoxious.

They ask him if he owns a wolfhound, and he says what his werewolf lawyer told him to say: that his dog ran away and he has no idea where he went. When the admit that they’re investigating the park ranger’s murder, he says he wasn’t there. They want to investigate his house and yard, but after some prodding it’s revealed that the tip they got to go to Atticus was given, once again, by his neighbor Mr. Semerdjian, and so Atticus explains that his neighbor’s an insane douchebag and they back off a bit, and eventually leave, though Fagles makes it clear that he still thinks Atticus is guilty.

Which, y’know, he kind of is?

I thought about this on one of my walks, and I realized another thing that bothers me about this: Atticus isn’t acting like an innocent man. He’s snarky, annoying, and basically rubbing in the cops’ faces that they can’t do what they want. He could still act like he knows his rights and act unnerved and terrified, but he doesn’t. You would think a man who keeps billing himself as paranoid wouldn’t be flippantly teasing the police there to accuse him of murder.

And also police… don’t always follow the law. It’s become a massive political issue lately, sure (and one we will NOT get into here, because I see enough political BS on Facebook and it already sends my anxiety through the roof), especially in regards to race, but it’s not new by any means, nor is it limited to African-Americans. If Fagles is really as unstable and obsessed as Hearne paints him, there’s a huge chance that he’d barge into Atticus’s house, warrant or no, and actually wave his gun around with an itchy trigger finger.

Yeah, it sucks, but there are a lot of cops who abuse their power. And there have been for years. So Hearne’ss protagonist, who claims up and down that he’s oh-so paranoid and well-prepared, is talking back to the cops. Atticus, you could very easily get yourself shot this way. And yet we’re being told that this is him acting oh so clever and witty. The fact that back talking law enforcement is pretty much suicidal never seems to enter anyone’s mind.

[Yes I follow Swear Trek on Tumblr.]

“But Juracan! He’s immune to death, remember?” Yeah, okay, but a bullet to the head can’t exactly be comfortable, can it? Even if he heals from that, his reputation in this town would be kind of screwed. He’d have to go out of the way to explain to his attempted murderers why he’s not dead, or fake his death, and then assume a new identity, probably leave town— the whole chalupa.

Of course none of this crosses his mind because he’s a Mary Sue and I hate him.

Atticus cleans up his house, looking to see if there’s anything incriminating in case the police do come in. He notices that his antique books might be roughed up if the cops decide to go rifling through his stuff, and that his lawn plants might be confiscated on the assumption that they’re illegal drugs, so he calls up Hal (the werewolf lawyer, if you forgot, who works during the day while Leif the vampire works at night). He asks Hal if a lawyer could park at his house to be obstructive if the cops come in, basically. Hal agrees to send a junior associate. Atticus is pleased, because if Aenghus is involved then the cops might bring a non-human in, and a werewolf would still be a pretty good defense.

You may be the most paranoid man I’ve ever met.”

“I’m certainly the longest lived you’ve ever met.”

[sigh]

As I’ve explained a dozen times over by now, Atticus is anything but paranoid.

He goes to Mrs. MacDonagh’s house, and notices that Bres’s body isn’t there. He hypothesizes that maybe the Morrigan ate it. Then he talks to the leprechaun.

“Ah, me dear boy Atticus, ‘tis a pleasure to see ye again and that’s no lie. Have ye killed any more Brits for me?

“Good morning, Mrs. MacDonagh. No, I haven’t killed any more Brits. I hope you won’t be talking about that with anyone.”

“Tish, d’ye think I’m daft? I’m not there yet, thank the Lord. It’s all due to clean livin’ and good Irish whiskey. Would y’be havin’ some with me? Come on in.”

Maybe me quoting these bits is why I haven’t got as many comments on these sporkings lately. They are painful to read, I guess. But you guys will suffer with me.

Atticus declines the whiskey, saying it’s too early in the morning, and also it’s Sunday. MacDonagh knows that, but she says she drinks a bit before going to the student Mass because the priest gives long homilies aimed more at college kids than her. She insists it’s not that she’s drunk, she’s mellow, but, uh… yeah, she goes to Mass drunk.

I… hate these characters.

The leprechaun asks if she could convince Atticus to get baptized, and he also turns that down and says he has to go to work. Oberon asks him what Baptism is, and Atticus gives a basic explanation like, “You’re dunked in water and come out reborn.” Of course, Oberon doesn’t get it, so he says it’s a symbolic thing, and Oberon still doesn’t get it.

Mind you, this doesn’t really seem a theologically-accurate description of the Sacrament of Baptism, but in Atticus’s (and Hearne’s) defense, Atticus isn’t Christian, and doesn’t seem to have much interest in Christianity in general. I mean he has been around two thousand years so it’s a bit weird that he hasn’t picked up any actual knowledge of Christian theology, considering, y’know, Irish history and all. But it’s not exactly inexcusable, since he skipped out of Ireland before Christianity got there, so I’ll regrettably give it a slide.

It’s not great, but the man doesn’t even keep track of the politics of the country he’s in now. So it’s not unbelievable that he doesn’t know how Baptism works. It’s dumb, but it’s consistently dumb, ya ken?

Atticus finishes out his explanation as he goes to work with ‘It’s symbolic, okay?’ and Oberon’s all like “Like going to church drunk is really going to church mellow?”

Oh yeah, Atticus is on his way to work. Did I mention that? The most paranoid man Hal has ever met is leaving his house to go to work. He’s so paranoid, guys. Atticus describes how he has some business on Sundays, mostly because you had a bunch of angsty college kids rebelling against their Christian upbringing going to a New Age shop.

Also we get this:

And their auras almost always churned with arousal, which I did not understand when I first opened the shop, but eventually it made sense: For the first time in their lives, they were going to read about a belief system where it was okay to have sex, and they could hardly wait for the validation.

Look, sex is not my subject. But you honestly expect me to believe that because these college kids are no longer Christian, they’re just aroused from just looking at non-Christian reading material and merchandise? Because it might not give them validation for sex outside of marriage?

I think you’re projecting, Atticus.

This isn’t weird, is it? Like I know college kids can be perverts, but the idea that they’re walking around a New Age shop aroused by it not being Christian doesn’t make sense. If anything, it feels like another attempt to drag sex into the novel, in the most juvenile way possible. And it doesn’t add anything! All it tells us is that Atticus brings up sex in contexts where it’s weird. Which we already knew!

“Hey? All these college kids in the store? They’re thinking about *SEX!*” Okay that’s nice but what does that have to do with the Plot? You know, the evil Irish god out to kill you and take your magic sword? Does this really add anything to this scene? Does it give us a clearer picture of the store?

Nope, it does not. It’s just there.

Atticus goes on to describe the auras and looks of customers who were actually members of the supernatural community, and oh look, there’s Emilya, the witch from earlier? Who had Atticus brew up an impotency potion? Yeah her, and despite the fact that Atticus gave her a magical beatdown last time she was here, she’s sneering in his face and sticks her tongue out at him.

Yeah, because that’s how a person in her situation would act.

But before much else can happen, another woman enters the shop and reprimands Emilya. It’s described like a child being chastised by a parent, with Emilya realizing that she’s in trouble. And that’s the end of the chapter.

I know I’ve said this before, but there’s something really messed up about the depiction of women in this book, isn’t there? Aside from being all sexualized to some extent (I want to say that the Leprechaun isn’t, but she also admits that she’d like to bone Atticus so that goes out the window), they’re terrible people and… not very bright? Flidais doesn’t understand how to use basic kitchen appliances, the Morrigan is ready to murder people at the drop of a hat, the Leprechaun goes to Mass drunk and immediately drops all intelligence to go murder happy at the mention of Britain, and Emilya, after picking and losing a fight with Atticus goes to his shop to basically brag in his face.

It’s not just that it’s one or two characters, it’s just about all the female characters. The only exception I can think of right now is the bartender at the Irish pub, and it’s all but said that Atticus gets an erection just being around her. So, uh, that’s not great.

What makes this frustrating in Emilya’s case is that she’s meant to be around a hundred years old. I know compared to Atticus that’s pretty young, but she’s not that young. For Atticus (and the author) to be infantilizing her like this comes across as pretty condescending. She should be Atticus’s equal, or around that level, but nope! She’s just an immature brat without a lick of common sense.

Maybe things get better for the female characters later on in the series, but this book treats them pretty badly.

Join me next time, as… stuff happens, I guess? I need several shots of apple juice…

¹ I haven’t made a blood-sucking lawyer joke, have I? That’s pretty terrible of me.

Comment [7]

You know, there’s an argument that Atticus is meant to be an old-fashioned medieval trickster hero. Read some stories about Renard or Wayland the Smith, and they do some pretty terrible things, including murdering people to take their stuff, but it’s a-okay because they’re the protagonist and they’re flicking off those in power. And if I got the impression that Atticus was a deconstruction of that sort of hero I’d accept Hounded as being somewhat clever! But it’s not really; Atticus plays protagonist-centered morality straight, and doesn’t care about the Plot. He’s just some idiot that the Plot caters to because Reasons.

Anyway, were you curious about the witches’ coven in The Iron Druid Chronicles? No? Tough toenails! He’s a chapter in which we delve more into that.

The new witch who just showed up and chastised Emilya is Malina Sokolowski, a witch who was mentioned earlier from Radomila’s coven. She called to represent the coven, remember? No? That’s fine, you probably have a life, unlike me. In any case, she’s meant to represent the coven and monitor Emilya getting the magic potion she ordered to make sure no funny business is going on and the magical contract is fulfilled by both parties. She’s sort of the lawyer of Radomila’s coven. Which is interesting, considering we keep referring to Radomila’s coven of witches, and we still haven’t met Radomila. It’s an odd way of introducing a character. Unless there’s some big reveal about Radomila’s character, like she’s a complete badass or she’s a joke, having her being mentioned all the time without her appearing on-page makes it feel like Hearne wanted to have the coven there and its leader be friends with Atticus, but without the effort of including the character in a way that makes sense.

We also get a description of Malina. She looks like a hot blonde in her thirties. I’m sure you’re surprised. Except then PLOT TWIST! The reason Atticus thinks she’s so hot, he realizes with his amulet, is that she’s got a “some kind of beguilement charm on her hair.” With that charm out of the way, we get a more in-detailed description… and she’s still a hot blonde. I’m sure you’re surprised.

Nonverbal signals are so powerful at times that I wonder at our need to speak.

Because some tasks, like, say, reviewing a book or movie, need words ya twit.

Oh right this is followed by this:

Without looking at her aura, I already knew that Malina was classy where Emily was not; far more mature, intelligent, and powerful; and was reluctant to give offense where Emily could not wait to give it.And I also knew she was more dangerous by several orders of magnitude.

I can’t be the only one who read this as Atticus basically saying “Emilya’s a trashy skank whereas Malina’s a classy lady,” right? Just by looking at her, and hearing her tell Emilya to shut up, he’s basically telling the audience, “Yeah this witch is hotter and more powerful and also she’s just much better all-around.” Or, in other terms, because she’s harsh to the character who is mean to the protagonist, she’s meant to be more likable.

So Malina, speaking with a Polish accent that is supposedly very obvious but isn’t shown in the dialogue (at least, not as much as the Leprechaun’s), demands that Emilya apologize to Atticus. Because Atticus takes pleasure in Emilya’s pain, he tells us “She was scoring points with me already” but he does point out that you can’t trust witches and the entire thing might have been staged to get on his good side. But he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t care about anything.

When Emily took too long, Malina’s voice lowered to a threatening growl so that only Emily and I could hear. “If you do not apologize to him right now, then I swear by the three Zoryas that I will measure your length on this floor and put you in breach of contract. You are in so much trouble already, you will be cast out from the coven.

Two things:

FIRST: This… doesn’t read like a strong Polish accent. Which is fine! But when Atticus’s Irish neighbor is written with a stereotypical Irish accent so strong it’s basically a joke, telling us this character has a heavy Polish accent and then her dialogue sounds like English is her first language… well, it’s inconsistent. It’s not bad, mind you, but if he’s not going to go through the trouble of writing an accent for Malina, why does he write one for the Leprechaun?

SECOND: So there’s some argument, but consensus among scholars seems to be that there aren’t three Zoryas. The Zoryas, for those not in the know, are Slavic star goddesses. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they’re the daughters or servants of the Sun god Dazbog? They open the gates to his household as he leaves in the morning and returns in the evening; hence they are the morning and evening stars. They also watch the skies to make sure that the doomsday hound Simurgl doesn’t leave the constellation the Little Dipper, because when it does that will be the end of the world. Hooray!

I’ve seen debate as to whether there’s a third sister (a midnight star), but from what I gather the third sister is injected into the mix to make the Zoryas into a Slavic equivalent to the Triple Goddess motif of different mythologies that became fashionable in New Age movements. The most famous person to do this is Neil Gaiman (who Hearne admits he’s a fan of), who included them as characters in American Gods. Neil pretty much admitted that he made up the third sister, along with a lot of the stuff about different mythologies (and Slavic mythology in particular; the Czernobog/Bielobog thing stands out) to make it all fit the story. Which is fine, as long as you know that’s what you’re doing!

But this… well, it reads like Hearne just read American Gods, or some New Age-y book, and thought, “Hey, the Zoryas are a cool triple goddess, right? Let’s put them in the mix.” It’s the same thing as happened with Flidais—she’s not actually a hunting goddess, but that’s what people who didn’t do research said, so he rolled with it. This is another one of those things that I wouldn’t look at too critically if I wasn’t already disinclined to give any credit to this book.

We’ll hop back to this later.

Anyhow, Emilya gives her apology, Atticus accepts, and Malina shakes Atticus’s hand and oversees him making her magic potion for Emilya. Then Emilya leaves without much dialogue and Malina formally introduces herself. Atticus makes tea for her. Oberon says that he likes her, but Atticus reminds him that Malina’s a witch, and therefore not to be trusted.

Malina mentions that Emilya’s not really well-behaved, and Atticus asks why they put up with each other then? And Malina says it’s “a very long story.” Atticus assures her that he, being an immortal Druid, can deal with long stories, instead of taking a hint that it’s not something she wants to tell him. After all, that’s what I mean when I say “It’s a long story.” Malina’s uncomfortable talking about this here though, considering there are a bunch of nonmagical folk around. But Atticus is all like, “Yeah, no problem, Perry the goth will just shoo them out if I do this!” and he puts a CLOSED sign on the counter.

Oh and we get this thing with a “scruff man” at the tea counter. Because Hearne thinks it’s funny, I guess?

“Whoa, man. You’re closed?” He frowned at me but was not to be deterred. He had something on his mind. “Hey dude, you got any medical marijuana back there?”

“No, sorry.” These guys just wouldn’t leave me alone.

“It’s not for me, I swear. It’s for my grandma.”

“Sorry. Try back next week.”

“Hey, really?”

“No.”

I turned my back on him, pulled up a chair next to Malina, and plastered an attentive look on my face.

Yeah, so I get that this is a New Age shop, and so of course Potheads are going to show up. But… like, really? ‘Cause they keep showing up in the story to be cheap punchlines. They arrive in the second chapter to gawk at the Morrigan and then presumably get murdered off-page. And here’s a guy who shows up just to ask for pot so Atticus can shut him down.

Also, pothead or not, wouldn’t this guy be a little upset that he went into a store and the owner was rude to him? And wouldn’t there be a risk that he goes to his friends and tells them that the guy who owns this store is a rude jerk? I know that the customer is not always right, but this man’s not even particularly difficult? Have you dealt with high college students? They’re not always this polite. And Atticus is incredibly rude to him.

Yes, he’s a druggie and he’s annoying and you’re not obligated to bend over backward to accommodate every single person you meet, especially if they’re only talking to you for drugs. My point is: here is yet another NPC in this story who exists as just some loser the main characters can be mean to with no consequences. And it keeps happening.

The guy tells Malina her hair’s pretty, she tells him to buzz off, and she takes the magic charm off of her hair. She’s still hesitant to talk to Atticus about magic stuff in public, because the Muggles can overhear—

Wait, is the store closed, or just the tea counter? It’s a bit unclear.

—anyway, Atticus tells her that people will assume she’s Wiccan when she talks about witchcraft. Or, if someone overhears her talking about living in the past, they’ll claim they’re members of the SCA, which is the Society for Creative Anachronisms.

There’s also this whole bit where Malina asks if the SCA means “Society for Cruelty to Animals” and Atticus corrects her that she’s thinking of the SPCA and explains what the SCA does, and it’s a bit of a tangent that gets us nowhere other than to clue us in that Hearne knows about nerd stuff while he’s mocking it.

This conversation does get at the root of something I’ve thought about though, and it’s not a bad thought. If you heard two people in a restaurant or store talking about monsters or vampires or magic, you would assume they’re talking about a video game, or DnD, or something like that. If you thought they were serious, maybe you’d tell it to your friends as an amusing story. “Hey I passed these two weirdos who were talking about vampires and witches!” But you wouldn’t assume that there was a secret magic world out there because you heard two strangers talking.

So while I take issue with the stupid tangent and the pothead, the idea that Atticus puts forth, that they’re not really at risk of exposure talking about these things in public, I’m okay with that. I kind of agree.

Malina, being surprisingly forward in the face of all of Atticus’s questions, tells Atticus that she met Emilya in Krzepice, Poland in September of 1939, during the Blitzkrieg. See, Malina saved Emilya from being raped, and so she’s sort of been a parental figure for Emilya ever since—

…wait.

Emilya’s backstory is that she was ALMOST RAPED BY NAZIS HOLY FATHER FRANCIS WHAT THE FUDGE IS THIS?!?

Because Emilya’s entire character has been “Hey look at this one witch she’s a trashy obnoxious ho! Isn’t she annoying?” and now we’re being told that she was ALMOST RAPED BY NAZIS and that’s a heavy thing to drop on us with no warning, ya know? I’m debating whether or not that’s worse than just throwing the Troubles into the Plot for character motivation out of nowhere. This should be the backstory for an interesting, complex character that takes center stage but instead it’s just a sidenote to a character who is just there to bother the protagonist and act like a twit.

So the Leprechaun is a joke character who has the backstory of being widowed because of the Irish Troubles, and Emilya is a minor antagonist that was this close to being raped by Nazis. Anything else? Are we going to learn that Leif was one of the raiders at Lindisfarne? That the bartender at the Irish pub had family in the Twin Towers? The Atlantic Slave Trade? The Armenian Genocide? The Tiananmen Square protests? All of these are sitting right there if Hearne wants to use them for cheap backstories.

Don’t do this guys. I’m not saying you can’t write stories involving these events, but don’t throw them in there for a ‘oh, by the way’ backstory.

Anyhow, getting back to the story: Malina was seventy-two in 1939, and Emilya was only sixteen then. Only the two of them are from Krzepice. When they got together with their current coven, they moved around until they got to Tempe, which is where they’ve lived the longest. Atticus asks why Tempe, and Malina tells him the same reason he has “Few old gods, few old ghosts, and until recently, no Fae at all.”

Alright I covered this: Southwestern Native American nations? Mexican and Mayan mythological figures? Christian saints? These should all be coming out the wazoo. There are very few places you’ll find with no cultural ties to religious figures at all. Antarctica might be one, but I suspect that would put Atticus out of his comfort zone.

Since Atticus asked Malina some questions and she answered truthfully, she requests the same of him. Atticus, being a piece of turd, says he’ll answer with the truth, but not all of it. So when she asks how old he is, he just says that he’s “At least as old as Radomila.” Then she asks if he has the sword belonging to Aenghus, with which Atticus replies “No. It does not belong to him.” Which basically means ‘yes’ and she knows it, and follows with asking if he has the sword Aenghus believes is his, and Atticus replies in the affirmative. And then she asks if it’s on the premises, and he confirms that it is.

Her final question in this question trade-off is “Which of the Tuatha De Danann did you last talk to?” And Atticus tells her that it was the Morrigan, which surprises her. Atticus guesses that she expected him to say Bres, and that by saying Morrigan maybe she thinks Morrigan killed Bres instead of him? Or something stupid, becauses it really wouldn’t be difficult to find out that Atticus was the killer.

Atticus asks her how many witches are working of Aenghus Og, and she refuses to answer, so Atticus basically tells her that he can’t trust her and that she and her coven buddies are allied with his mortal enemy. Malina says they aren’t, but that they can’t give too many details.

We do not want anything to do with the Tuatha De Danann. Mortals who have dealings with them rarely end happily, and while we are not your average mortals, we still are not in their weight class, if you will allow me to use a boxing metaphor.”

“I will allow it this once. I would find it more amusing if you would use gamer jargon from now on, like, ‘If we fought the Tuatha De Danann, we’d get so pwned. ”

So, uh, that ages this book significantly.

Seriously, what was the point of that comment, other than another attempt to make Atticus sound hip? Was “pwned” a thing people ever actually said outside of the Internet? I only ever heard/saw it as a joke. It’s a joke here, but it’s not funny. It’s another one of those ‘This is what the kids are saying now’ comments that doesn’t do anything but tell us that Atticus thinks gamers are funny. Which isn’t news, considering how he seems to mock nerd culture in general. Why would there be an issue with Malina using a boxing metaphor anyhow? Harry Dresden uses them all the time, talking about different entities’ weight classes. It’s an easy-to-understand way of discussing who is more powerful than who.

Malina says that the witches know Atticus and Aenghus will fight, and are worried that Aenghus will turn on them, considering the potion making him impotent was commissioned by a witch, so they have every reason to want to back Atticus. After all, if Atticus kills Aenghus, then he’s no longer their problem. That doesn’t really explain why some of the witches are involved with Aenghus at all, instead of just leaving him alone. Really, the witches should all just be sitting back and being all like

But I’ve given up on characters making sensible choices. She asks Atticus how they can help him fight Aenghus, and so Atticus asks about the Zoryas, if they’re the source of the witches’ powers.

“Ah. Well, yes, the Zoryas are the star goddesses known throughout the Slavic world. The midnight star, Zorya Polunochnaya, is a goddess of death and rebirth, and, as you might expect, she has quite a bit to do with magic and wisdom. It is she who gives us much of our knowledge and power, though the other two Zoryas are helpful as well.”

Remember how I said I don’t mind too much that Hearne’s assuming Neil Gaiman had done his research? I take that back. Because Zorya Polunochnaya is the one Zorya that Neil made up. That’s what most sources will tell me if I Google the name. Yes, there’s some debate that there was a third Zorya, but that name is taken from American Gods. The only other source I’ve seen mentioning her by this name, in the way she’s described by Hearne, is this site, but with a name like ‘Crystal Links’ and no actual citations to reliable-sounding sources, I’m more inclined to think it’s New Age nonsense.

The Zoryas are not goddesses of death and rebirth. They never have been, as far as I can tell. There are several Slavic deities associated with death and rebirth; that makes sense, considering that the Slavs weren’t really one united group of people in pre-Christian Eastern Europe, and so they’d have some differences in religious practices. There is a goddess who looks closer to this mold (based on her Wikipedia article, anyhow, and I recognize it might be wrong, so take it with a grain of salt): Marzanna. Associated with rebirth, and maybe magic. And she’s been likened to Hecate by medieval writers! See, there’s a Slavic goddess packaged to fit this whole witch thing right there, and instead, Hearne goes with the Zorya made up by Neil Gaiman. Why? Because he just didn’t care to Google, I imagine. He just assumed that the Zoryas were a triple goddess that would fit his needs because American Gods said so!

I hadn’t heard much about the Zoryas before—old Slavic deities had rarely come up as a topic of conversation in my travels.

Why the fudge not? You’re apparently super-paranoid, you try to avoid deities all the time, and you’ve travelled all over the world… and you don’t know anything about the Slavic gods? If I was someone who was trying to avoid gods at all costs, I’d do my best to know about as many of them as I could.

Anyhow Malina offers to help with some magic to give him a boost against Aenghus Og, and asks how he plans to attack him. Atticus tells the audience that he’s not going to answer that, and tells her that he’ll just wing it. She seems surprised that he doesn’t want help.Clearly she doesn’t know him.

Malina looked incredulous. “Are you anything more than a Druid?”

“Of course I am. I own this shop and I play a mean game of chess, and I’ve been told that I’m a frakkin’ Cylon.”

“What’s a frakkin’ Cylon?”

“I don’t know, but it sounds really scary when you say it with a Polish accent.”

Isn’t this so funny? Aren’t you glad this joke from Chapter 5 came back? Isn’t Atticus so clever? WHY AREN’T YOU LAUGHING???

Malina doesn’t like being poked fun at, and she realizes that nothing she says will make Atticus trust the coven or take them seriously. So she leaves, and Oberon makes some more pop culture references (Mary Poppins and Star Wars, if you’re curious!). And then the Morrigan comes back! She flies in as a crow, apparently scaring the customers enough that they all just agree to leave? No really, she just flies in, and everyone just leaves, and Atticus tells his employee Perry to take a lunch break. Perry’s a bit worried about his source of income being left alone in a store with what appears to be a demon bird for company, but does as asked. Atticus flips the sign to CLOSED so I guess the store is closed now.

The Morrigan tells him that Brighid’s on her way.

I jumped up and down and swore violently in seventeen languages.

See, here’s the thing: when someone gives Atticus bad news, he does this thing where he has a gut reaction of freaking out that seems natural. But then he immediately decides he doesn’t really care and chills his way through everything. Again, if he was really that worried about anything he wouldn’t stick around, he’d leave or make some preparations.

The Morrigan told Brighid about Bres and how he died, and she decided she’d moozy on over, without telling Morrigan what her plans were once she got there. Atticus points out that if Brighid decides to kill him, they’re in a kind of awkward position because the Morrigan won’t take him to the afterlife, remember? So the Morrigan tells him basically to play dead if Brighid decides to kill him. Which is stupid advice, but so is all of the advice in this book.

Atticus is like, “Oh BTW, did I mention I talked to Flidas? And I got into legal trouble because she made my dog kill a park ranger?” Which the Morrigan, using half a brain cell, says is fishy. She decides some kind of weird scheme is going on between Irish gods and she doesn’t like being left out, so she says after she sees what happens with Brighid, she’ll go investigate. The Morrigan bails then, because she thinks it might look bad to be seen hanging out with Atticus here.

And then Brighid appears, manifesting as a fireball bursting through the door and melting the little bells on the door. And then she turns into a human form, “leaving a tall, majestic, fully armored goddess in its place. It was Brighid, goddess of poetry, fire and the forge.”

“Old Druid,” she said in a voice of music and dread,” I must speak with you about the death of my husband.”

I’d care if it wasn’t abundantly clear by this point that Atticus will never face the consequences of his actions.

Join us next time, as we find out what it is that Brighid wants to say to the man who killed her husband!

Comment [12]

I had the random thought that I wonder what followers of Irish paganism think of this book? Its depiction of the Irish gods is not fantastic, to say the least. I’m not saying that a writer should change his or her ideas to avoid offending people, but I was curious, in the same way how I wonder what Odinists think of the American Gods show or the recent God of War that don’t paint Odin in the nicest light.

Anyhow.

What was going on in Hounded when we left off?

Brighid was a vision. I don’t think there’s ever been a hotter widow in history.

Oh right, Atticus was getting a boner. Again.

I’m going to be blockquoting a lot more than usual, at least in this first bit, because there’s plenty that struck me as interesting to talk about here.

Even though she was in full armor and all I could see of her actual person were her eyes and her lips, well, I felt like a horny teenager again.

You always feel like that! When you see college students poking around your shop looking at New Age books, you think they’re doing it because they’re thinking about sex! And that’s weird!

I really, really wanted to flirt, but seeing as I was the guy who widowed her, I thought perhaps there was a line somewhere I shouldn’t cross.

Gee, ya think?

These lines here all comprise the opening paragraph of Chapter 14. The queen of the gods of the pantheon that he worships arrives, and he’s immediately going on about how he’s so hot for her, but he doesn’t want to flirt with her because “Oh, that’d just be awkward!” It feels all wrong for what should be going on in his head right now.

I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong for a goddess to appear and a mortal finding her beautiful, or even overtly sexual in her manifestation; that’s kind of in line with how mythologies depict some deities. But this is just… weird. Let’s go step-by-step here:

-Atticus is apparently so scared of what Brighid will do when she appears that when he hears she’s on the way, he swears in [checks Chapter 13] seventeen different languages.

-When she does appear it’s first as a burst of flame, and then as a woman in full armor, with only part of her face visible.

-And so Atticus is immediately turned on by this? And his first instinct is to try to flirt with her? And yeah, to his minor credit he doesn’t do that, but it’s because he thinks it’s awkward, not because of any shred of decency on his part.

Guys, Atticus’s internal monologue should be more along the lines of “HOLY &%(@ I need to grovel because I killed this goddess’s husband and she might smite me on principle! Pleasedon’tkillmepleasedon’tkillmepleasedon’tkillme…” None of this narration seems to indicate terror, fear, anxiety, or even just basic respect for a person arriving on your doorstep who, as far as you know, has every intention of killing you and every justification to do so.

I cleared my throat and licked my lips nervously. “You’d just like to speak about his death?” I asked. “No summary incinerations or anything like that?”

Alright now he’s showing some terror, but again, this reads weirdly. This doesn’t sound like someone who is terrified or even trying to sound regretful. It’s too weasley. It sounds more like a guy who is scared of getting detention from his teacher. Even if this did sound like grovelling, it’s completely undercut by the first paragraph informing us, pretty strongly, that Atticus’s first thoughts upon seeing Brighid are that he wants to have sex with her.

Brighid tells him that after she hears a full account of what happened, then she will make a decision about what happens to him. Atticus tells her almost everything, because “One doesn’t even attempt to lie to Brighid” although why that is, I don’t know. He does, however, leave out the details about seeing through Bres’s illusions, and he says it’s because he doesn’t want Brighid to know about his iron aura magic necklace thing, but that’s stupid because he ends up telling her by the end of the chapter anyway.

Atticus insists that it was “purely self-defense” which it kind of wasn’t—at the moment, Atticus even tells us that he doesn’t have to kill Bres, but that he does it anyway because he hates the guy and doesn’t want him to bother him again.

“I realize that.” Her manner softened. “And in truth, Druid, I owe you my thanks. You have relieved me of an odious task.”

You guys are shocked, I’m sure.

Yes, Atticus killed her husband, and her answer is “Thanks, bro, you saved me the task of doing it myself.”

Gadzooks! Brighid just said she owed me. That was a huge admission, and not what I had expected at all.

ONE: Who the flying fudge says “Gadzooks!”?

TWO: Not what you expected? Really? ‘Cause you haven’t been acting like you were this close to dying. You’ve been acting like your hot teacher’s going to talk to your parents about your grades. In either case, whether or not it’s what Atticus expected, it’s not far off from what the reader expected. At this point, we’re fairly certain that nothing is going to happen to Atticus that might inconvenience him. In this book Atticus can’t die, he can’t be seriously injured, and he can’t even have his house or shop get seriously wrecked! Even if Brighid did come here to kill him, something else would have happened to prevent it from happening, like the Morrigan flying in with some BS explanation as to why it shouldn’t happen.

How sad is it that a major goddess manifests in our protagonist’s workplace after he killed her husband, and we know there’s not going to be a boss fight because it would destroy the store? There’s no risk here! Not only will our protagonist not die when by all rights someone should have murdered him, he can’t even have someone blow up his house or his store or anything! The most we got is Brighid breaking his door!

Brighid removed her helmet, and her red hair spilled out across her pauldrons like one of those self-inflating life rafts. It wasn’t sweaty or tangled from being confined in a helmet across miles of desert. It was glorious, shining, Age of Aquarius hair that would make Malina Sokolowski envious, a full-blown movie star ‘do that a team of stylists would spend three hours teasing before the cameras rolled. It smelled of lavender and holly. I remembered to breathe only with some effort.

See, in theory I don’t have too much of an issue with this. Brighid’s a goddess. Of course she’s unbelievably beautiful. But I take issue with it because A) we’ve already established that Atticus’s view of Brighid is sexual (reminder: her ENTIRE BODY except for her head is covered in armor, so this is weird), so his description of her hair is definitely meant to be more than just aesthetic; it’s supposed to be insanely hot; B) in that description there’s also a putdown of Malina, because why not? Atticus is all too happy to talk about how everyone else is better than those witch skanks anyhow.

“Yeah, this goddess? She’s so much hotter than that witch from earlier!” Guess what? We don’t care!

I’m tired, guys. Here, take a look at this bunny gif:

Yeah, divinities bang mortals all the time in mythology. But Brighid’s not here to sleep with him. She’s just here, and Atticus is not appreciating her beauty; he’s gawking over how hawt she is.

Brighid asks for tea, and Atticus is all too happy to do it and starts working on it. Oberon asks to meet her, and Brighid is surprised to learn there’s a dog in the house because despite being a goddess, she doesn’t have the supersenses that every other supernatural being in the story does. Atticus dispells the magic cloaking on Oberon, and Brighid is nice to Oberon and therefore everything is cool, right?

Brighid brings up that Oberon’s killed a dude, and he feels bad, but says that he didn’t mean to, Flidais made him do it. Brighid knows, and says that it’s kind of her fault because she’s the one that sent Flidais to Atticus’s house in the first place.

Trivia: Brighid takes milk and honey in her tea. Just like me.

I don’t care! I don’t know what this comment is for. It sounds like the kind of thing a moron with a massive crush would care about, but considering that this goes nowhere, as far as I know, it’s absolutely pointless.

…sat down and took a moment to savor the surrealism. I was having tea with Brighid, a goddess I’d worshipped since childhood, in a city that didn’t exist when I was a child.

Here’s the thing (aside from the question of whether the area was settled before he was born, as it might well have been, because there’s evidence of Native Americans having lived around the area, if not necessarily right there, before the birth of Christ):

None of these interactions read like a man who is meeting his god.

I don’t know how many of my readers are religious, but if you are, whether it be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, Neopagan, Zoroastrian, whatever: is this how you’d act and talk if a central figure from your religion descended from the celestial planes to come talk to you? ‘Cause I’m betting… not.

There’s no reverence in how Atticus interacts with Brighid. There’s no awe, no wonder. It’s mostly sucking up. His fear is of being killed, but it’s pretty weak, and even then that’s not what his fear should be. When he hears she’s coming, he starts swearing a bunch, instead of, I dunno, being gripped by fear for his life or his soul or anything. If this is a goddess he actively worships now, there should be a sort of fear of being in the presence of a being so far beyond his understanding and capabilities that his thoughts should be jumbled. Atticus should be terrified or in awe on a level that he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Instead, he’s just sipping tea and thinking, “Hey, isn’t this kind of funny?”

I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be drinking tea or anything, but Attiucs shouldn’t be this casual about this. And his first thoughts when Brighid arrives in his shop definitely shouldn’t be about how he thinks it’d be awkward to flirt with her.

Like in Dresden Files when—

No! No, wait, I can do an example that’s not Dresden Files this time!

Have you heard of the Obsidian and Blood trilogy by Aliette de Bodard? If not, they’re very good, and worth checking out. It’s a historical fantasy murder mystery series set in the Aztec Triple Alliance. The lead character is Acatl, the high priest of the god of the dead. He regularly interacts with gods and minor sorcerers and the like. And when he interacts with gods, even if he doesn’t like them, he treats them with respect their otherworldly power and does his best to not offend them. Because even if it’s not his god, even if that god has shown that he’d happily kill all humanity, the fact is that he, a person raised in this belief system, sees them as gods, beings so much above and beyond him that the best he can do is sort of appease them and hope they don’t squish us. It helps that his patron deity, Mictlancuhutli, is (relatively) benevolent and doesn’t care about scheming because, well, he’s the god of the dead: he’ll get everyone in the end anyway.

I’m not saying every author needs to take that route, but I’d have liked to see something similar to that from Atticus, considering he’s, y’know, a Druid who actually worships this pantheon, and here he straight-up admits that he worships Brighid. I’d be less bothered if Atticus was explicitly non-religious, but here is a being he literally worships, and he’s acting more like he’s interacting with a hot celebrity he had a crush on since he was a kid.

Hearne kind of shot himself in the foot by making the Tuatha de Danaan into super Druids instead of actual gods? And by making Atticus himself basically their equal. If you recall, early on Atticus explains that the Irish gods weren’t really born as gods; they’re humans, sort of super-Druids, who got themselves deified. So why does Atticus, a person who knows this, worship some of them? He’s basically a god: he’s around the power level they are, except without the limitation that they’re less powerful in American than in Europe. And he has an amulet that defies the basic rules of magic. The difference is that he doesn’t have the name recognition. Why would he worship them? He knows that they’re not really divine and he can kill several of them any day of the week.

[This, in turn, sort of feeds into why I don’t like the whole idea of ‘gods exist because people believe in them’ trope that’s all too common; because the gods aren’t real. And so any religious person who discovers that he or she lives in a universe like that should reject that belief. If my belief is what makes a god, then it isn’t really a god, is it? It’s a thing we made.]

The point I’m making here is this: none of this adds up. Atticus should not be worshipping a being he knows for a fact is not divine. He should not have been horny just from Brighid’s appearance at her arrival even if she wasn’t a goddess he worshipped, but because she is it’s even more inappropriate and weird.

You might be wondering why Brighid is here, if it’s not to kill Atticus or sleep with him. It’s for the other reason characters appear in this book: to infodump! Basically, this is what she tells us:

Aenghus Og has been plotting to take over the Tuatha de Danann for some time now; Brighid thinks it’s part of an even bigger evil plan, but we don’t know what that is. It doesn’t really matter. So Aenghus has been grabbing as many magic weapons and pieces of armor as he can get his hands on. That armor that Bres was wearing? Brighid made it, because Bres, on Aenghus’s orders, asked her to make him some armor strong enough that the sword Fragarach couldn’t cut through it. She made some crappy armor for him, no questions asked, and Bres believed it and went and got killed. Which is fine with Brighid, because she doesn’t want to directly get involved with Aenghus’s people unless it’s absolutely necessary. Because… Reasons?

But hey, why kill Bres at all… ? I get that he’s a dick, and he’s apparently working for Aenghus, your enemy. If Bres has always been such a douchebag, why hasn’t she killed him before now? And why not capture him and interrogate him for what he knows? Even if he should have been killed, Atticus shouldn’t be the one to do it—having someone who is not a god killing a god, of your own pantheon, and one who is your spouse, sets a very bad precedent! You let a human kill your husband, Brighid! How does that look to the other gods?

[Oh and by the way, Aenghus and Brighid are brother and sister? Which isn’t really, like, shocking considering how mythology works, but I felt it could have been brought up instead of just casually mentioned without anyone commenting on it.]

The armor that Brighid’s wearing, on the other hand, actually was built to withstand Fragarach, but she doesn’t know for sure that it’ll work because it’s never been tested, and she has no intention of giving Aenghus the chance. That’s why Aenghus wants Fragarach specifically—to kill Brighid with.

Which is kind of dumb, if you think about it? Because hey, as we’ve learned from this book, the Tuatha de Danann are actually not immortal in this series. Which means that any method of killing her would work, but for whatever reason Aenghus decides it must be the sword. If he were really the scheming dickbag this book keeps trying to paint him as, who’d be willing to do anything to get what he wants, wouldn’t he just shoot her? Okay, maybe her armor is bulletproof, but there are plenty of other ways to kill people. Drowning. Poison. Strangulation. Poison gas. Grenades. Arguably maybe she could magic her way out of those too, but seeing as no one explains that, and we have yet to see how gods, Druids or faeries would deal with those things, I have no idea why Aenghus’s plot is so reliant on Fragarach.

This is a god who is willing to manipulate law enforcement, hire assassins both mortal and faerie, and you’re telling me that his plan of killing his sister, the queen of his nation, is entirely dependent on him getting a specific sword, and he can’t carry out his plan without it? Why the fudge not?

“I would never wield Fragarach against you.”

[…]

“I know that, Atticus. And I would rather Aenghus not wield it against me either.”

“I’d have to be dead first.”

“Precisely. I think you are fit to wield it

Wait a minute, back up! Why does she trust Atticus with the sword? Because he’s on her side? It didn’t stop him from killing Connie of the Hundred Battles’s men when they tried to take the sword from him and give it back to their king who dropped it. Atticus is not the last person you’d trust with the sword, but he’s pretty low on the list. He killed people on his own side because he got the magic cut-through-anything sword. That’s not exactly trustworthy.

He’s not fit to wield it! He doesn’t carry it because he’s worthy, or he went through some trials or quests or anything! The sword landed in front of him, and he picked it up! Then he ran ‘cause the Morrigan said so! That’s it! There is no good reason for him to have the sword!

Brighid tells Atticus that the police are being controlled by Aenghus, which is why they’re so interested in arresting him (WE KNOW THIS).

The police are now tools of the love god.

“They’re definitely tools,” I agreed.

ISN’T ATTICUS SO FUNNY GUYS? ISN’T HE SO WITTY AND HILARIOUS? ARE YOU LAUGHING YET?

She then tells him that the witch coven in town is also allied with Aenghus, and Atticus acts shocked because Malina just told him they weren’t! And I think we’re supposed to care which way the witches lean, and I just… don’t. I don’t care. Atticus points out that if they’re siding with him, it doesn’t make sense for one of them to order a potion that makes Aenghus impotent, which is what I said, but Brighid gives him the explanation he gave the audience earlier, that it gives Aenghus an excuse to go after Atticus and get the witches close to him. Which is stupid, because Aenghus doesn’t need an excuse to want to kill Atticus—he’s a god, and he’s been trying to kill him for over a thousand years. Why does he need to give himself impotence?

Atticus acts all outraged, because he has a symbol of Radomila’s blood, and the coven owes him a favor, so how could they double cross him like this? Brighid claims it’s because they’re not expecting him to be around to collect on the favor, and she hypothesizes that they’ll get travelling priveliges through Tir na nOg. Atticus gives “a low whistle” and says—

HANG ON A MINUTE. What is he feeling in this scene? Because he’s really agitated when he’s told the witches have double crossed him (despite him constantly telling us you can’t trust witches anyway so it’s not like he thought much of them to begin with), but now he gives a low whistle? It’s like he goes from being animatedly upset to just calmly interested. Pick a mood, man!

Anyhow, somehow being able to travel through Tir na nOg would make them a powerful coven, though why isn’t explained. Does it give them power? Does it connect to other places on Earth? I don’t know! And no one tells us!

Brighid keeps dumping info on our heads to tell us that Aenghus has definitely cut a deal with Fomorians and Fae, and that she suspects he’s made some deals with hell. And no, it’s not capitalized here despite it definitely talking about the Christian concept of Hell.

That could be a fairly huge problem. There were way more of them than me, and they wouldn’t listen to my lawyer.

LAUGH DAMNIT

What does the heck does Hell get out of this? Why are we bringing in yet another fantasy element to the Plot that doesn’t fit? Why would Lucifer make a deal with Aenghus Og? What could possibly be gained that’s worth the trouble?

Atticus asks what the other Irish gods think and who they’re siding with, and Brighid says most of them are with her, because, surprise! They don’t like the idea of Fomorians and demons in their yards! Which makes you wonder why Aenghus is doing any of this? Why does he want to rule a kingdom so badly that he’s willing make deals that none of his subjects will be happy with? I know that people do stupid shiz for power all the time, but there’s always a semblance of a reason. And this is fiction; it has to make more sense than real life. Once again, we’re being told that Aenghus Og is doing all this evil crap, but he’s given no motivation to do so!

Brighid asks him to join her side, and Atticus immediately agrees.

What moral dilemma was there? She wanted me to keep the sword; Aenghus wanted to take it. She liked me alive; Aenghus didn’t. She was hot; Aenghus was not.

You know, up until that last sentence I didn’t have a problem with this passage. Also when Brighid offers to reward him if he kills Aenghus Og we get this:

I have to admit that some of the warm fuzzies flew away right there. It made me feel like a mercenary.

Since when has Atticus cared about stuff like this? He’s always been a dick who’s willing to screw over anyone if it’s convenient. This was never a righteous cause kind of deal; look, on this same page he admitted that one of the reasons he picked Brighid over Aenghus is because she’s hotter! Even if he did care about morals, he’s constantly telling us that he’ll happily use sneaky and backhanded tactics to get what he wants because it’s more practical and keeps him alive. So why does he feel bad all of a sudden about mercenary work?

Brighid wants to give him a special kind of magic in case he runs into some demons, called Cold Fire, but she can’t give him the magic because of his special iron amulet. She asks about it, and he explains to her how he has this thing he made that defies the rules of magic but he has one because he’s just so OMG BRILLIANT, AMIRITE? It’s so brilliant guys, that Brighid, the goddess of crafting and queen of the Irish gods, thought it was impossible and hasn’t even tried it! She’s completely baffled by how this thing works! Isn’t Atticus so impressive?

Brighid asks how the amulet was made, and Atticus says he can’t tell her because it’s a secret because the Morrigan made him promise not to tell anyone else how it’s made as part of their deal—he’s only allowed to teach her, and that’s it. Atticus doesn’t tell Brighid about the Morrigan though, just that it’s a secret, but he encourages her that she’ll figure it out sooner or later, in a way that’s not at all condescending.

Nah that’s a lie, it’s super condescending.

So she gives him Cold Fire when he momentarily takes off the amulet, and it’s, like, this literal fire that’s cold? Like ice? It drains a lot more Mana than other spells, even if he’s touching the Earth at the time. It apparently only works on demons from Hell, and they must both be touching the Earth because… reasons.

And the magic word is “Doigh.” According to Wiktionary, as a verb it means “burn.” But if it’s cold, why would it do that? I don’t get it?

… you are all that is keeping Aenghus Og and his allies from moving openly against me.

Why? You’re the queen of a pantheon? Brighid has gods on her side, and she could easily get a bunch of mortal pawns on her side.

And then Brighid kisses him, tasting “of milk and honey and berries” and she leaves. How does she leave? [shrugs] I dunno. Hearne doesn’t tell me. He just puts in Oberon’s dialogue tag that he said his lines “once Brighid had left.” Considering her entrance was so big and flashy, you’d think it’d be worthwhile to describe how she exited the scene. But nope! Nothing.

Anyhow, Oberon says that since three goddesses have kissed Atticus, Oberon deserves his harem of three hundred poodles. Because… that’s funny, I guess? Our protagonist’s dog demanding that his sexual fantasies be fulfilled is meant to be cute or something. Look, I don’t care, but he does bring up that actual goddesses are showing up at his shop and house to make out with him, and this is meant to be amusing instead of stupid?

Join us next time as Atticus talks to cops again.

Comment [11]

Are you ready for more of Atticus “outwitting” the cops? No? Well too bad! Here’s Chapters 15 & 16! But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll tell you right now that someone will get shot.

Welcome to the opening paragraph!

I thought Sundays were supposed to be relaxing. As a male citizen of America, I’m entitled on Sundays to watch athletic men in tight uniforms ritualistically invade one another’s territory, and while they’re resting I get to be bombarded with commercials about trucks, pizza, beer, and financial services. That’s how it’s supposed to be; that’s the American dream.

I know this is a joke, so I won’t spend too much time on it, but it again highlights my problem with Atticus’s character: he doesn’t want anything. Atticus was just given a sacred mission by his goddess and he starts the next chapter telling us he’d rather be at home watching football. Can we petition for a new protagonist? One who actually wants to get off his butt every once in a while?

Also! Fun fact! Atticus isn’t an American citizen!

Wait, what?

…I’m not really a citizen of America. Mr. Semerdjian called the INS on me once, in fact. I waved my hand in front of the agents’ faces and said, “I’m not the Druid you’re looking for.” They were not amused. I waved my hand again and said, “Move along,” and they got out their handcuffs. That’s when I got out my slightly scuffed yet soigne illegal documents, prepared for me by Leif Helgarson, Bloodsucking Attorney-at-La. And after the INS agents went away, that’s when I sent Overon over to poop on Mr. Semerdjian’s lawn for the first time.

Yes apparently the first thing he did was use Star Wars references when the government came knocking at his door. Not once, but twice. Isn’t Atticus so funny? Isn’t he hilarious?

LAUGH DAMNIT

…why is he not a citizen? I know it’s probably easier all around, considering that because he can’t exactly submit a birth certificate, he’d have to submit fake papers sooner or later. I get it, I guess, and forging the papers makes things easier, but none of the reasons are gone into. Just like with the abusive father he mentioned earlier, it’s just dropped on us without a reason other than as a tangent in his rant about how Americans are lazy on Sunday.

This leads into how his feud with his neighbor started, and he keeps acting like it’s just a grumpy neighbor when it really reads as if Semerdjian is completely and totally correct in assuming that there’s something wrong with Atticus and he’s heroically trying to catch him on anything. It’s like, yeah, Al Capone did a lot more than tax evasion, but that’s what they nailed him on because that’s what they could find records of.

Also why is the Lebanese man the one freaking out about his Irish neighbor being an illegal immigrant? I don’t want to get anywhere near current events in the US about people being anti-immigrant, it’s just that this is not the way you’d usually expect these things to go.

Turned out he was just mean, and dog shit on his lawn turned him into Flibbertigibbet, a regular Lebanese Tom o’Bedlam.

Alright either go with modern expressions or old fashioned ones. Stop hopping back and forth between them. Also isn’t a Tom o’Bedlam a wandering crazy person? Mr. Semerdjian doesn’t wander around being crazy. He sits in his house terrified of his neighbor who gets up to no good with his godlike powers!

So Atticus is calling a contractor to fix the door Brighid melted through on her way in when the police roll up! Detective Jimenez (the Good Cop) and Detective Fagles (the Bad Cop) pop out of their cars along with way too many officers to be believable. Atticus hangs up and tells Oberon to hide invisibly while he deals with them. And then Atticus’s werewolf lawyer Hal Hauk arrives.

Hal slows down and bothers Fagles by explaining to the audience that the cops have already searched Atticus’s residence with a warrant, and the werewolf lawyer posted there has several complaints. Their warrant authorized them to search for the wolfhound that killed the park ranger, and they definitely went through a lot of places that a wolfhound wouldn’t fit, like “in a drawer or a dresser or in kitchen cupboards” so he’ll file a complaint and maybe try to sue the police department. This tips Atticus off to the fact that what they’re really looking for is Fragarach and most definitely working for Aenghus Og.

This has to be the tenth time the book has told us this, btw.

The cops deny anything like what Hal describes happened, and if it did it’s not like they could prove it! And then Hal’s all like, “Oh yeah, well my associate has VIDEO of your search on his phone!” which surprises the cops. And I understand that it’s not too hard to hide a camera phone if you’re standing in place, if he apparently wandered around following the cops while they searched the house it’s a bit stupid that they didn’t notice they were being filmed.

So Hal tells the cops that they will continue the search for a large dog, and only a large dog, and if they start poking through small cabinets or something, then he’ll sue you.

Fagles is not very happy about being made a fool of.

In Fagles’s defense, he didn’t know he was trying to play dominance games with a werewolf.

What the fudge does that have to do with anything? What does Hal being a werewolf has to do with his skills as a lawyer? They’re not playing dominance games, they’re arguing about laws! And I know that maybe, arguably, one person is “dominating” the other in this conversation but that has nothing to do with werewolves! It’s just… weird. I don’t want to hear about the lawyer having dominance over the Bad Cop, Hearne! That brings up uncomfortable mental images!

Atticus decides to look at Fagles with his Magic Vision, and he sees that a “band of green knotwork wreathed Fagles’s skull, almost like one of those Roman laurels. That was the primary method by which he was being controlled. But interlaced with those strands, I saw, were very fine blue and red threads.”

Basically: green knotwork around his head is mind control from Aenghus. The blue and red? He has no idea. But he can’t break the green binding without tripping those as well, and if he doesn’t know what those do it might be dangerous to do.

Fagles actually sees the sword. But that should be impossible, because Fragarach is magically cloaked. OHES NOES! Atticus deduces that the spellwork around Fagles’s head lets him see not through any glamour (as that way, he’d see through the cloaking on Oberon right away), but specifically the cloaking spell on Fragarach. But this means that he had help from the one who made the cloaking spell in the first place, and that was Radomila, the leader of the witch coven in town. Which means (GASP) that the witches are working with Aenghus!

Why are we acting like this is shocking? We’ve just been told this by Brighid.

I think what Hearne’s going for is that Atticus is undecided, because he has evidence that they’re not siding with Aenghus (like what Malina told him and… not much else) but he also has evidence that they are (Emilya’s subplot and Brighid’s exposition). It’s waffling back and forth, and Atticus doesn’t know for sure which it is. And like, okay, I get that. But the text acts like it’s a big reveal every time it comes up. Atticus will tell the reader something like “What? The witches are working against me?!” as if it’s a surprise when A) most of the evidence points that direction anyway and B) Atticus keeps telling Oberon and the audience that witches cannot be trusted.

Of course, if he had half a brain, Atticus might come up with a hypothesis that fits the facts, like, say, “Some of the witches are working for Aenghus and some of them aren’t,” which is what ends up being the case, but Atticus doesn’t have half a brain so we’re left with this waffling back and forth.

Anyhow, Fagles freaks out about the sword, but Hal tells him it’s not the dog so he has no reason to pay it attention. Fagles insists that it’s a concealed weapon, and that needs a permit. Hal, who has started filming this exchange with his phone, points out that a sword isn’t a concealed weapon and so it doesn’t require a permit.

Whoa. That’s why Hal gets $350 an hour. Quoting Arizona statutes, complete with their soul-destroying legalistic sentence structure? That’s Druidic.

Except… it’s really not. Considering earlier Atticus tells the audience that he practices sword fighting with the werewolves and his vampire lawyer, and they live in a college town, this probably comes up a lot. In any case, it’s not an obscure thing you couldn’t find on Wikipedia. I basically found the same information in high school when I was looking up whether it was legal to own a switchblade in my state. My point is this: while Hal’s being a good lawyer here, it’s not super impressive that he knows this off the top of his head.

Atticus decides that the blue magic around Fagles’s head is what allows him to see through the sword’s cloaking spell. So he decides he’s going to break that spell. He doesn’t know for sure, mind you, and that will also break the green and red bands, and he also has no idea what that’ll do to Fagles. But he’s going to do it anyway. Why?

It was one of those decisions you make when you have too much testosterone bubbling around in your system, or when you’ve been raised in a culture of ridiculous machismo, as I was.

[throws up hands]

What am I supposed to do with this?

“Yeah, it was a stupid decision, but I make stupid decisions a lot because I was raised to be a macho man .”

For starters, this isn’t out of character in the least. Atticus does stupid things without thought all the time. You remember when he went hunting with Flidais, the goddess who has control over animals, with his dog? And he turned into a dog while doing it? And when the hunt started he felt some magic being worked, but he ignored it because Reasons.

Atticus doesn’t think much about anything he does. He’s working entirely on impulse, and while some of his moment-to-moment impulses are handy, like defending himself in a fight, mostly they’re not, because he keeps making terrible decisions, like hunting with Flidais, or killing Bres, or not skipping town the moment he heard that Aenghus Og was rolling in for his head.

And part of what makes this so infuriating is that the book insists that Atticus isn’t like this. Over and over again we’re told that he’s really careful and paranoid and clever. Hal calls him the most paranoid person he’s ever met. Atticus mentions how paranoid he is all the time. Every time he makes a stupid decision, the other characters excuse it as being a good decision so that he doesn’t have to face consequences, just so we can hear how clever and smart and handsome Atticus is.

And now this is thrown at us, where Atticus tells us, “Yeah, it was a dumb decision, but I do that all the time because of my upbringing.”

This reminds me of the bit in Angelopolis (never a good sign) where Valko decides to release the Watchers. It’s a terrible decision, and there’s no reason for him to do it other than Plot. When his coworkers call him out on it, he just responds with “Yeah, it’s dangerous, but we do dangerous stuff in our everyday work. Now let’s do this!” And of course Valko gets killed soon afterward.

Except Atticus won’t get killed because he’s a Mary Sue and I hate him! Here he is, after telling us the entire book that he’s oh-so-smart, informing us that he just makes dumb decisions all the time. No it’s not quite as bad as the Angelopolis example is, because let’s be real, very little is as bad as Angelopolis (ONE OF THE VILLAINS EATS PENISES AS HER SCHTICK) because this has some buildup, but it’s not very good.

So, using his magicks, Atticus breaks the spell around Fagles’s head. And it basically blows back and hits everyone in the head.

…definitely a trap, the concussive sort. I felt a whump against my face, like getting hit unexpectedly full force with a pillow, and I saw Hal’s head snap back abruptly. He fell over backward, snarling in surprise. Fagles yelped and grabbed at his head, and then as Hal and I were recover—Hal fed-faced and eyes a bit yellow, his wolf close to the surface—Fagles went completely batshit and drew his gun on me.

So this makes Fagles even more angry because he’s convinced that Atticus hit him, despite not being next to him. The way it’s phrased, “Fagles went completely batshit” is meant to make Fagles sound like he’s an unreasonable douche who just snapped. And he is unreasonable, and a douche, yeah, but let’s look at his point of view: he knows Atticus is a villain, he knows he has what he’s looking for, and then he just gets whacked in the head by a mysterious force in his shop? Of course the guy’s going over the edge.

Also, Atticus’s lawyer’s about to wolf out. Apparently the blast of this magic blast was mitigated, somewhat, by the magic wards on the shop, and the blast didn’t bother Atticus as much because he’s got his super special awesome mega kewl chocolatey-covered amulet that has more powers than Mulch Diggums.

Fagles is freaking out, which again makes sense considering his grip on reality is unravelling right before his eyes, and though he insists that Atticus hit him Hal says that the security cameras will prove that he didn’t. But they’d probably also show Atticus doing something wouldn’t they? The breaking of spell is described as “the gentlest of mental tugs” but are you telling me there are no accompanying hand gestures? If nothing else, he’s staring at Fagles’s head when it happens.

Hal tries to calm down Fagles and get him to put down the gun. But on top of everything, Fagles can no longer see Fragarach, so he starts freaking out and yelling about the sword. This isn’t helped by Atticus going “What sword?” and pretending that the sword was never there to begin with. And since Fagles was the only one that could see it, no one could back up his claim that there was a sword there. Hal points out that he only argued with Fagles about the sword because as a lawyer, that’s his job, but from his position he can’t see the sword or the position it’s meant to be in.

Oberon gives us this:

I think his panties are getting twisted.

Tee-hee, a detective is being driven to homicidal insanity and is waving a gun around! Isn’t it hilarious?

LAUGH DAMNIT

[I should make that a count.]

The other detective, Jimenez, puts away his weapon, and all the cops except for Fagles chillax. Fagles is still upset about something hitting him in the head. Hal suggests that it was “a freak gust of wind,” as if that makes any sense.

Detective Jimenez basically says “Well the dog’s not here, let’s pack it up boys!”

Fagles gritted his teeth in frustration, and the green wreath around his head flared menacingly. And that’s when he shot me.

This would be cathartic if I actually thought this would be a threat to Atticus. But since we know that since Chapter 2, he’s been made mostly immune to death.

Chapter 16!

You know that old saw about your life flashing before your eyes at the moment of death?

Except we know that you’re not dead, so shut up.

The first thing I thought was, “Oh no! I’ve been shot!” in the immortal words of the golden protocol droid when he got lased with special effects in a mining colony.

A public service announcement from your not-so-friendly neighborhood sporker: pop culture references are not jokes. Just because you referenced Star Wars two chapters in a row, that doesn’t mean you’re clever. It doesn’t even mean you’re a nerd. Please stop.

There’s some more talk about him getting a highlight reel of his life in his head. Shortly afterward, Oberon telepathically freaks out, and Atticus assures him that he’s fine.

All the other police officers pull their guns on Fagles, because he just shot Atticus. Fagles is losing his mind, because he didn’t mean to do this; he was basically being controlled by Aenghus in that moment to shoot Atticus. But he can’t exactly say “An Irish god made me do it,” and I don’t know how aware he is of how he’s being used. So he doesn’t know what to say other than that a voice in his head told him to shoot Atticus and take the sword, which Hal keeps denying exists.

“There was someone in my mind. Telling me what to do. He wanted the sword.”

Which makes me question: why didn’t Aenghus do this before? Chapter 5 indicates that this is a thing that the Irish gods can do, just popping into someone’s head to tell them to do something. Here he seemingly enthralls Fagles, or at least pressures him into doing it. So if Aenghus can just find people with guns, and talk them into shooting Atticus… why didn’t he do that? It’s a bit late now, considering that Atticus is immune to death and all, but Aenghus has had over two thousand years to pop a cap in Atticus this way. All he had to do is grab a few guys with machine guns and give Atticus some lead injections! BOOM! Problem solved!

We’re meant to think that Aenghus has this elaborate plan to ruin Atticus before killing him, but that falls apart once this incident happens, because here Aenghus has his agent try to execute Atticus the second he knows where the sword is. We’re meant to believe that Aenghus had the option of more or less possessing a minion to assassinate someone this entire time, but he’s only used it now in circumstances that wouldn’t have worked.

Weirdly though, Atticus actually doesn’t have any healing power on him; despite no indication until now, he says that he’d worn out all the extra backup power in his amulet with camouflage and breaking the spell on Fagles’s head (yet another reason it was a dumb idea to do it in the first place). As long as he touches the Earth, he’ll be good, but that’s going to be difficult with the police here as he’s got to react like a man that’s just been shot.

Fagles insists he didn’t do it, but Good Cop Jimenez points out that, uh, he kinda did, as far as they can tell, and there’s a security camera and a lawyer so there’s no way this goes well for Fagles. Fagles actually begins crying, insisting that he wouldn’t do it, but Jimenez reminds him that they all saw him, and tells him to put down the gun. This jars Fagles into being defiant, and he decides that he’d rather go down fighting than go to prison, I guess?

“Oh, you’re going to shoot me, are you?” he sneered, and then he became unhinged. “Well, that’s better than going to prison! And even better than that would be taking you with me!”

We’ve never been given any indication that Fagles really hates Jimenez, by the way. He just decides he’ll happily die if he can take Jimenez with him.

So, uh… Fagles screams and raises his gun, and all the other cops shoot him. He’s dead now, I guess. This is confirmed later when Hal “sidestepped…over the body of Detective Fagles” so he’s really dead.

Okay then.

And again, this whole thing with Fagles? It’s really dark, yeah? A man being driven insane by having himself dragged into some immortal feud he knows nothing about? Atticus himself gives a “Poor Fagles.” This whole thing isn’t played for laughs, and I have to give Hearne minimum credit for that. But again, this is something very heavy and the book isn’t giving it that much time to develop in order to treat it with the weight that it should have. The other cops act more worried about getting in trouble than they do about shooting a coworker.

Jimenez asks that they call the paramedics. Hal checks on Atticus, who tells him he needs to get outside to touch some ground, or his lung will keep filling with blood. Hal tells Jimenez that they need to get Atticus outside because “He needs air.” but Jimenez points out that he should probably stay put until the medics arrive. Hal just picks him up and…

…and he hooked an arm under my shoulders and knees and scooped me up as effortlessly as he would an Italian runway model. Silly cop, I don’t need your help; I have a werewolf on retainer.

That’s… a weird and oddly specific simile? Are Italian runway models easy to pick up?

Hal puts him outside so he draw on the Earth Power to heal himself. He tells Hal to get the sword to him, and that he needs to clean up all the blood in case the witches come by and do something with it. That includes the blood that’s on Hal’s suit. Hal protests that the suit costs three thousand dollars, but Atticus assures him that he’ll cover it.

Yeah, Atticus can just throw out three thousand dollars?. But his neighbor’s suspicious of him because he’s just a jerk. Right.

Atticus also tells Hal to take care of his dog, and let him ride home with him in his Beemer. Hal agrees, but also says that Oberon better not do anything to his leather seats.

“Sybarite,” I said.

“Ascetic,” he retorted, and he got up to go open his car door.

Atticus owns his own shop, sells antique books, lives in a nice house in the suburbs where he regularly entertains women, and can throw out three thousand dollars with barely any notice. That’s not remotely ascetic. Like, I know that this is probably meant as a joke between friends, but considering how often the book tells us that Atticus is paranoid and clever and down-to-Earth, I feel the need to counter this.

Atticus instructs Oberon to go with Hal for the night; he has to be taken to the hospital because, healing or no, they have to remove the fluid from his lungs. I would say this actually makes sense and give credit to Hearne for thinking this one out, but then Oberon agrees to the plan as long as he gets a date with a French poodle, and I’m reminded of the dog’s poodle fetish. You ruined it, Hearne.

Then Perry, Atticus’s goth (or possibly Goth) employee, who just now got back. When he last was here, he was worried about the giant bird that was the Morrigan, so he says

“Holy shit, boss!” he said. “Did that big fucking bird do all of this?”

Tee-hee, isn’t this book hilarious?

…

LAUGH DAMNIT

Comment [13]

Do you ever read a book, and think to yourself, “You know, this protagonist is an awful person, but he needs a bit more umph to push him into full-on supervillain territory. It’s not enough that he sells drugs to college kids, pals around with serial killers, kills people who happen to be in his way, manipulates his friends, and never takes responsibility for his actions. What he and his friends need is some good ol’ fashioned money-grubbing corruption proving that they love money more than humanity!”?

No? Never thought that? Not even once?

Well too bad! This is Hounded Chapter 17!

Atticus tells Perry, his goth store employee, that he’ll explain everything later, but for the time being to run the shop and brew the pre-made tea satchels for Emilya when she arrives the next day for her potion. He also tells him not to tell Emilya or any one else what happened at the store that day, anything at all, even if it’s to talk about the weather. He says he’ll be back in a few days. Perry thinks this is weird because he can see a bullet hole in Atticus’s shirt, thinking that Atticus will, in a best-case scenario, be in the hospital for weeks.

As the Black Knight famously said, that’s just a flesh wound.”

“The Black Knight always triumphs!” Perry beamed. Monty Python is like catnip for nerds. Once you get them started quoting it, they are constitutionally incapable of feeling depressed.

You know I kind of hate Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Alright that’s not fair, I don’t hate it. I hate that reciting is considered humor for a lot of people. I never watched it growing up; weirdly a Puerto Rican family never saw much sense in idolizing a movie by an English comedy troupe. And I hate that I can’t watch it now because it’s just… not… funny? At least, not anymore. Not because there’s anything wrong with the humor, or I’ve grown too old for it, but it’s just that I know all the jokes, because morons like this keep reciting them so that none of it humors me. That’s what happens when you tell the same jokes over and over again!

A few years ago there was a local production of Spamalot and I went to see it because I was curious and I just didn’t find it that funny, aside from the bits that I hadn’t heard a hundred times over, which were mostly the bits added specifically for the stage play. And I felt bad, because this is one of the staples of nerd culture, and I didn’t have that much fun watching it!

But even moving away from my personal issues with Holy Grail we must confront the fact of it that this is stupid! Just because Atticus quotes the Black Knight, Perry forgets that his boss has been shot! If you are not a young adult, imagine that you are for a second, and you come back from lunch to find that the man who pays your bills has been shot by a policeman. No amount of quotes from your favorite movie is going to make you forget that!

Do we take a shot for a “nerd reference”? I don’t know anymore. I don’t have enough apple juice for this book anyway. In any case, this is stupid, and it’s not even a joke, it’s a reference. Skin Game has a Holy Grail reference that’s actually a joke, but this is just “Hey, nerds love Monty Python!” Okay… and? Atticus has still been shot!

Atticus puts Perry in charge of the shop for now, and also tells him to do anything Hal tells him. He then introduces Hal to Perry, and then when Hal takes Perry back inside the shop, Atticus talks to Oberon for a bit and then works on Fragarach. See, he doesn’t want to let the sword out of his sight right now, so he’s planning on taking it with him on the ambulance. But he doesn’t want someone to freak out if he or she bumps into it, so he removes the magic camouflage. He then puts a binding on the sheath so that it doesn’t move more than five feet away from him.

When the paramedics arrive, Hal instructs them to take Atticus to Scottsdale Memorial Hospital, so that his personal doctor can take care of him. Atticus then explains to the audience that he doesn’t have a personal doctor, but the werewolves have one named Dr. Snorri Jodursson that is a member of their pack and also the doctor for the supernaturals in the area.

He was also willing to do things off the books; he had a whole surgical team who would work off record for obscene amounts of cash.

Ah yes, an easily bought medical team in your pocket! I see absolutely nothing wrong with that, do you? Hearne keeps fleshing out the supernatural world of this series in the most horrifying way possible without even thinking about it. Not like in a “here’s some monsters that kill people” sort of way, but in a “Hey, me and my supernatural friends, one of whom is a serial killer, have an army of lawyers and doctors who are bought and paid for, and a clean up crew to dispose of any bodies!” sort of way.

Imagine, if you will, if this werewolf doctor decided he wanted a patient dead? His crew could easily make the death look like a surgical accident and then feed the body to ghouls. And someone cries foul? Well he’s got a bunch of werewolf lawyers on hand to prevent that from ever being proven!

Hooray?

A paramedic walks up and naturally, he’s confused because Atticus is supposed to have been shot but seems fine enough. Atticus explains that he’s stable, but there’s fluid in his lungs and he needs to get to his doctor. The paramedic then asks, if he’s been shot, where’s the bullet hole? Yup, Atticus didn’t consider while healing himself and waiting for the ambulance that the paramedics might have a lot of questions about a man who got shot ten minutes ago but doesn’t have a wound on his body at all.

Atticus tries to lie and say that he was shot with a rubber bullet that caused internal bleeding, but the paramedic points out that detectives don’t carry rubber bullets, and even if they did, it wouldn’t make his lungs fill with fluid.

“Tell you what, sport. Put me on a stretcher and get me to my doctor and let him worry about it.”

Yeah, that’s not fishy at all, is it? The paramedic is astounded that this man is claiming his bullet wound healed so fast, but Atticus tells him that he’s going to get to the doctor and everything will be fine. Also his sword is coming too. This gives the paramedic some pause, but Atticus insists that it’s really valuable so he can’t leave it in his shop. Hal scoots over and threatens to sue the paramedic for not transporting his client, because he’s a one trick pony and really likes sueing people I guess. The paramedic points out that the sword is the point of contention but Hal says it’s a family heirloom and being separated from it would cause Atticus emotional trauma. So after Hal bullies the paramedic enough, he takes Atticus into the ambulance. Hal then promises that his vampire coworker Leif will go visit the paramedics tonight and mind rape them so that they don’t remember anything.

Atticus gets bored, so he decides to use his magic to give the paramedic a wedgie.

No, really.

Using a bit of power recently banked in my bear charm, I bound a few of the natural threads in the elastic band of his underwear to the fine hairs in the center of his back about five inches up. The result was an instant wedgie.

Ladies and gentleman, our protagonist!

This magic apparently fits under the category of “binding” but I don’t know how.

Also, hey! The bear charm on his amulet, the reserve of magical power? It’s already started recharging! You remember why it was uncharged? Because he kept using his power for fights and breaking spells and such. You’d think that if he was “Oh So Paranoid” (that should be a count too), upon getting that magical store of energy back, he’d save it for when he actually needs it? But nope! He just uses it to give the paramedic a wedgie!

And this?

Those have been funny for two thousand years, but they’re even more hilarious when your victim is sanctimoniously trying to behave like he knows more than you.

The paramedic was not “sanctimoniously trying to behave like knows more than you” at all! He was acting like a rational individual who knows how to do his job! He shows up at a location where a police officer has been shot, expecting to find someone else with a bullet wound, and instead finds a young man who not only doesn’t have a gunshot wound, but seems perfectly calm. In fact, he’s more than calm; he, the college-aged owner of a New Age shop, is telling a medical professional how to do his job, and blatantly lying to his face about his condition and what happened and refuses to tell the truth when called out on it. Then that man demands that he takes a sword with him, and his lawyer threatens to sue if he doesn’t get to do it.

I repeat, a man who is supposed to have been shot, at the site of a police officer having been killed, is actually fine, he lies to the paramedics and then demands to take a bladed weapon with him into the ambulance but the bad guy here is the paramedic because he doesn’t bend over backwards to do what Atticus orders him to.

This wedgie, which leads to “a girlish squeal followed by a high-octave “Ahh! What the fuck?!?” and an abrupt attempt to stand up, which cracked his head on the ceiling” —

[puts down book]

Alright, Hearne? This is the kind of comedy a middle schooler would come up with. And it’s only a middle schooler who would find it funny.

[picks up book again]

Moving on.

Atticus admits that he shouldn’t have done it, because he starts laughing at this and it causes him pain. When they get to the hospital, he’s loaded off of the ambulance, and the driver comes to help him out. He asks what happened, and the paramedic says nothing’s wrong with him, so Atticus gives him another wedgie—

[puts down book]

Really Hearne? Really? Another one? Are you done?

[picks up book again]

So the werewolf doctor, Snorri Jodursson, arrives and we get a description of him. We’re given another reminder that Thor is a jerkface because Atticus thinks “His sharp nose and chiseled jaw made him look like a thunder god”. He also says that the doctor’s hair looks like a frat boy douchebag’s, as if I didn’t have enough reason to hate this guy. Of course he doesn’t say any of this aloud, because Atticus, contrary to all the evidence we’ve seen, does actually have some common sense. Not much though.

The doctor assures Atticus that everyone around them is on his payroll, so Atticus can tell the truth and not get any trouble for it. Jodursson tells him they’re going to withdraw the fluid from his lungs, and offers to take an X-ray because the cops tend to want those, but Atticus refuses because he’s already healed himself, so those X-rays wouldn’t look right anyhow. The doctor is a bit annoyed by this, but Atticus is basically like “Well I’m paying you a fortune anyhow so just lie to the cops like a good boy, okay?”

“Well, you’re going to charge me thousands for chest bandages I’ll never use, so I figure we’re even. You and your team will just have to lie convincingly on the stand when you get called up.”

See? Told you.

Atticus tells Jodursson that he’s planning on sueing the cops, not because he feels wronged or anything, but because he doesn’t feel like paying for the hospital bills. And since he’s got a big fancy law firm on his side, he’ll probably win. Jodursson decides he’ll pad the bill just to make the cops pay more.

“You’re the reason we need health care reform, you know.”

I AM TRYING. SO HARD. TO NOT LET THIS SPORKING SLIP INTO POLITICS. AND YOU KEEP DROPPING S*** LIKE THIS, HEARNE. FIRST THE IMMIGRATION, AND NOW THIS!

YOU! IN THE COMMENTS! DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!

[leaves and comes back with a tall glass of apple juice]

Once again! Our protagonist and his friends! Whatever you think of the police, I don’t think we can paint Atticus’s plan here as anything other than villainous. He’s planning on suing the police department, a public service funded by the city government, just to pay his fraudulent medical bills, which the doctor will artificially inflate to fill his own pockets. Atticus is almost literally stealing people’s tax money. At the very least, any public works, buildings or programs that the city’s planning are going to take huge dents in their budgets, because Atticus is taking away their money. Our protagonist and his friends are almost textbook examples of some of the worst types of corruption, and the book’s like, “Tee-hee! Isn’t this hilarious that he’s showing those stupid cops what’s what?”

NO. NO IT’S NOT.

Oh yeah, and then Jodursson points out that he’s going to need to be paid more for “hush money.” Look, anyone who is described as having had his or her “grin returned” when the topic of being paid hush money comes up is nothing but a villain.

Atticus urges the doctor to rush this, and so he’s rolled out in a wheelchair by nightfall. They go out the side door to avoid people in recovery, but Detective Jimenez is out there waiting. He points out that Atticus is in really good shape for having been shot that very day and asks for a statement. Atticus tells him he was shot, that Jimenez saved him, and he’s planning to sue the city for millions of dollars.

Then Jimenez notices the sword. Remember, right now the sword is enchanted to not move farther than five feet from him. So of course the detective sees it. Atticus points out that he’s sounding a lot like Fagles when he was supposed to be looking for a dog, and Jimenez shoots back with “If that sword was taken from the crime scene, then it shouldn’t be with you.” Atticus just claims that it’s a coincidence and Jimenez can’t prove it’s the same sword that Fagles claimed to have seen in the store.

See, this is part of what annoys me—this is so obvious? Atticus is practically screaming “I’m up to something illegal!” and the book’s treating him like he’s clever for back-talking cops. Except they’re making really good points, and he’s willing to steal money from the city government so he doesn’t have to pay hospital bills he wouldn’t have to pay if he wasn’t an idiot!

Jimenez tries questioning Jodursson, but he’s deflected and told that he’ll get more information when the report’s done. Atticus has the doctor push his wheelchair to a private spot so he could cast camouflage on himself and sneak away. But Jimenez follows them and calls the police station for a car. So Jodursson just goes faster and Atticus gets away anyway? Look, I stopped caring. The rest of the chapter is Atticus ranting about how he’s going to proceed.

If I continued to let Aenghus test my defenses and provide him with a stationary target, eventually he would find a way to break me—especially with a coven of witches backing him up. So it was time to change the game somehow, and I had two choices: run like hell or fight like hell.

Yes, that’s right! It’s seventeen chapters into this book, and our protagonist is finally like, “You know, I should actively do something about the Plot, shouldn’t I?”

Atticus explains that he doesn’t want to run, because he’s done that for two thousand years, and also because he feels honor bound because he promised Brighid that he will fight Aenghus, and despite spending most of the book claiming up and down that honor is stupid and useless and will get you killed compared to hard and cold practicality, this is now something he cares about. For Reasons. There’s also pride, because Atticus doesn’t like the idea of running away from the witches in town because witches are lame, man!

My ego didn’t want to let a bunch of Polish witches less than half my age get away with bearding me in my own den.

Yeah, stupid witches! They’re lame and younger than him, and… wait, wasn’t part of the reason he hates them because they’re physically older than he is? Look, I know they’re both older and younger than him, but pick the beef he has with them and stick with it, Hearne.

So Atticus is going to “fight like hell” and he tells us that it’s “about time” because he “had managed to out-dither Hamlet” and he quotes Hamlet to show us he’s smart, or something.

Have I mentioned how much I hate that Atticus is a Shakespeare nut? Not like in a “I like his plays” way, but apparently has all of Shakespeare memorized? Because it doesn’t make sense. It just reads like another way to show us that Atticus is brilliant, despite there being no reason that Atticus should know the Bard by heart. Why Shakespeare? Why not, say, an Irish playwright or author? Why not Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw? I’ll tell you why—because according to pop culture, smart people love Shakespeare, and despite all evidence to the opposite, Hearne is still trying to convince us that Atticus is the smartest smart person.

And so our chapter ends with this:

If he’d been free to follow the dictates of his conscience rather than the pen of Shakespeare, perhaps he would have abandoned verse altogether, like me, and contented himself with this instead: “Bring it, muthafuckas. Bring it.”

This is what passes for wit in this book.

What am I supposed to do with this, exactly? I can’t really analyze it, because there’s nothing to analyze. It’s just another juvenile attempt to be funny. It’s another of those “The kids these days say this!” from Atticus, despite the fact that no one would ever say this in anything other than in parody of what a badass would sound like.

You know, someone in the comments for one of the early chapters mentioned that in some ways Hounded feels like someone’s doing a bad attempt at something like Percy Jackson and the Olympians but for adults. Like, mythology in modern day mixed with pop culture, but with sex and swearing and violence to make it “mature.” And yeah, I see it. Because there’s a lot of stupidity in this book I’d excuse more if it the audience was middle schoolers. Except it’s not written for middle schoolers, despite Atticus spouting jokes that only a middle schooler or high schooler would find funny.

Nobody talks like this! It just sounds stupid from Atticus’s mouth! It’s not funny! It’s not clever! I’d say it’s a poorly-worded expression of what Atticus should have been thinking this entire book, but it’s not even that! “Bring it”? Idiot, Aenghus Og has been “bringing it” the entire story! You’ve just been sitting on your butt the entire time not doing jack squat! Stop throwing this crap in my face, Atticus, and act like an actual likable protagonist!

…I’m okay. I … I needed a second.

Are you curious what’s up with the hawt Irish bartender? ‘Cause that’s what we find out in the next couple of chapters. I’m sure there’ll be something else to make me mad. But I need a break for now.

Comment [7]

Just as a reminder: I have a Tumblr friend doing a sporking of the Tiger’s Curse series that you can find here.

I had every intention of making this update sooner, but I had to take a break from Hearne, guys. After Hearne published an actual serious fantasy novel, I saw that he had teamed up with another author (Delilah S. Dawson) to make a parody fantasy series, and I thought to myself, “Hey, maybe Hearne’s actually gotten better! Maybe he’s become an okay author! I’ll check out this parody fantasy book he co-authored.” So I picked up Kill the Farm Boy!

It’s, uh… it’s not good.

To be fair, it reads a little better than Hounded by virtue of the protagonists not being Atticus, but overall it’s still the same crude stupid humor but dialed up to eleven, the authors keep vomitting jokes until they lose any semblance of being funny, and once again the characters wandered aimlessly without a real Plot to sustain them. What retroactively made it a bizarre novel was that in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book, the authors claimed that the point of the novel was to write a book that subverted the white male power fantasy that pervades genre fiction.

Yes, the man who wrote The Iron Druid Chronicles, a series about a white man who so much more handsome, powerful and clever than anyone else because the book tells us so, who gets everything he wants handed to him on a platter, who regularly makes out with goddesses, yeah, the author who wrote that… says he has a problem with white male power fantasy in the genre fiction.

[makes muffled angry noises into a pillow]

There’s a dissertation about the hypocrisy here floating around in my brain somewhere, but it probably can’t be written because I can’t seem to finish a serious project for the life of me.

What were we talking about here again?

“Bring it, muthafuckas. Bring it.”

Oh. Right.

The previous chapter has Atticus declare he’s going to take a more active role in the Plot, in order to avoid getting sucker punched by Aenghus Og’s plans when he’s not looking. Which sounds promising, as he should have been doing this since the first chapter. But what does he do after making this declaration that he’s finally going to care about the Plot?

If you guessed ‘Not care about the Plot,’ then congratulations, you go get yourself a cookie.

I awoke in the morning remarkably refreshed but with urgent pressure on my bladder. After relieving myself on the oak tree—out of sight of the few people strolling through the park—I took a deep breath, and it felt remarkably good.

Look at that Plot picking up pace, and that protagonist who decides to take things into his hands, stepping into the action and, uh… [checks card] peeing on a tree in a public park?

Yeah, no. That whole business at the end of the last chapter about actually giving a shirt about the Plot? That’s a lie. Atticus went to sleep in the park, and this chapter he goes home, visits his neighbor and sits and catches her up on everything that’s happened, and then goes to the Irish bar in town to talk to his lawyer. And then he gets a conversation with the bartender about what her deal is. The next two chapters after this one deal with that.

That hardly sounds like the Plot is picking up, does it?

The earth was so good to me, so giving and so kind.

Ah, no Atticus. That’s not the planet being so kind to you, that’s the author.

Shouldn’t that be a capital ‘E’ on Earth? Since he’s referring to it as an entity of a sort?

Right so he wakes up at 10 AM, and deciding that it’s time enough to meet his lawyer for lunch at the Irish bar. He checks his phone’s messages, and he’s got ones from just about every other male character:

-Hal to complain about how Oberon won’t stop eating, and also killed the air freshner in his car.

-Snorri to thank Atticus for giving him tons of money for being a corrupt douchebag.

-The cops for more questioning. Atticus ignores those messages.

-Perry to let Atticus know that the shop door had been replaced (in less than a day???) and that Malina had come by and told him the contract for that impotence potion with Emilya is considered fulfilled and he doesn’t have to make more.

Malina also asked Perry to find “a letter from Radomila” in the shop, which Atticus takes to mean the blood sample of Radomila’s that he has on a piece of paper. Perry doesn’t find it, because while Atticus is stupid, he’s not so stupid that he leaves that lying around his shop. He does begin to wonder if the cops picked it up when they rifled through his house, as it’s not like the lawyer present would have known what it was. Still, instead of checking on that ASAP, Atticus decides it’s “Better to save such questions for Hal at Rula Bula,” again proving that he’s a bloody moron.

Reminder, in case you forgot: Atticus and Radomila did favors for each other (Atticus got her an amulet from a shipwreck, and she did a cloaking spell on the magic sword), and in exchange they gave each other blood samples as insurance to make sure they never turned on each other. Blood samples can be used for some dangerous blood magic and do all kinds of nasty stuff to each other. And now he thinks that Radomila turned against him, and maybe, just maybe she got that sample back so that he couldn’t use the greatest weapon against her. And instead of going to his house, making sure that the blood sample is exactly where it’s supposed to be, he’s like, “Meh, I’ll just wait until lunch to ask my lawyer, who may or may not have noticed it being taken in the first place.”

Isn’t Atticus so paranoid, guys?

What makes this worse is that not only does he not go to his own house, he goes to the Leprechaun’s house. He says it’s because he assumes that his house and shop are being watched, but somehow Atticus doesn’t think that taking a taxi to, say, his next door neighbor’s house or his favorite bar that he regularly visits would raise any flags with the cops or the forces of evil.

“Ah, Atticus, me lad!” The widow smiled a cheery greeting and raised her morning glass of whiskey at me from the porch. “What happened to yer bicycle that yer drivin’ up to me door in a taxi?”

At this point I’m quoting her dialogue in these sporkings because this book makes me spiteful of the fact I’m still breathing and I take it out on all of you.

So Atticus, the “paranoid” individual he is, suspicious that his house might be watched by his enemies, sits on the front porch of his next door neighbor and tells her about his misadventures the previous day.

This conversation—

I’ll be gettin’ meself a refill if y’wouldn’t mind sittin’ fer a spell.”

[deep breath]

Okay, sorry, the Accent just makes me mad. So Atticus—

“Ye’ll be takin’ a glass with me, won’t ye? ‘Tisn’t Sunday anymore, and I can’t imagine ye objectin’ to a cold handful of Tullamore Dew.”

[another deep breath]

Yes, right, after all of this, the Irish Accent and Atticus talk about—

“Yer a fine lad, Atticus, drinkin’ whiskey with a widow on a Monday.”

STOP IT! STOP IT THIS INSTANT, HEARNE! STOP FEEDING ME DOG**** AND TELLING ME TO LIKE IT! THIS IS JUST A STUPID CARICATURE OF A CARICATURE AND I HATE IT! I HATE THE LEPRECHAUN AND I HATE HER ACCENT AND I HATE THIS STUPID BOOK!

[ahem]

But like… you guys see this, right? I’m not exaggerating when I tell you about this stupid accent! Nobody talks like this! The Lucky Charms mascot would be offended by this accent! It’s so bafflingly stupid, I can’t imagine how this got past the first draft of this book!

I really did enjoy her company. And I knew too well the loneliness that clamps around one’s heart when loved ones have passed on before. To have that companionship, the comfort of someone being at home for you for years, and then suddenly not to have it anymore—well, every day can seem darker after that, and the vise clutches tighter in your chest every night you spend in a lonely bed. Unless you find someone to spend some time with (and that time is sunlight, golden minutes when you forget you’re alone), that vise will eventually crush your heart. My deal with the Morrigan aside, it’s other people who have kept me alive so long—and I include Oberon in that. Other people in my life right now, who help me forget all the other people I have buried or lost: They are truly magic for me.

What is this?

No, seriously, Hearne, what is this? What is this nonsense? I know that stories about immortals often have this motif of the immortal in question lamenting the people they’ve outlived. But we are eighteen chapters into this book, and only now is this being brought up. It’s not quite as bad as that time when Atticus mentions that his father was abusive, because that was wrapped up in a joke about how he cries every time he watches Field of Dreams. But this isn’t great, because it’s a monologue right the fudge out of nowhere about how sad he is about loved ones who have died in the past.

Here’s the thing though: we don’t care.

Look, this very easily could have been a good character moment for Atticus, but it’s all too little, too late. We’re told he’s the last Druid on the planet, and yet at no point does this fact make him feel especially lonely or sad or any emotion at all. We’ve gotten no indication that he’s particularly lonesome. Look, I don’t know if Atticus really has any friends other than the Leprechaun and Oberon. Hal and Leif, and the wolf pack, I suppose, but they’re also his lawyers, and Leif is addicted to his blood, so I don’t know if that really counts. The witches are the closest thing he has to people who have any idea what it’s like to be him, being older-than-normal magic users, but he holds them in contempt because their magic is not as cool as his, and also without their glamours they’re old and ugly and Atticus has no interest in associating with a woman who isn’t hawt.

Furthermore, it’s not like Atticus is a great guy to begin with! I made a list at the end of Chapter 11 of all the dickish things he did, remember? No? Well here it is again!

-He stands by to let humans get killed by gods.
-He will happily kill people on his own side of a battle if it gets him what he wants (like a magic sword).
-Said magic sword that he knew was being used as an unstoppable weapon that caused chaos in Ireland, and he took it for himself.
-He associates with at least one serial killer.
-Are we counting the Morrigan? If not, it’s still incredibly sketch that he’s BFFs with the Irish god of violent death and warfare that goes and kills people for insulting her.
-His worries about killing are centered around being caught rather than actually doing something immoral or hurting people.
-He fought and killed with the Golden Horde for no discernible reason.
-He can kill faeries by touching them using a type of magic that distorts the very nature of magic itself.
-Frames his neighbor for harassing the police.
-Manipulates another neighbor into helping him cover up a death.

And since then we can add ‘is stealing money from the city’ to that list if we want!

We’ve said time and again that Atticus is not, nor has he ever been a hero. But I want to hammer home this point: not only is he not a hero, he’s an absolute garbage human being. He’s done absolutely nothing to deserve sympathy. And yet here’s an entire word-vomit of Atticus telling the audience, with no prior buildup, foreshadowing or precedent, “Sometimes I get sad because I outlived loved ones hundreds of years ago.”

No, I don’t think you do, Atticus. In a competently-written novel, I’d say it might be the protagonist is trying to avoid talking about his or her pain, and it’s only surfaced at a vulnerable moment. But this isn’t a competently-written novel. This is a white male power fantasy dressed up like an urban fantasy novel, where the protagonist wanders through his daily routine while information gets handed to him, the villains don’t bother to inconvenience him by acting remotely intelligent, and he’s just so powerful and strong and sexy and well-connected that nothing ever gets him down.

So even if I believed this for an instant, that this was a legitimate character moment for Atticus, and that we’re meant to honestly believe that he feels bad about outliving loved ones, I cannot find it in myself to care. Atticus, you are filth. Go die in whatever way seems best to you.

Atticus spends the next hour or so talking to the Accent what happened yesterday. He says he’s telling her “enough of the truth to entertain her yet keep her safe” but I have no idea what that would look like. Because now I imagine she believes that the City of Tempe hires cops who might snap and go homicidal for no reason. I also have no idea how he explains healing from getting shot so fast, and it’s glossed over so we’ll never really know. This sequence is also entirely pointless because he just leaves and goes to that Irish bar shortly afterward.

Oh, and remember that the magic sword is now uncloaked? I’d forgotten, but Atticus reminds us that it’s just strapped to his back and people are giving him funny looks as he walks into the bar. Again, he didn’t go to his house or shop because he’s worried about being watched, but the attention he receives by walking around town with a sword is no big deal.

Look guys, my brother and his friends got the cops called on them for carrying paintball guns in our neighborhood. I think Atticus would get in trouble. But none of that’s important because the hawt barmaid was there. There’s a description of how hawt she is, of course, as if we need another set of sentences telling us how gorgeous this woman flirting with Atticus is.

Granuaile (hey come up with nickname for this character and I’ll use it) tells Atticus that she read in the papers that he got shot. Atticus, instead of downplaying this, or changing the topic, admits that he got shot but that he can “just heal fast.” Look, if you’re not going to tell your neighbor who witnessed you killing a god about the supernatural, why are you going to tell the bartender that you can heal like Wolverine? I know he’s probably trying to play it off as more like he just heals faster rather than something supernatural, but the man was shot through the chest and the very next day he’s walking around like nothing happened.

And then this happens:

Granuaile’s expression abruptly changed. Her eyes narrowed and she tilted her head to the side as she placed a bar napkin in front of me, and her voice became throatier as she spoke with a newfound accent: “Druids usually do.” With only three words to work with, all I could do was hazard a guess that the accent was from somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. Then, without much of a pause, the old Granuaile—the perky and beguiling barmaid—was back. “What’ll it be? A Smithwick’s?”

Yup, apparently Granuaile just gets possessed for a bit and says something in a voice that’s completely different from her own. Atticus is just like “Oh hey, that’s weird, how’d you do that?” And to be fair, he has been around the block a while, so it’s not out there that he’s not thrown by this, but still… it’s hard to take this seriously when Atticus isn’t that surprised by the bartender being possessed.

Granuaile has no memory of saying the thing, and so when Atticus asks her about it, she works out what happened and that a mysterious individual talked to him through her, and that she’s wanted to talk to him for weeks now. Atticus wants to know more, but Granuaile says it’s a long story, so Atticus agrees to wait until after he meets his lawyer.

Hal and Oberon enter the bar, and he goes to hang out with them, and especially to hang out with Oberon who missed him. If I cared about them I’d find that touching. But I don’t!

Hal advises Atticus to start wearing a bandage on his chest to at least be able to fake having been shot and with serious injury. Then it glosses over their discussion, but it’s about suing the police department and how they have “the most airtight case possible” (despite Atticus not appearing injured in the slightest) to rob the city out of millions of dollars.

Atticus instructs to Hal that after he’s paid and Snorri’s paid, the rest of the money should go to Fagles’s family in an anonymous donation. This surprises Hal, who calls it noble, but Atticus insists that it’s not nobility at all, he just doesn’t want to have any profit from Aenghus’s machinations. Which he, uh, could have done if he just didn’t try suing the police department. It feels like a tacked-on attempt to make it so that Atticus is a nice guy deep down, but again, this contradicts everything we’ve been told about him. It’s like the editors told Hearne how much of a dickbag Atticus was, so in response he hastily inserted all the moments that sounded remotely sympathetic into this chapter.

The conversation continues with Atticus saying he’s got some new information on the bartender, and Hal responds with “The redhead who smells like two people?” Atticus is surprised, because Hal never told him this before, but Hal’s reply is basically “You never asked.” Which… he did. Hal’s description of the conversation is “you asked me if she smelled like a goddess…a demon, a lycanthrope, or some other kind of therianthrope…You were too smitten at the time to ask me what she actually smelled like.” Which, okay, he didn’t specifically ask you what she smelled like, but that was clearly something he wanted to know, and an ongoing topic of discussion between you, and you’re supposedly friends, so you just didn’t tell him because… Plot, I guess.

So Atticus tells Hal to take Oberon to the Leprechaun’s house while he will go talk to the bartender. We get another reminder slew of how hawt she is before she tells him that she’s possessed by an Indian witch named Laksha Kulasekaran. And that’s where we end Chapter 18. I imagine this is meant to be a “GASP! PLOT TWIST!” moment, but considering that A) this has nothing to do with the Plot of this book, and B) witches aren’t really that big a deal other than that Atticus hates them for being women less kewl than he is.

But nope, the possessed bartender? She just inserts herself into the Plot despite not having anything to do with it. So the next two chapters are about her.

This book is so dumb.

Comment [14]

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.

Comment [11]

I’m guessing you guys are probably tired of this book sporking, considering that the amount of comments on the last chapter was [checks] zero. I get it; this sporking became pretty repetitive over time. But I did say I was going to finish this book, and I feel like I should at least try to do that before disappearing into the ether. Maybe nobody’s reading it, but at least it’ll be out there and I’ll feel some sense of inner peace.

So last time, Granuaile’s possessed by an Indian witch named Laksha and she wants to be a Druid! At the end of Chapter 19 the witch takes over Granny’s body to talk to Atticus. The chapter opens with Atticus asking Laksha to drop an info-dump about her backstory, and she is happy to oblige!

She was born in 1277 in Madurai and she met Marco Polo when she was sixteen years old and happened to be passing through the area. She decided she also wanted to know more about the world, so when she got married, she made deals with demons while her husband was away.

No really.

“I married a Brahmin and played the dutiful wife while he was at home. While he was away, I played with the demon kingdom. I saw no other way for a woman in a caste system to free herself from that system.

Hearne? There are ways to do sympathetic backstories, and this ain’t it.

I don’t know enough about the Indian caste system to really do a full analysis, but given the level of research Hearne’s done so far, I doubt he has either. Stereotypically, the Brahmin caste is pretty high up, if not the highest caste in the system. So basically, Hearne’s had this character say to the audience, “I’m from the most privileged background a person from my time and place could have been, and it wasn’t enough so I cut deals with demons.”

And here’s the thing: there were movements by people in the Brahmin caste to try and make social reform accept people despite their caste or gender. Some of them lived in Laksha’s time! I figured this out from five minutes on the Wikipedia page! And you’re telling me that Laksha decided that the only way she couldn’t be a housewife was through becoming BFFs with demons?

I suppose this might have been on purpose, and that Hearne is trying to portray a witch as a terrible person and for once succeeding, but it’s a bit weird, yeah? We have one witch that was almost raped by Nazis, and another that sold her soul to demons, and… the one almost raped by Nazis is the skank ho, while the one who sold her soul with no regrets is the helpful witch that helps our hero? Doesn’t that feel like it should be switched? And yes, Atticus seems uncomfortable around Laksha and her magic, but the character’s treated like an anti-hero. It’s not bad mind you, because Laksha explains that she’s trying to become a better person, but this level of sympathy isn’t given to someone whose backstory is that she was almost raped by actual Nazis.

More to the point though, this exposition is really, really boring. Laksha tells a quick bio of herself. She tells how she learned from a vetala how to live indefinitely by moving her soul from one body to another. She asks Atticus if he knows what a vetala is, and he says he does and asks how she ended up in a necklace on the ocean floor, and she tells him that in 1850 she took a boat from China to the US, paying for it by sleeping with the captain, but then the ship wrecked and a guy one of the lifeboats tried to mug her so she jumped in the necklace after she got stabbed and sank to the bottom of the ocean. She explains when Atticus asks that the necklace in question is a very powerful magical item crafted by a demon and that she can’t replace it. Then she explains that she can take any body she wants, but she would prefer not to steal an innocent’s body because she is actually trying to become a better person.

I remember when I did a writing workshop in college, we were warned against infodumps, and I think some classmates took that lesson too much to heart because they labelled any exposition at all as an infodump. But this? This is a textbook infodump. It’s just one character telling us a bunch of backstory, occasionally interrupted by questions. It’s dull to read, especially because we’re getting pretty close to the end, and the book promised us that the protagonist was going to start actively trying to take the fight to Aenghus Og. But that’s not happening; instead he’s sitting in the bar talking to a hawt bartender and the witch in her head.

And there are ways to make infodumps not feel tedious! Think about the end of a lot of the Harry Potter books, where someone sits down and explains what’s going on. That’s an infodump, sure, but there were a lot of mysteries in the Plot, so you don’t feel bored as much as excited to finally find out what’s happening. Not so here—Granny’s deal was barely a footnote in the story, but now it’s taking up two entire chapters and some change to get payoff on something we never really cared that much about to begin with. Imagine if near the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban there’s a couple of meaty chapters explaining the origin of the Herbology department and the history of magical botany. Who cares? Not me.

We also get bulshimflarkus like this:

All this time the Scary Witch-O-Meter had been traveling further and further into the red. The phrase crafted by a demon sent it all the way over to the right so that the arrow was pointing only a degree or two above the x axis.

Yes, her amulet/necklace was made by a demon. And that’s not great! But you know what, Atticus? You’re lawyer is an actual serial-killing vampire and by many cultural standards, that counts as a demon! Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer got that right. And while she’s not technically a demon, you also pal around with the Morrigan, the Irish goddess of war and violent death. And you’re planning on giving her the knowledge to craft an amulet like yours, so that she can kill magical beings by touching them, in exchange for immortality. That’s not a deal with a demon, but it sounds pretty close, doesn’t it?

There’s also this bit where Atticus asks what happens to the souls of people when Laksha takes over their bodies, and Laksha admits she doesn’t know. Which, considering she’s been doing this for, like, seven hundred years, is kind of silly. But for all she knows, they’re dead and passed on to the next reincarnation (because she’s nominally Hindu, I guess). Atticus is all disgusted by this, as if he doesn’t kill people or let people die all the time. Do I need to pull out the list again? This doesn’t work, Hearne! You can’t say that Atticus is cool when he kills his allies or innocent people, and then turn around and say it’s not okay with Laksha does it! Pick a stance and stick with it!

After reaffirming that she wants to help, Laksha explains that Granny’s plan to get her a new body was to go to the hospital and find a coma patient; or as they put it “Bodies that are still alive but whose spirits have already left them.” Okay, I guess?

And then Atticus says he’ll agree to help, but only if Laksha does something for him. She says she’s already agreed to kill Radomila for him, but Atticus insists that doesn’t count, because she already wanted to kill Radomila, so it’s not really a favor? That’s pretty stupid reasoning, and Laksha should tell him to shove it, but because “Make it easy!” is this book’s motto she agrees, and the task Atticus gives her is to remove the cloaking spell Radomila put on the magic sword. She agrees to this.

Atticus gives another condition: that when she gets her new body and her necklace, Laksha has to move the fudge away (his words are “east of the Mississippi”) and never come back without telling him. He basically says that he thinks it’s possible that she’s going to be doing weird deals with demons again and that’ll lead to trouble, so he’d rather it not be his problem. Because that’s what makes a good hero, right? One who’s all too happy to make it someone else’s problem?

Laksha agrees to this too, and then retreats and Granny takes her body back. She goes off to deal with the actual customers, “when Gunnar Magnusson, alpha male of the Tempe Pack, came barging into Rula Bula with most of his werewolves behind him”—waitwaitwait, Gunnar? Who the fudge is this guy? You’re telling me Hal’s not in charge? Hearne, what are you doing introducing the leader of a major faction this far into the book? Considering how important the Pack is to the Plot, you’d think Hearne wouldn’t have saved him until right as he’s Plot Relevant to introduce him.

Welp turns out that Hal, Atticus’s werewolf lawyer, has gotten dognapped! As did Oberon, I guess. Atticus checks his phone, and there’s a text from Emilya saying she’s taken Hal and Oberon and that she wants the sword, or they’ll die. And so the chapter ends with Atticus being angry, and that “Gods Below, I hate witches.”

This is such stupid plotting! Chapter 17 ends with Atticus swearing that he’s going to go on the offensive, that he’s going to make an active effort to go after Aenghus before he goes after his friends. And it’s not that Atticus fails to live up to that promise; to paraphrase George Washington, the damned poultroon didn’t even try it! After that oath he just goes to his favorite bar, and essentially gets caught up talking to the hawt bartender that he doesn’t realize one of his friends and his dog has gotten kidnapped. And this is what kicks off the buildup to the final showdown. So that proclamation that he’s going to take this all seriously? Completely pointless!

Wow, that chapter was short, so I guess we’re on to Chapter 21!

So Atticus shows the text to Magnusson. Instead of telling the others in the Pack who are there with him, “he communicated the message to them through their mental link.”

[lowers book] I’m sorry, what? Werewolves are telepathic? Since WHEN? I don’t read/watch a lot of werewolf fiction, so maybe this is something that Hearne picked up from pop culture and I had no idea. If this has been brought up before, it hasn’t been highlighted, and that’s weird considering we have seen different members of the Pack interact with Atticus. If they’re all telepathically connected, we should know this, and it should have been more relevant before instead of only being brought up as it’s important to the Plot.

Because it is important to the Plot, in that they’re going to use it to find where Hal’s been taken. Magnusson explains that Hal was knocked out when he was taken, and now he’s blindfolded, so they can’t discover where he is, but if Atticus calls then maybe they’ll get some hints. Atticus requests that they all stay quiet while he calls, so that Emilya doesn’t know they’re listening.

Atticus calls and Emilya’s all like, “It took you long enough,” and this is ridiculous? Atticus was talking to Hal two chapters ago, right before this conversation with Granny. That means that at most, it was like, what, an hour ago? And Emilya’s acting like it’s been hours, and implying that he doesn’t care that much about his dog, when the message about Hal and Oberon was probably sent twenty minutes ago. That’s not that long of a time for him not to respond to a text.

Before going further, Atticus demands proof that the captives are still alive. Emilya puts the phone to Hal, who of course uses the opportunity to pass information. He says that he’s in the woods somewhere, and that they’re tied to trees with silver chains. Emilya takes the phone back and says that they’re in “the eastern Superstition Mountains” and that he’s to meet them at “Tony Cabin” with the sword so that they trade them.

Of course, Atticus loses his cool and threatens Emilya, who doesn’t care and points out that she’s got Aenghus Og as an ally. Atticus, having no restraint, barks back that Aenghus hasn’t killed him in two thousand years of trying, what makes her think she’s got a chance?

“Two thousand years?” Emily said.

“Two thousand years?” Magnusson said.

Whoops! This is why I don’t like to get angry. It makes you reveal things you would rather keep secret.

Oh, right. Yeah. There’s that whole thing where the werewolves don’t actually know how old he is. I don’t get why this is a big deal? Did Aenghus Og not tell the witches how long their feud has been going on? It’s just a fun fact that Atticus kept secret from his friends and enemies for no reason.

Also, Atticus doesn’t like getting angry? Which is weird for a guy who is constantly going around provoking everyone he can.

Atticus hangs up, and Magnusson, with his super werewolf hearing heard the entire conversation. He insists that Atticus is not going out there by himself. With their werewolf telepathy, they were able to see some of the coven when they pulled the bag off of Hal’s head. Because apparently, with this telepathy, they can see through each other’s eyes, and also smell through each other’s noses! Magnusson asks what was up with the swan smell, and Atticus explains that it was probably Aenghus Og, as the swan is one of his animal forms. For once, Atticus acts like this is a fight he might actually have trouble with, but he hopes that bringing Laksha will give them an edge.

So he calls over Granny and says that he will accept her as an apprentice, and that she must quit immediately. Like, right this second.

“Okay,” she said, beaming as she jogged back to the kitchen entrance to slap open the swinging door. “Hey, Liam! I quit!” Then she vaulted herself onto the bar, swung her legs around, and hopped off between a couple of stools.

“Attagirl,” and elderly gentleman said, raising his pint in salute.

We left the place en masse before Liam, whoever he was, could properly register that he had just lost a damn fine bartender.

Where to start?

Well how about here: this would be a mildly amusing scene if I cared at all about these characters. Instead, Granny’s a character we barely know, and her yelling that she quits and bailing is just something that feels like it’s meant to be a joke, instead of a convenient fix to make her active in the Plot when she’s only really been a character for the past three chapters.

Also some random old guy is there and thinks that’s cool? Uh, okay? Is that supposed to be funny? ‘Cause it’s not. It’s just random. There’s Just Some Old Guy there, and he approves of her quitting.

And lastly: Atticus doesn’t know who Liam is? Dude, you’ve been going to this bar for years, you’re apparently a regular customer, and were constantly flirting with the bartender. But you didn’t even know the manager’s name? I guess if it’s not a hawt girl he just doesn’t care.

Anyhow, Atticus’s whole crew leaves the bar and drives to the Leprechaun’s house, because again he thinks the police are watching his house, so it’ll be perfectly safe to instead go to his favorite neighbor’s house and no one will notice. He has them working on the yard so that he can still help the Leprechaun with yard work even while he’s busy with the Plot.

While the widow was happily occupied admiring impossibly fit men and women grooming her landscape

Oh right, we need a reminder that everyone in this book is a horndog. And I don’t know about you, but if when one of my neighbors has a bunch of people working on the yard, I’d notice. The cops watching Atticus’s house would also notice this, and probably notice that these guys aren’t professionals by their lack of equipment. This should send up a million red flags.

Atticus tells Granny that Laksha needs to remove the cloaking spell on the magic sword. Then he tells Magnusson to keep an eye on Laksha, because he’s “paranoid.” He’s not, but that’s what he says, and in this case it actually makes sense to have a trusted ally watch the witch he just met and doesn’t fully trust.

Because he wants to get Radomila’s blood sample from his house, but his house is being watched, Atticus turns into an owl and flies to his backyard. He confirms that the cops are indeed sitting in front of his house to watch. He gets the blood sample, and then goes back to the Leprechaun’s house.

While Laksha continues working on the cloaking spell, Atticus infodumps to Magnusson for a bit. It’s boring. He explains that he wants the cloak off of the sword because Radomila’s found a way to weaponize it when Fagles could see it, so maybe she could turn it against him or something.

Atticus also mentions that while having the Pack will definitely be an advantage, the witches would be stupid not to expect it, so there will be silver weapons. This makes Magnusson mad, I guess? And also the other werewolves, some of whom change. And hey, remember they’re working on the front yard of the Leprechaun’s house? While the Leprechaun’s watching? Welp, Atticus decides that it’s high time he had a talk with the Leprechaun.

“Can she be trusted?”

“Absolutely,” I replied. “Two days ago she watched me kill someone, and she offered me her backyard as a place to hide the body.”

“Truly?” Magnusson raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That’s a fine woman.”

No, that’s an unhinged woman. And if you recall, she only agreed to help you cover up the murder when you lied to her about who Bres was. If you have to lie to someone in order for her to help you, that’s not trustworthy. Besides, the woman is downright homicidal when it comes to English people. The Leprechaun isn’t some eccentric but wise old sage. She’s an insane woman with whipped crazy on top.

This is proven when Atticus goes to talk to the Leprechaun, who is more than a little freaked out that a bunch of people turned into wolves right in front of her. When Atticus tells her that it’s okay, she first asks if that means they’re Irish. Atticus replies that they’re Icelandic, and she asks if Iceland was a British colony. Atticus has to tell her more than once that they’re not British.

So Atticus sits her down and has the Talk. No, not that one. The one where he reveals that the world is actually magic and there are gods and monsters and stuff walking around and that he’s a Druid.

“All of it’s real, then? There’s no make-believe?”

“There’s plenty of make-believe in the details. This vampire I know actually likes garlic quite a bit. And werewolves, as you just saw, can change anytime, though they do try to confine it to the full moons when they have to change, because it’s a pretty painful transformation.”

Okay, cool, I guess, but this doesn’t change that Hearne hasn’t really done anything new with his vampires and werewolves, except maybe the telepathy thing which he pulled out of his butthole when it was Plot Relevant. Other than that, the vampires and werewolves fit pop culture perceptions, and not the actual myths that the pop cultural creatures are based off of.

Hearne’s werewolves are:

-A wolfpack that works on outdated notions of how wolves behave based entirely on animals in captivity.
-Weak to silver, something that’s not present in any werewolf stories before they became big in Hollywood.
-Hate vampires, because that’s what they always do in urban fantasy.

Hearne’s vampires:

-Can’t come out in the day, something invented by the film Nosferatu to have an ending without too much violence.
-Have super strength and speed, like they do in all pop culture fiction.
-Hate werewolves, because that’s what they always do in urban fantasy.

It’s like Hearne’s trying to insist that there’s creativity in his worldbuilding, and there just… isn’t. It’s almost all copied-and-pasted. That his vampires actually like garlic is the absolute bare minimum of originality. This wouldn’t necessarily be bad, even, but this story’s just so terribly done that it’s another thing that feels half-baked. This story could have been more interesting if the worldbuilding was cool at least, or if the Plot was good but the worldbuilding was cliched I wouldn’t have minded so much. But if both are barely thought-out, well… it’s just a weak book all-around.

And then we get this:

“So God really exists?”

“All the gods exist, or at least did exist at one time.”

“But I mean Jesus and Mary and all that lot.”

“Sure, they existed. Still do. Nice people.”

“And Lucifer?”

“I’ve never personally met him, but I have no doubt he’s around somewhere. Allah is doing his thing too, and so are Buddha and Shiva and the Morrigan and so on. The point is, Mrs. MacDonagh, that the universe is exactly the size that your soul can encompass. Some people live in extremely small worlds, and some live in a world of infinite possibility. You have just received some sensory input that suggests it’s bigger than you previously thought. What are you going to do with that information? Will you deny it or embrace it?”

I’ve alluded to my issues with the Gods Need Prayer Badly trope in this sporking before. But let’s talk about it in full, and why I think it hardly ever works:

It’s become increasingly popular in fantasy fiction to treat mythology this way: the gods exist because people believe in them. When belief in them wanes, then the gods get weaker, and if no one believes in them at all, then the gods die. This system was made popular by Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. The thing is, it worked in those stories under specific circumstances. The Discworld is a parody of fantasy, and a world that explicitly runs on magic. Likewise, the world of American Gods is the world of one-shot novel that’s meant to make a statement about human nature in general and American culture in particular: specifically, that we live in a culture that’s always trying to move on to the Next Big Thing and forget a lot of the important ideas that shaped the past. I’m condensing a lot in talking about those works, but you get my idea, right?

But here, it doesn’t fit at all. In this conversation, it seems like Atticus (and by extension, Kevin Hearne) is using this system to point out the idea that different people will have different experiences of the world. The small-minded, who aren’t open to other people’s beliefs, have a smaller world, whereas more open-minded people live in much larger worlds.

Here’s the thing: everyone lives in the same world. So whether you personally believe that there’s a Zeus, there is a Zeus because enough other people believed in a Zeus. So Atticus’s statement? Isn’t true. The world isn’t “exactly the size that your soul can encompass.” It’s the size that everyone had unconsciously decided it already is.

And again, that means that God is potentially a fake. Because if God exists because people believe in Him, then He’s not God! He’s a created being! Christianity, Islam, Judaism… heck, any religion, becomes a lie! So yeah, for someone who isn’t religious, this sounds warm and fuzzy, but for the Leprechaun, who is at least nominally Catholic, reciting a creed that declares God the Creator of Heaven and Earth every Sunday, this should be grabbing her worldview out from under her. Atticus is telling her that God only exists because He was made up! But we’re acting like this wouldn’t fundamentally change the way a believer thinks? That a religious person would just nod and be like, “Hmmm, okay, so that just means all religions are correct, right?” Because it doesn’t! It means that all religions are at best misunderstandings and at worse hollow lies! And if the characters acted like that, that’s fine. But instead by Atticus’s words and the Leprechaun’s reaction, this is supposed to be a heartwarming affirmation of everyone’s beliefs and the connectedness of humanity or… something. It’s not. You just told this woman her religion is a lie. Mind you, she’s not especially devout, but given how the next book goes we’re meant to believe this is a large part of her worldview.

And like, if reality is shaped by people’s beliefs, how the fudge does anything work? Are you telling me if that the Flat Earth Society ever gets enough members, then the Earth will actually be flat? Because if the world is shaped by people’s beliefs…then this, and a bunch of other stupid beliefs are just as valid, right? That’s what the ‘Everything Anyone Believes is True’ trope means, doesn’t it? So Flat Earth? Yup, it’s true. World run by Alien Lizard People? Also true. Elvis assassinated JFK? Get enough believers, and it will be true! And that’s only the relatively tame conspiracy theories. What about the beliefs of groups of violent extremist factions in the world? Because if reality is built on beliefs… well, those guys also have very strong beliefs about things.

How do scientific discoveries work? Like how did we discover that the Earth revolved around the Sun if everyone already believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth? Because if the universe conforms to what people believed, then there’s no way that anyone would have made a discovery of anything that wasn’t what people already believed. You can’t discover something that contradicts what everyone already believes, which means science would barely work at all!

To be fair to Hearne, it’s unclear how much of reality is shaped by belief in this universe. Is it just the gods/religious figures? Or is it like Sandman where it affects everything, like who is in charge of the world, how physics and geography work?

And again, this system can work, if it’s applied to a specific setting or if it’s done to make a point, like what Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman did. But that’s not what Hearne’s done here. Like with the vampires and werewolves, he’s lifted an idea wholesale from other authors and hastily taped it onto his own series, without any deep thoughts into how it doesn’t make any sense. And then he has his protagonist explain it to another character in a way that’s meant to be warm and fuzzy, and she just smiles and nods, when instead she should be acting like everything she thought she knew is falling apart in front of her.

[sigh]

Oh and because I’m in constant emotional pain I’m making you guys read the Leprechaun’s accent.

She grinned fondly. “Ah, me dear boy, how can I deny anything y’say? If ye haven’t killed me yet for seein’ more than I ought ter, I figger ye mus’ like me and ye wouldn’t steer an old widow wrong. And besides that, I saw those bloody werewolves with my own eyes.”

Wait, hang on, I need to do that thing TMary suggested:

She grinned Irishly. “Ah, me dear Irish boy, how can I deny anything y’say? If ye haven’t killed me yet for seein’ more than I Irishly ought ter, I figger ye mus’ like me Irishly and ye wouldn’t steer an old Irish widow wrong. And besides that, I saw those bloody werewolves with my own Irish eyes. I’m Irish!”

…you know, this actually doesn’t change that much, but it is a little easier to read.

Atticus affirms that he does like the widow, especially because she’s the kind of person who helps him hide a body, but, uh, again, the reason she did that was because he lied to her about who it was that he killed in the first place, using her only-then established trauma and prejudices. You can’t count someone as “the friend who helps you hide a body” if you have to lie to them to get them to hide the body!

Anyhow he tells her that he’s got to go save his dog and his friend, but if he survives then he’ll sit down and answer any questions she has about him being a Druid or the supernatural world or whatever.

The Leprechaun expresses some surprise at the idea that Atticus is actually in danger. I would too, if I actually thought he was in danger, and this wasn’t just more lying on the narrator/author’s part. Yes, this is going to be the final battle. But look at this! Atticus is only barely acting concerned about his own safety! He’s preparing for a fight, for once, but it isn’t as if he’s leaving behind notes in case he dies or anything like that. It’s just business as usual, but with more allies this time.

Gunnar strolls up with his wolf pack and Granny and holding Fragarach in his hand. The cloaking spell Radomila put on it is gone, and apparently it’s basically buzzing with magic. The chapter ends with Atticus declaring he’s going to stick the sword in Aenghus.

This sporking chapter got longer than I hoped. But at least we’re getting towards the end of the book? And it all feels very… rushed. We’re just now getting a handle on the world, on how werewolves work and how Druids work and yet now we’re running to the final battle? And now we’re going to meet the villain for the first time? It doesn’t feel right.

Furthermore, we were told by Atticus that now he was going to take a more active role in pursuing Aenghus Og and his minions. Except he hasn’t; what kicks off the final battle is the bad guys kidnapping his lawyer and dog while he wasn’t paying attention. This entire story is Atticus being passive and then reacting to whatever the villains throw at him. He never pursues any course of action that isn’t a reaction to what someone else is doing!

And this “final battle” doesn’t feel remotely final. We’re told that Atticus is concerned that he might die, but he doesn’t act like it. Sure, he makes more preparations than he has the entire book, but that’s not a high bar. This is supposedly the final confrontation with the god that has been chasing Atticus his entire life, and I don’t feel hyped. I feel confused.

Welp, that’s it for this time. If there is anyone out there reading this, pray that I make it through NaNoWriMo in one piece.

Comment [21]

You know, here’s something we didn’t talk about in the last few chapters that we really should have: Granuaile wants to be Atticus’s apprentice, and yet they’re both clearly attracted to each other. Apparently their relationship up ‘til this point has been checking each other out and flirting? And yet this isn’t really discussed at all in this book. From what I remember from the next book, and what I’ve read about this series, they don’t have any sort of sexual relationship while she’s his student, which, uh, thank goodness because that’d be weird and uncomfortable, but this is definitely something that should have been addressed? Pretty upfront?

Yes, they’re both adults, but when one of them is the other’s student there’s a power difference between them that should be talked about. Presumably they do, at some point, but we never see it, considering they don’t sleep together. Maybe it’s just me, but I think this is one of those things that you should talk about right out of the gate. And yeah, I guess there are other things they need to handle right now, but it’s not like that’s ever stopped Atticus from leisurely going about his day, has it?

And even then, shouldn’t Atticus thinking about this? Shouldn’t it cross his mind how weird it is that this girl, who halfway through the book was someone he saw as a potential sexual partner, is now his student? Considering that it’s implied that this book is narrated after the events happened, it’s not like there’s that much urgency, and he can definitely mention how he feels about this in hindsight. You guys maybe think I skipped over that in my attempt to get through the boredom of these chapters, but nope! Any contemplations about Atticus being sexually attracted to his student are just… not there.

Anyhow, this chapter begins with Atticus telling us about the Haunted Canyon trail that Emilya told him to go to. Which is kind of boring, I guess, but if you’re interested in what the place looks like in real life. He explains that most people don’t go to the trail in question, instead going to the Peralta trail, with easier hiking and a more stereotypical Arizona desert-type feel to it. Whereas the trail the characters are going on now has more trees and a more strenuous hike.

See, I like this kind of stuff. So much urban fantasy in the US, and speculative fiction in general, is obsessed with the country’s most famous cities. Jim Butcher even admitted that his editor made him change the setting to Chicago because no one would want to read about a wizard detective in a small town. And no, Tempe isn’t exactly a small town (it’s right by a major university), but it’s not as well known as New York or Chicago or Boston. And that doesn’t mean there’s not as much cool stuff you could do there!

There’s weird and cool stuff all over the map! Especially in the US. Authors can play around with that a lot! But nope, it’s almost always in cities that we see in every other movie anyway. This is part of why I’m trying to write a story set in a fictional counterpart to my own hometown.

Of course, to take this compliment back… this isn’t a good book. So any goodwill Hearne might have earned in writing about his hometown is instantly gone. Yeah, he’s showing off his hometown and how cool it is, but he’s also doing it in a book about a power fantasy that makes out with goddesses on a regular basis. He’s not using the setting to do anything interesting. It never causes any problems or obstacles or even helps the character through his familiarity with it. It’s just there; so it’s difficult to care.

Atticus and his buddies roll up, and the werewolves hop out of their cars and transform on the spot. And fun fact! It’s specified that these sleazy werewolf lawyers? All drive sports cars. Because of course they drive the most expensive and attention-grabbing vehicles they can to rub in people’s faces how much better they are than everyone else. Look, I know I was a bit dismissive when someone suggested the Twilight influences on Hounded but now I think you guys were on to something.

Atticus asks Laksha if he can talk to Granuaile, so she switches, and Grannie’s freaked out a bit by seeing a bunch of people turn into wolves. Atticus calms her down by explaining that it’s the Tempe pack, and most of them have been in the Irish pub a few times. Because of course everyone in the supernatural community goes to the same Irish bar. Also, apparently he’s been talking to Laksha for the past… while or so, because Grannie doesn’t know what they’re even doing there and has to be told. Isn’t that a bit creepy, having her all the way out here and not having told her what they’re doing?

Alright, how does this work, exactly? Because Laksha seems to be able to tell what’s going on when Grannie’s in control, but it apparently doesn’t work the other way around? Because when Laksha takes over, which she can do at any time, Grannie wakes up later having no clue what’s going on.

Because of the situation, Atticus tells Grannie that he is going to do a couple of “bindings” on her so she can keep up. First is that he’s going to bind her to him so that she can draw on his energy so that she won’t get tired, because Atticus can pull energy straight from the Earth. This actually sounds like binding, unlike the next thing he’ll do, which is give her night vision.

But what! Atticus receives a phonecall! Turns out it’s Malina, the witch from Chapter 13 was longtime friends with Emilya but wasn’t a skank ho (and the only other witch from the coven we’ve met)! She assures Atticus that she’s actually not evil. Turns out that not all the witches have sided with Aenghus Og, just six of them. The other seven are forming their own coven. Atticus asks for all the names, of the witches against him and those that split off with Malina, but I don’t know why. Atticus tells the audience he doesn’t recognize any of the names, that he’s just “filed them away for future reference.” Basically, it’s a setup for the sequel as if we care. And bad setup at that; they very easily could be introduced in the sequel with little fanfare, instead of being named here and Atticus straight up telling us that these names mean nothing to him.

Malina doesn’t expect Atticus to survive the night, but she does want to prove to him that she didn’t betray him like he suspected she did, because “Unlike my former sisters, I have a sense of honor.” Which is… look it’s weird that we’re treating this like a good thing, when the entire book Atticus has been drilling into our heads that “person with a sense of honor” = “suicidal moron.” You can’t do this Hearne! You can’t spend a novel telling the audience that having a sense of honor is stupid and will get you killed, and then try to portray characters as sympathetic because they have one!

So the phone conversation ends like that, and Atticus, Grannie and the werewolves run into the woods. They do their best to keep quiet; since the werewolves communicate with each other telepathically, they don’t need to make too much noise. Maybe the bad guys heard the werewolves making noise when they were transforming, and maybe not because the cabin they’re aiming for is six miles away, but for the time being they’re trying to go for a sneak attack.

Atticus wonders if he can shield his mind or dampen his telepathic connection with Oberon, because he’s worried that once he gets close enough for his dog to detect him, the bad guys will be able to tell that he’s there from Oberon’s reaction.

…if he sense me nearby, his tail would start to wag as sure as a princess waves in a parade

…what?

It’s not wrong, per se, but that’s just another weird simile.

After about a half mile of running uphill at a full sprint—across rocky, treacherous terrain on a moonless night—I heard Granuaile giggle delightedly. “This is unbelievable!” she crowed. “What a trip, running with a pack of werewolves!”

“Remember this,” I said, “when you get bogged down in your studies and wonder if it’s all worth it. This is only a taste of what you will be able to do.”

That doesn’t sound healthy at all.
“You feel bogged down by your studies in becoming a Druid? No worries, just think of the incredible adrenaline high you got this one time we were rushing into battle! Not, like, the thought of helping people with your powers, or making the world a better place. No, think about how much fun you’re having right now!”

This goes against the whole ‘Druids are better because they help the world and make things grow!’ angle that Chapter 19 was going for. Atticus’s pitch for Grannie right now is that it’ll be loads of fun down the road, rather than that it’s actually a good thing to do. Again, you can’t do this Hearne! You can’t tell us that Druids are Good because their magic is Good and True and then turn around and say the best part of being a Druid is the rush that wielding that power gives you!

Also, I have trouble believing that Grannie, who has given no indication of being athletic, is just dashing up “rocky, treacherous terrain” without any problems. Yeah, she’s been magically enhanced with extra energy and night vision, but she doesn’t trip? At all? I trip a lot when I take a walk in my neighborhood, and it’s the exact opposite of treacherous terrain. I’m not saying she’d be helpless, but I’d expect Grannie would at least trip or something, even if she wasn’t on rocky terrain, because she wouldn’t be used to the landscape or the strength she now has in her legs. The magic here is just applied as a “Make It Easy!” solution in order to avoid Grannie having any problems, without considering that she would at least have trouble sprinting up rocks without any practice.

Grannie asks Atticus if she’ll be able to turn into an owl too, and Atticus answers with a ‘maybe.’ See, when Druids graduate, they’re given four animal forms, which aren’t chosen, but “determined by ritual.” Atticus himself can turn into an owl, a wolfhound, an otter and a stag. It’s not explicitly explained here, but I think it’s that they’re four types of animals most useful in different situations: one for flying, one for swimming, one for hunting/combat, and one for running. This would have been nice to know when shapeshifting was first brought up, right? Nope, right at the end of the novel when someone asks about it rather than when someone’s transforming or something.

Also we get this bit:

“Oh, okay, um, master, or sensei, or whatever. What should I call you?”

I laughed. “Archdruid would be the correct term, I suppose,” I said. “But that doesn’t fall trippingly off the tongue, does it? And it would turn heads in public, and we don’t want that. So let’s stick with sensei.”

Alright I’m speeding through this chapter, so time for more nitpicking!

The prefix ‘arch’ is Greek, as you could probably guess from the word ‘archangel.’ So no, technically speaking, as a man who is actually from ancient Ireland, he should know a word for it that isn’t a mashup of two different languages from different parts of the world. But okay, fine, moving that aside:

The prefix ‘arch’ means ‘chief’ and so ‘archdruid’ means ‘chief druid’ or ‘chief of druids.’ In Atticus claiming the title ‘archdruid’ as being his correct title, he is naming himself as the Chief of Druids, or at least of those in his area. Problem: there is only one Druid. It’s Atticus. And yeah, he has an apprentice, but isn’t it a bit pretentious to say “I AM THE CHIEF DRUID!” when there aren’t any other Druids for you to have authority of? It’s like if I called myself King of Juracans on ImpishIdea; yeah, of course I am! I’m the only one! Being chief of a group of which you are the only member is silly and pretentious.

It’s like that bit in Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time where one of the villains declares himself “the deadliest cyborg golfer in the world!” As Ron Stoppable points out, it’s not really a crowded field, is it? Atticus is chief of one other person. And even if he wasn’t, as far as we know it’s not like he had that title before, so he’s chief by virtue of all other candidates being dead! Him claiming that title is utterly meaningless.

[Also if you’re still wondering what happened to all the other Druids, that’s cool, I guess, but Hearne still doesn’t care.]

Atticus asks Grannie to switch to Laksha because he needs the witch’s help. Laksha activates, and they mention the ‘sensei’ thing, with Laksha telling Atticus that she doesn’t know the word. And yeah, Laksha is Indian, but she’s been around for hundreds of years, travelled around Southern and Eastern Asia… and she’s never heard the word ‘sensei’? This just reads like yet another ‘old immortals don’t understand pop culture references!’ thing.

And hey, I just noticed that Laksha has this weird speech pattern/accent thing going on:

“I am not knowing this word.”

“I was not thinking so. You will have to get me the necklace, then, if you want me to be helping with them.”

I don’t know what to make of this. Is this meant to be an approximation of an Indian accent? Why would she still have it after sitting in Grannie’s head for months at a time?

So with the sample of Radomila’s blood Atticus has, Laksha tells us that she can kill her “from as far away as a mile” with it, but that to beat the rest she needs that magic necklace back. She also does this thing where her eyes roll back and all you see are the whites of her eyes while she’s using the third eye to see magic. Sort of like Lilith on Supernatural I guess?

This is supposed to be creepy. And it would be, if we didn’t follow it up with this when she switches back:

…her eyes rolled back down like slot machine tumblers to give me double pupils.

“Her eyes switched back to normal like… slot machines! Yeah, that sounds right! That makes her sound creepy, doesn’t it?”
-Kevin Hearne, apparently

Atticus shows some concern about Laksha’s statement, because by the time he’s close enough to grab the necklace from Radomila, they’ll be up to their necks in bad guys and he’ll probably be busy. Hang on—do they know for a fact that Radomila has the necklace right now? Why? I suppose it’s a powerful artifact. But why is this necklace now a part of the story? Other than adding yet another McGuffin to the Plot at the eleventh hour for a C-list villain just makes this whole thing even more muddled than it already is.

But put that on hold! Because Atticus detects someone drawing power from the Earth nearby—that’s Druid magic! He draws his sword, because maybe it’s Aenghus Og. He briefly wonders if the magic of the Tuatha de Danann would work on werewolves, which is dumb because then we see it work like five minutes later. I don’t know why it wouldn’t; Atticus explains that his doesn’t because… Reasons.

[He also says that his magic is a “somewhat weaker” version of the magic the Tuatha de Danann use, but considering he has worked out a way to make his aura poisonous to others, something no one else in history has done, and he has no problem taking down gods, I wouldn’t get that impression at all. SHOW DON’T TELL, HEARNE.]

And this:

Laksha… had coiled Granuaile’s body into a defensive stance that was probably some form of varma kalai, an Indian martial art based on attacking pressure points. She wasn’t dependent entirely on magic, then, like most witches, for her offense and defense—good to know.

He says “like most witches,” despite neither of the other witches we’ve seen displaying any inclination towards physical combat or martial arts. You would think this would have come up that one time he actually punched a witch in the face, that they apparently often have fighting skillz, but it only gets mentioned here in a non-fight scene. We don’t even get to see Laksha use awesome Indian martial arts here, we just get Atticus telling us that he assumes that’s what she’s doing here.

The werewolves try to attack the magically cloaked newcomer, but they’re easily deflected, and they just kind of roll over. Atticus is kind of freaked out, because that’s not how werewolves act. But the magic camouflage is thrown off, and surprise! It’s Flidais, the Irish goddess of the hunt (except not really she’s actually probably a cattle goddess). Y’know, from earlier?

Why is she here? Why, to tell Atticus important information, of course! Helping Atticus is what everyone does! She ends the chapter by telling him that if he confronts Aenghus Og the way they’re going, then “this magnificent pack will be destroyed.”

Pfft. Better let them go ahead and die. They’re dickbags anyway.

You know how we keep saying this book’s motto is “Make it easy!” I’m not kidding. Because we’re charging headlong into the final battle, the protagonist not sure of what dangers he’ll face, and then a goddess pops right the fudge out of nowhere, with powers to conveniently make sure she doesn’t get accidentally hurt by the “heroic” characters, in order to warn them about the upcoming traps and give an explanation as to what they’re going to face.

THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING. You should not have the narrative stop all momentum so that a character can pop in and give your characters a walkthrough on the fight they’re about to face. This drains any tension from the story if we already know what’s going to happen! It’s not like there’s a lot of tension anyway; I don’t think anyone honestly believes that something bad is going to happen to one of the main characters. But this? While this is pretty in line with the writing we’ve seen before, having it happen right now is another low of laziness that keeps popping up throughout this novel.

[sigh]

Well join us next time, as Flidais tells us what’s going to happen next, and then we see it happen.

Comment [13]

Merry Christmas! And don’t worry, we’re not far from the end now, guys! Just hang on tight!

So Flidais just arrived right the fudge out of nowhere. Atticus explains, once again, that she has absolute control over animals (hence her ability to knock out the werewolves), and that he has no intention of ever shapeshifting in front of her again. He’s also genuinely surprised that she was able to knock out the werewolves; he “had not thought it was possible to subdue a pack of werewolves through magic.” Why? [shrugs] I dunno. Magic can do a lot of things, like kill faeries by touch, mind control, and curse people using blood, but apparently Atticus, a two thousand year old Druid, just wrote off ‘subduing werewolves’ as impossible.

And hey, what’s Grannie/Laksha doing during this scene? [shrugs] I dunno. Hearne didn’t say after he mentioned that she took a defensive stance. She’s not a werewolf, so she shouldn’t be on the ground, knocked out. But she doesn’t get mentioned until a couple of pages into this chapter, only to say that she’s doing her best to not be noticed, and Flidais doesn’t care that she’s there, so we don’t either. I suspect what happened is that Hearne wrote this scene and forgot she was there, and hastily inserted a small bit or two to explain why she doesn’t do anything. Again, this is one of those things I’d probably overlook if this book had more redeeming qualities, but it doesn’t, so, uh, there you go.

Atticus is understandably a bit wary right now; he lowers his sword, but he doesn’t actually put it away, nor does he have any intention of doing so, and he asks Flidais what’s up. The goddess goes on to explain that the witches, not being complete morons, actually set some traps around themselves for the werewolves, all involving silver. AND all the witches are packing silver daggers.

“Physical traps with magic triggers?” I said.

Who cares? This is adding more complexity to an idea that doesn’t need it. It’s a magic trap—that’s all you need to say.

Atticus asks Flidais if she’s with them, and she replies that officially speaking, she was never here and she’s not on anyone’s side. Atticus explains to us that it’s because Flidais can’t “be seen taking sides against the Tuatha De Danann” because that’s… wait, no, that doesn’t make sense! Aenghus Og is in open rebellion against the rightful queen of the Tuatha De Danann! If this were phrased in a way that says that Flidais was an undercover agent of Brighid (which she is) then I’d give this a pass, but instead it’s phrased as if none of the Tuatha De Danann are allowed to publicly side against each other, even if one of them’s plotting to overthrow their monarch.

Whatever. Flidais won’t help fight, but she can give some advice, especially since she’s angry at Aenghus for ruining her hunt back in Chapter 6. Atticus decides, I guess, that this proves that Flidais is not someone you want to mess with?

I was glad we had no quarrel; I think I would have had an arrow in my gob long ago.

Except I don’t actually believe that the author would try that hard to have you killed. Furthermore, Atticus, I think you’re missing the point of this entire conversation, and that’s this: Flidais doesn’t always act directly. If she wanted you dead, she wouldn’t just shoot you, she’d put you in a situation where you’re likely to be killed and then have no official ties to the scenario so she could get off scott-free. That’s what she’s doing to Aenghus right now.

Idjit.

Also this?

She had her bow and quiver with her now, I noticed; the protective rawhide strips on her left arm were new and fresh.

Who cares?

Finally getting back on topic, Atticus asks if there’s a way to avoid the traps, and Flidais tells him there isn’t; they form a perimeter around the witches’ location (and that of the hostages), so no matter how they go through, they will set off at least one trap. She recommends that they sacrifice one of their number to get through. And so that’s the plan they go with. Which, uh… hang on… wait, what?

Someone has to die, or at least be grievously injured for them to continue? Isn’t that incredibly morbid? Look, you’re telling me that Atticus can look at the spell used to mind control Fagles and let him see his sword, and disable that, but he can’t undo a single magic trap? He’s not even going to try to do that? Really? And even if they had to send someone through to get whammied by a trap, isn’t Atticus the best choice? Strategically speaking, he’s your Tank. Atticus heals super-fast, can draw power from the Earth, and can pop right back up pretty soon. He’s not harmed by silver in the same way that werewolves are.

But nope! Not only is Atticus not going to be the one who goes through and gets stuck through with silver needles, it is not even discussed.

I want to reiterate in case you weren’t paying attention, so listen up: THE PLOT TELLS ATTICUS THAT SOMEONE MUST SACRIFICE HIM OR HERSELF, RESULTING IN DEATH OR GRIEVOUS INJURY… AND HE DOESN’T EVEN CONSIDER OFFERING HIMSELF UP.

Can you imagine being this much of a selfish douchebag? Can you? Let’s do this thing I used to do with Angelopolis all the time that I call: Remove the Fantasy Elements. Imagine you and your friends are off on a quest to go rescue another of your friends, who only got kidnapped because of something YOU did, and then you learn that the only way to rescue your friend in time is for one of you to sacrifice yourselves, and you just turn to your friends and say, “Yeah, so one of you has to die now, sorry mate.”

‘Cause that’s what Atticus does! It doesn’t even cross his mind to try to disarm a trap, or to trip one of them himself. He’s told by someone he considers only mildly trustworthy that someone must get hit with a trap, and ATTICUS, the PERSON THEY ARE HERE FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE, the one member of the party who could potentially HEAL HIMSELF FROM THE INJURIES THE TRAP WOULD INFLICT, DOESN’T OFFER TO BE THE ONE TO DO IT. It’s just explained to his friends that one of them has to die, and that’s that.

To be fair, given these are magic traps, it’s possible that they would only be triggered by a werewolf, but Flidais doesn’t say that. She says absolutely nothing to that effect. And if she did, you’d think Atticus would offer to go it alone to avoid letting harm fall upon his friends. But he doesn’t have friends, Atticus has people who he can use and discard when it’s convenient to him. So he sees nothing wrong with demanding that people die for his own vendettas, and the narrative sees nothing wrong with letting him get away with this.

Atticus is a greedy, lecherous, scum-sucking, yellow-bellied, frat-tastic narcissist. And we’re not only meant to root for him, but see him as a hero.

Flidais explains that Aenghus Og is drawing up a lot of power from the Earth, and that when they get past the traps then the witches are still, y’know, witches, so they have to deal with that. But Hal and Oberon are doing okay, so I guess the death of one of your friends is still A-okay.

Our protagonist asks what Flidais did to the werewolves anyway, and Flidais says that she subdued them because Atticus wasn’t doing anything about it. She seems to not realize that he can’t do that by himself, which is weird considering from Atticus’s comments this is a pretty tricky and nigh-impossible piece of magic, one that Flidais manages only because controlling animals is her speciality. She also comments that when she leaves, they’ll wake up and be kind of upset, so it’s a bummer for Atticus that he can’t control them the same way.

Also, Atticus tells her that even if he could control them like that, he wouldn’t, but we all know that’s a lie as he’s willing to sacrifice one of them to get what he wants.

And we get this:

They will turn on me merely to vent their spleen.”

“Vent their spleen? Are you trying to quote Master Shakespeare to me again?” She smiled at me, and I began to think of things I really shouldn’t before going into battle. “Because no one in this age speaks of spleen venting.”

“No, you’re right,” I said. “I get my idioms mixed up sometimes. It would be more contemporary to say they’re going to go apeshit on my ass. So what would you suggest?”

Another shot for “What the kids say these days!” Seriously, why is Atticus so insistent that he has to use expressions that he thinks are modern? It’s not like he’s talking to people who care for most of the book. And it’s weird because the modern substitution he uses almost always contain swear words. Again, it’s not bad to use swear words in fiction, but it feels like Hearne’s trying really hard to sound hip and kewl by throwing them in there for no purpose.

And hey! Good to see that having Flidais smile at him is enough for Atticus to get a boner right now. He’s about to go into a Boss Fight with his worst enemy for the last two thousand years, and he’s just been told that one of his werewolf friends is probably going to die. But pfffft, Flidais is hawt, amirite? So naturally he’s thinking of having sex with her!

[Shouldn’t it be ‘vent their spleens’ anyway? It isn’t as if the werewolves all share a single spleen.]

[And why ‘apeshit’ anyway? It doesn’t fit with the mental image of, y’know, WOLVES. It brings to mind a different picture altogether.]

I also don’t understand how werewolves work in this universe? Apparently, when they wake up they’ll be so angry they won’t hesitate to attack Atticus? Are werewolves just raging murder monsters all the time then? I complain a lot about ‘Show Don’t Tell,’ but in this case, it’s like… showing us in a situation that’s vague and explicitly out of the ordinary. This? Werewolves getting magically fainted by a goddess? It doesn’t ever happen, in Atticus’s experience, so it’s not a great measure for understanding how werewolves work.

Flidais decides to [sigh] Make It Easy! for Atticus some more by telepathically telling the werewolves what’s up before waking them, and telling them that if their sacrificed companion manages to survive, she will help pull silver out of his or her body! Thanks, I guess. The werewolves growl but don’t do much else, and after Flidais leaves they dash towards the bad guys and battle—

[sits up abruptly]

You know, this fight would be much easier with guns.

We’ve talked a bit before in the comments, I think, about how really good urban fantasy makes use of the modern setting. Both Dresden Files and Skulduggery Pleasant have heroes that use magic, melee weapons, AND guns. Granted, against a lot of threats, they don’t always work, but in many situations they do, or at least slow down magical enemies enough to buy some time. Not in Iron Druid Chronicles apparently! We’re not given any explanation as to why Atticus doesn’t use a gun, other than the excuse he feeds the Leprechaun in his BS story when she asks: that he’s Irish. Apparently Atticus thinks Irish people don’t use guns. Considering that at the time he’s talking to someone who was involved with the Irish Troubles, you’d expect her reaction would be like this:

Now, with Atticus having unlimited time and funds, his constant lectures about practicality versus honor, and little regard to the law, he could very easily get his hands on some firearms and night vision goggles. He doesn’t need to go through all of this: all he has to do is get a rifle with a scope, find the witches in the clearing, and headshot them one by one. Aenghus Og, as Brighid mentioned and we see later in this scene, is wearing magical armor, so that won’t work on him, but you could definitely take out the witches. Most of them don’t have those magical protections on them.

Or heck! Use a bow! Surely with his Druid powers, he could snipe further than a mortal archer. And we know that Atticus can shoot a bow: after all, he explicitly tells us that Flidais taught him horseback archery so he could join the Golden Horde. And he grabs a bow to hunt enemies in the very next book!

If anybody was sensible, the situation would be approached like this: Atticus and his friends shoot around the assembled witches, taking out as many as they can. Then Atticus turns into an owl, flies over the traps, lands in front of Aenghus, fights him, and then BOOM! Plot solved. If the writer were any good, he’d come up with excuses for that not to happen, to preserve drama, but instead we’re just… running in because that’s how you approach Boss Fights, I guess. The idea of using ranged weaponry doesn’t even come up.

The werewolves run ahead of them because they’re in full-on Rage Mode.

But for Gunnar and the rest of them, this wasn’t about saving a pack member so much as saving face. No one could be allowed to mess with the Pack and not suffer retribution—with, perhaps, the exception of Flidais.

Why?! Why are werewolves supposed to be this macho?! I get it, they’re half animal, but the fact of it is that the animal half is of a creature best known for using teamwork and strategy to take down their prey. All of them running straight at the enemy with little regard to their own safety is the exact opposite of that!

But nope! Can’t be thinking about these things. Instead, werewolves are just angry Macho Men. Laksha even comments that being angry makes them stronger. For Reasons.

They get close, and Laksha says she’s going to fight Radomila now, as they’re near enough now and the werewolves could use some help, and draws herself a circle in the dirt. Atticus continues on ahead alone to catch up with the werewolves. He finds the werewolf that tripped the trap.

It was hard to miss, because there was a werewolf moaning pitiably on the ground, with silver needles sticking out of him like S&M acupuncture.

I’m sorry, what?! You see someone stuck full of needles, and your first thought for comparison… is a sex thing? Not, like, a pincushion, which I think is the simile anyone else would have gone with? You jump immediately to sadist/masochist sex play?! We’ve talked about Atticus having a one-track mind, but… one of his friends is full of deadly needles, and his mind compares this to a sex thing.

And who was the wolf who drew the short straw? We don’t know for sure, but Atticus thinks that it’s Dr. Snorri Jodursson. That’s right, the Pack’s doctor is the one who was chosen to get himself possibly killed. You know, the doctor who the Pack employs to help them and Atticus in times of trouble? Who pays a team of doctors to keep his supernatural clients out of the public record? Yeah, that guy.

Now is it just me, or is this possibly the stupidest decision the Tempe Pack has made in the book? Letting their healer get in a potentially fatal situation? He’s the last guy you want to get killed. Atticus is confused by it too, not because logic but because Snorri was pretty high-ranking in the pack. But he doesn’t care, ‘cause he just moves on with a quick “I would never understand pack politics.” Never mind that the guy who stitched him up a few chapters ago, and is meant to be a friend, I guess, is bleeding out right there. Nope! Not important.

And hey, isn’t it handy that the werewolves got here first? Because out of the six witches present, four of them are already dead when Atticus arrives on the scene! How convenient! The only two left are Emilya and Radomila, the ones we actually care about. Three other werewolves have been injured, and Atticus tells us that they’re not doing so hot, but we don’t get much detail other than that.

Radomila’s a miniboss, so she’s in a cage lined with silver doing her spells. This would be fixed with a ranged weapon. Emilya runs away, and the werewolves are about to follow her, but then realize that she’s only leading them to the perimeter traps, so they don’t pursue and she gets away to be a pain in the next book.

It was time for me to act.

YA THINK?! This chapter book has been other people doing stuff for you, including getting killed! It’s far past time you did something!

There was nothing more they could do—I sincerely doubted they would be able to take on Aenghus Og, and last long. I doubted I could either, but I had some hope.

…what? Where is this coming from? Since when has Atticus expressed anything but the upmost confidence in his own abilities compared to Aenghus? He keeps telling and showing us that he can curbstomp every enemy that gets in his way. He’s only been vaguely nervous about Aenghus Og coming for him in Tempe, but he’s done nothing to actually prepare himself other than go about his day and talk to people he knows around town. And now he’s telling us, “Oh, I don’t know if I’ll be able to beat him

NO! Let’s not act like there’s any fear of failure here. You know and I know that what’s going to happen is that they’re going to fight in a way that shows just how much more TEH AWESOMEZ Atticus is than Aenghus. It wouldn’t surprise me if Atticus threw in the word ‘AWESOMEZ’ because he thinks people say that nowadays, although he’d also put a F-bomb there too.

Anyhow, Aenghus Og is there, clad head-to-toe in silver-plated armor, apparently doing… who knows while the werewolves were slaughtering witches. To be fair, they can’t even touch him, because his armor is silver-plated. There’s a detailed description of his armor too, if you care: Corinthian helmet, silver gorget, chain skirt, and some silver spurs. Atticus calls the spurs “a surreal mash-up of medieval armor and American spaghetti westerns” which is weird, ‘cause… well, medieval knights also used spurs. As did the ancient Celts, in fact.

He’d planned to involve the Tempe Pack all along—for many months it would seem, because that suit of armor had to be a fairly recent commission… It spoke to me of a level of connivance that chilled the marrow of my bones—when he found out where I was, he had known I would involve the Pack through my lawyers… He had outplayed me with the witches from the beginning, had two different police departments playing fetch for him, and had anticipated or even counted on a pack of werewolves showing up tonight: What else had he thought of ahead of time? What was he doing with that fire pit, and what was Radomila up to?

[yawn] Oh, I’m sorry, am I supposed to care what he’s saying? Because I don’t. This part is supposed to make Aenghus Og feel like a credible villain, but that doesn’t change that he has been on page for one chapter and he hasn’t said or done anything we haven’t already been told he’s going to do. He hasn’t said anything at all actually.

This moment is meant to convey to the audience how devious Aenghus is, how he’s been planning this for months and he’s a perfect manipulator. Except Atticus has walked through all of Aenghus’s minions at a leisurely pace and has refused to take him seriously. It’s just now that Aenghus is in front of Atticus that our protagonist is worried about him. And as we’ve discussed, Aenghus’s plans have all been really stupid. If he wanted to kill Atticus that bad, all he had to do was hire someone to shoot him. That’s it! That’s all! We’ve even seen him telepathically talk Fagles into shooting Atticus: why didn’t he do that with a bunch of gunmen?

And hey, if Aenghus has known about Atticus being in Tempe for months, why did he send that scouting party of faeries at the beginning of the novel? The first chapter? That served no purpose other than to start the book with an easily-won fight scene.

This all falls flatter than a pancake.

So what’s Aenghus doing with the fire? Why he’s summoning stuff! First comes Death, riding a pale horse, given no description other than being a hooded figure on a pale horse. Because Hearne has no creativity. Atticus explains that because the Christian personification of Death is here personally, then his deal with the Morrigan won’t save him. If he gets killed, Death will take him to the afterlife, Morrigan or no Morrigan. Atticus begins to wonder if the Morrigan had planned for this, but I don’t care.

He also notices that Aenghus is drawing up a lot of power from the Earth, actually killing the plant life around him, and Atticus is actually upset about this because as a Druid he’s supposed to care about this I guess. This really makes him mad, too. Atticus acts like this is some sort of perverse use of magic, because Druids are supposed to protect the Earth, and screwing with power like this “was solid proof that his priorities had widely diverged from the old faith, and he had bound himself to darkness.”

Dude. You’re the one who made an amulet that makes him deadly to faeries to touch, breaking the rules of magic. And you sold the secrets of that amulet to the Morrigan, the goddess of violent death and war. You just let the guy who stitched you up get shot full of deadly needles FOR YOU without raising any objections. Don’t claim the moral high ground here.

If I were to die tonight,

You won’t. We all know you won’t. We’d know that even if this wasn’t the first in a series. We know that Hearne won’t give you any trouble.

it would be a death any Druid would be proud of—not fighting on behalf of some petty Irish king’s wounded pride or his yearning for power over a small island in the great wide world, but fighting on behalf of the earth, from which all our power derives and from which all our blessings spring.

Stop claiming you have some sort of moral reason for doing this! Atticus is here because they kidnapped his dog! It’s not like protecting nature has been something he’s cared about before now either. In his civilian life, it’s not like we see Atticus promoting clean energy, or conservation efforts, or recycling, or growing a sustainable environmentally-friendly garden. No, he’s been a regular slimeball, hunting in public parks, stealing municipal funds, selling drugs to college kids, and doing everything he can to benefit himself. He doesn’t step out of his comfort zone until he’s forced to.

So no, Hearne, don’t try to spin Atticus as some environmentally-conscious eco-warrior. He’s not. He’s just some douchebag villain you’re barely even trying to spin as a hero.

Atticus leaps at Aenghus Og, sword held high and screaming at the top of his lungs. And then demons start crawling out of the fire pit, because of course they do and that’s the end of the chapter.

Have a happy holiday season, guys!

Comment [11]

Have you had a Merry Christmas? A great holiday season? Good, because we’re back with more Hounded.

Before we get started: my friend who did the spork of Tiger’s Curse and Tiger’s Quest has started sporking Tiger’s Voyage, the third book in that series. So go check that out!

Now on to the main event!

The opening of Chapter 24 has… this bit. And it gets to me. Irrationally so. In the grand scheme of things in this book, it means absolutely nothing. It doesn’t really change the Plot. It’s a throwaway comment. But… look, let me just show you, okay?

So demons starting popping out of Aenghus’s fiery hole and Atticus is describing how they look. The gist of it is that they tend to look more like Hieronymous Bosch paintings than stereotypical versions of demons. And so we open with this:

People in this part of the world like to envision demons as fiery red creatures with horns sprouting from their foreheads and barbed, whiplike tails. If they really want to vent their spleens about the evil of heck and sin, they add on goats’ legs and invariably point out the cloven hooves, in case you missed them. I’m not sure who came up with that—I think it was some feverish, sex-starved monk in Europe during the Crusades, and I tried to miss as much of that as I could by passing the time in Asia

It’s because they’re satyrs.

The reason that demons are classically depicted with horns and cloven hooves is because they’re meant to look like satyrs and fauns. Or specifically, like the Greek god Pan. This is basic. The Them, the group of children in Good Omens, got this one right and they’re explicitly a group of not-very-well-informed children.Yet Atticus doesn’t get this. Hearne apparently didn’t get this.

[takes a swig of apple juice]

I’m going to rant a bit here. Feel free to skip.

This isn’t… he didn’t even need to look this up! If all you know from mythology is stuff you’d seen mentioned in Chronicles of Narnia or heck, if all of it was stuff you’d heard from a guy named Jack Schitt, you would know enough to figure this out. Satyrs are nature spirits of the wild places and mountains, the locations which, in Jewish folklore, where demons were often said to hang out. It didn’t help that in Greco-Roman mythology, satyrs and fauns were always chasing after (often unwilling) maidens, were usually depicted as sexually aroused with exaggerated genitals, and having sex with animals. In a religion and culture that had very strict rules on sexuality like, say, Judaism in the ancient world, this checks off a lot of boxes for ‘Things that are Clearly Demonic.’

[It’s not until we get into the Romantic movement, and the idealization of pastoral life, where European writers and artists started thinking of fauns and satyrs as more of benevolent personifications of wild open spaces rather than weird sexual deviants. Hence all the happy benevolent fauns and satyrs you see in fantasy nowadays, like in the works of C.S. Lewis or Brandon Mull.]

And goats have a theological history of being painted as symbols of sinfulness! This isn’t just Jesus’s ‘Sheep and the Goats’ thing, a parable where he likens the faithful to sheep and the damned to goats, although that didn’t help. You also have in Hebrew Scripture the idea of a scapegoat, a goat ritually sacrificed that contains all the sins of the community.

Then you have Pan/Faunus, the satyr/faun god of the wild and of shepherds. And hey, both Christians and Jews use the analogy of a shepherd for their God. So a pagan of shepherds that engaged in what they considered sexual deviancy and violence was a hideous parody of their God. And this was a god that was worshipped by the people who conquered Israel: the Macedonians and the Romans. If you were a religious person oppressed by a powerful government that worshipped a gross and twisted joke of your deity, wouldn’t you be inclined to view that god as an image of the incarnation of evil?

And yeah, maybe you didn’t know all of this [waves hands at the above], but you probably worked out that the image of demons with hooves and horns had something to do with satyrs, and that the roots of it are probably very ancient indeed. But Atticus, an immortal Druid who interacts with mythological beings all the time, and apparently makes a lot of his money selling books on New Age topics and the occult apparently has no idea where this idea came from, but assumes that it’s from a celibate monk. Why? Because monks need to get laid, obviously. Got to tie this back to how everyone constantly wants sex somehow, don’t we? Atticus projects like that.

Like I said, this is a throwaway line that ultimately doesn’t mean anything in the story. But it betrays how stupid this character is and how stupid the writing of this book is. I am some useless loser who writes sporks for free on the Internet and chugs apple juice, and YOU, Hearne, are a former English teacher. There should not be this much FAIL in basic literary comprehension.

[makes rude hand gestures]

Oh, but we’re not done here. ‘Cause guess what? That whole, ‘I wasn’t in Europe at the time’ thing? Let’s take a look at that. He’s probably referring to the Eastern Crusades, which is what most people in the US or UK think of when they say ‘the Crusades,’ and I don’t think Hearne knows enough about… well, anything to know that there were other Crusades. That’s from the eleventh century or so to the thirteenth. And we know what Atticus was doing for at least part of that time. That’s right, in the tail end of that is around when we start with the Mongol Conquest.

So here is Atticus, an immortal man, telling us, “Yeah, the Crusades were a mess that I wanted no part of. So instead, I hung out in Asia, and while the Crusades were wrapping up, I was helping a man conquer a continent by killing enough people to lower humanity’s carbon footprint.” Can you imagine someone this dense? Can you imagine writing someone this dense? Someone who will casually dismiss the Crusades as a silly conflict he had nothing to do with, but was happily slaughtering people in another part of the world, not for God, or the gods, or for power, or for money, but because he thought it’d be fun. Religious conflict is beneath him, but helping Genghis Khan try to take over the world for kicks? Nah, that’s cool.

[screaming into a pillow]

Atticus is a parasite. He feeds on the excrement of society and dares to mock us for it. How are we supposed to see this man as heroic? He acknowledged injustices throughout history that he could have done something about, only to shrug it off as not his problem, and instead just farts off and kills people for fun. He’s a mindless, moronic bloodthirsty monster at worst, and at best he’s a mindless, moronic bloodthirsty supervillain.

So anyway yeah even though Atticus says it’s ridiculous for demons to look like satyrs, several of the demons that pop out of Aenghus’s fiery hole do anyway, “because it was nearly a contractual obligation by now that some of the appear in that form.” I don’t… get this? I thought mythological/religious beings appeared based on how people believe they look? So shouldn’t they all look like stereotypical versions of demons, rather than some looking like that and others like “a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, or maybe Pieter Brughel the Elder” ? Because most people don’t think of that when thinking of demons at all.

There’s actually a really nice bit describing all the demons. At least it would be, if it weren’t for the final bit.

Some of them flew on leathery wings into the desert night air, with fingerlike talons outstretched to rip into something soft; some of them bubbled across the ground in uneven gaits, owing to the uneven number of legs they had and differing lengths of their limbs; a few of them galloped on those infamous cloven hooves; but all of them, without exception, had lots of sharp, pointy parts, and they stank like ass.

Yeah, this is what we need in what’s meant to be a serious scene. Telling us that “they stank like ass.”

And like a well-written character (NOT), Aenghus isn’t even given any dialogue or mannerisms here; all we’re told is that he points at Atticus and “uttered the Irish equivalent of ‘Sic ‘im, boys!’” Because Hearne gave up a long time ago on writing coherent character motivations or interesting people a long time ago.

A couple of the demons don’t attack Atticus, they just take off because they don’t care about this Plot (I don’t blame them). This makes Aenghus mad (through description, because still no dialogue), but Atticus is all like, “Y u mad, bro? They’re demons mate, wut.” That’s not an actual quote mind you, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was.

Also the werewolves protect Hal and Oberon, so that they’re out of the way of the Boss Fight, I guess. The demons jump Atticus and he uses the Cold Fire spell that Brighid gave him, but apparently he wasn’t braced for how weak it made him and he misses, so the demons all pin him down. He drops the sword, and Hearne finally gives Aenghus Og dialogue, if only to tell Radomila that he’s closing the portal and Atticus has dropped the sword.

Atticus tries to get power from the Earth, but because Aenghus has basically blighted this area to summon demons, it don’t work. One of the demons starts biting his ear off and we get this one short instance where I actually agree with Atticus, even if this joke doesn’t belong in what’s meant to be a serious scene:

…the pain was unspeakable, worse than reading the collected works of Edith Wharton

Nah, man, I hear you. I read two of her books in graduate school. That’d be pretty bad to have to sit through. But like I said, I don’t know if that joke fits right here where you’re fighting off literal demons serving the will of your lifelong nemesis.

This could have been a horrifying scene and one where we actually see the protagonist in a helpless position (his EAR just got ripped off), but it’s all described in such a nonchalant way that’s meant to be… snarky, I guess? There are the random jokes, the flippant descriptions like “bloodsucking schnauzer-mosquito” and just lack of actual terror on Atticus’s part. He gets thrown around a bit, loses his ear, gets his blood sucked out, breaks his wrist, and it should feel important and life-threatening and it doesn’t.

Our protagonist has been beaten and maimed, and it’s all told in the same nonchalant tone. Do you get the problem with this?

It doesn’t help that one of the demons just picks him up and drops him for no apparent reason. See?

Something with blue scales and a steroid habit hauled me up by my leg high into the air, and I saw a giant mouth of gleaming teeth and assumed I would be heading in there momentarily. The bloodsucking schnauzer-mosquito assumed that as well, because it pulled out with a wet pop and flew away. But then I was dropped unceremoniously to the ground, breaking my left wrist in the fall.

Why did it drop him? A couple of paragraphs later, it’s shown that the Cold Fire spell he learned is just now starting to affect them, so maybe it’s that? Still, it’s awfully convenient. Aenghus assumes that he’s dead, for a paragraph at least, because… I don’t know. I was going to say ‘Plot Convenience’ but it’s not even that, because soon after he realizes that Atticus is still alive so it doesn’t actually affect the Plot.

When his demons start exploding from Cold Fire, Aenghus is confused, but quickly works through it.

“What’s happening?” Aenghus asked rhetorically

It’s not rhetorical if he doesn’t know what’s going on. He is asking what’s going on. Not rhetorically.

…then answered like the insufferable ass he was. “Oh, I see. Cold Fire. But that means he must be weak as a kitten. Where is the sword, Radomila?”

W-why…why is this insufferable? I don’t understand this. Aenghus is confused, asks about his confusion, then realizes the answer before someone explains it to him. This is just normal human behavior dude. I get that Atticus is probably just some dick who gets angry about every little thing someone he hates does, no matter how inoffensive, but this just takes the cake. It’s like if someone told you “Have a nice day!” and your internal monologue said something along the lines of, “That presumptuous piece of crap thinks he knows what my day is like!”

Because Hearne understands that there have to be some stakes here, not all the demons are dead, because Cold Fire only works if you’re touching the ground or something. So the flying demons, including the mosquito one, are still doing okay. It’s currently sucking his blood.

Radomila can’t magically detect the sword, because Laksha did some magic BS when she removed the cloak, leading to Aenghus declaring her useless because that’s kind of the whole reason he brought her here. And Atticus is like, “And speaking of Laksha…” so, it JUST SO HAPPENS GUYZ, that while Atticus is thinking about Laksha, the Indian witch manages to finish her spell against Radomila, and Radomila’s head implodes.

No really.

I’m not… going to blockquote that passage here. I imagine most of you guys wouldn’t be too squicked by some intense violence, but still. It seems distasteful? I think it’s supposed to be this awesome moment of “The evil witch who has been bothering our hero the entire book got her just desserts!” But instead it’s “This female character who we don’t know very well and is siding with the bad guy, I guess, for no discernible motivation, has her skull implode.” It feels excessive, not rewarding.

Now that is why I am paranoid about witches getting hold of my blood.

Yeah, so paranoid that when you heard that she maybe got a hold of your sample of her blood to counter her, you didn’t bother to check to make sure.

The blood-sucking mosquito demon backs off because the Morrigan shows up, as a crow out of nowhere, and lands on Atticus’s body. Aenghus Og gets a bit apprehensive about this, understandably, especially since his co-conspirator’s head just burst like a melon. He assumes Atticus did it, too. But Aenghus decides that the Morrigan is there to declare Atticus’s death and eat his eyes or something, because he doesn’t realize how much Plot Armor Atticus is wearing.

Atticus, of course, does know how much Plot Armor he’s wearing. He decides that OF COURSE the Morrigan will side with him, because she doesn’t like Aenghus assuming that the Morrigan will help him out. Being “taken for granted” was apparently “a fatal error” on Aenghus’s part. The Morrigan confirms this telepathically, and she is also apparently offended that Aenghus has “killed this land” for his own power quest as this “betrayed his most sacred bond”. And again, this emphasis about protecting the land itself has never been mentioned before it became Plot Relevant.

But who cares! The Morrigan promises to help as long as Atticus doesn’t tell anyone about it. I mean, there are a bunch of demons here, and the werewolves are all here, but Hearne forgot about them so they don’t really exist in this scene.

Since the land’s corrupted by demonic taint, or something, he can’t draw energy from the Earth. But no worries! The Morrigan’s lending Atticus some of her power! His wounds close up, though his torn off ear doesn’t grow back. She even agrees to take down the mosquito demon while he’s doing his Boss Fight! Isn’t that convenient?

The Morrigan even drops some exposition! The sword Aenghus Og is carrying is called ‘Moralltach.’ It’s a one-hit KO sword, in that if it manages to land a hit, it kills instantly. Specifically it has to be a solid hit, not a grazing blow or something lame (because we can’t make this TOO risky, amirite?), but that means you have to avoid getting hit.

Also now is when Atticus tells us the superpowers that Fragarach, his own sword has. Yes, right before the Final Boss Fight, Atticus sits down and tells us what the McGuffin that the bad guy’s spent the entire book trying to get his hands on actually does. It can control winds, which is an incredible power, but Atticus says it’s not as useful in the desert (what???). If you put it at someone’s throat and ask them a question, they are forced to always tell the truth—

Wait.

…is this the inspiration behind the Mortal Sword in Cassandra Clare’s work? We talked about how compelling people to tell the truth is a dumb power for a sword, but is it actually based off of this thing from Irish myth? [shrugs] I dunno. Someone call Apep and ask for his input.

Also, it’s basically the Sword of Truth. Huh.

Atticus doesn’t know why Aenghus wants Fragarach when he’s already got his own magic sword, but that’s dumb, because they do different things. Fragarach cuts through anything. Moralltach can just one-hit kill. That’s… a good sword, but less useful overall. Atticus, a two-thousand year old man, cannot figure out even though it took me less than half a minute to work it out.

That being said, if we’re at the Final Battle, and the protagonist has all the information of the villain’s plans, intentions and resources, and he tells the audience, “This plan makes no sense!” maybe you should rethink your Plot.

So the Morrigan hops off of Atticus and flies at Aenghus, and poops in his face.

No really.

I recast night vision on myself and turned my head just in time to see the Morrigan let loose with what may politely be called a “white blossom,” square in the visor of Aenghus Og’s helmet. He cursed and clawed at his face and the Morrigan croaked her laughter.

This is supposed to be the final battle.

You want to know a secret? This isn’t even the stupidest thing in this scene.

Atticus takes off his shirt to clean his sword with (no really). He smirks psychotically as he does so (no really). He then decides “that amusement was not the proper frame of mind… to cultivate right now” and grimaces, I guess.

Forty yards away from me stood the man who had done me—and the earth—more wrong than any other.

Except again, what he’s done to Atticus is pretty tame compared to what Atticus has done to others. Aenghus Og just sent people to kill Atticus. Atticus has killed countless people who were just in his way for convenience’s sake. I know that this has probably gotten old by this point, because it seems that every chapter I pull out a steadily growing list of horrible things that the protagonist did. But seriously! Atticus has the gall to act as if he’s some innocent guy who has been tormented by Aenghus Og his entire immortal life, but instead it reads like Aenghus Og is this man with legitimate beef, even if he goes about it all wrong, and Atticus is just this monster who cannot comprehend not being a dick to everyone.

He removed his helmet, wiped the crow shit from his eyes

I don’t have much to add to this, other than: this is what I have to deal with in this book.

I read this book so that you don’t have to.

Honor my sacrifice.

“Siodhachan O Suileabhain,” he sneered, drawing Moralltach out of its sheath. “You’ve led me a right merry chase, and if there were any bards left to sing of it, they’d probably write a ballad about you. A proper one where the hero dies at the end, and the moral is don’t ever fuck with Aenghus Og!”

This is our villain.

Honestly, I love villainous breakdowns. I love that bit in the story where the villain, after fully realizing how much their plans have been thwarted, just lose it and go nuts and snap and go all out. Because all those elegant plans? Screw them! Just gotta kill this guy!

Except we haven’t been seeing Aenghus Og this entire book. He has only just showed up on-page, and we’re given the bare minimum on what kind of guy he is, or what his motivations are other than that he wants power. Why? [shrugs] I dunno. So this breakdown means nothing to us. The book tells us he’s losing it because spit is flying from his mouth as he rants, but having never seen this guy before now, for all we know he was always like this. We just get this rabid angry man who talks like almost every other character.

I mock the Leprechaun because she’s a terrible caricature, but at least she sounds distinct from other characters in the book.

Aenghus demands the sword back and—

This guy is an epic douche. Kick his shiny ass, Atticus, Oberon said.

ISN’T THIS BOOK SO FUNNY?! LAUGH, DAMNIT!!

Atticus declares that Aenghus has “broken Druidic law” by blighting the Earth and “opening a gate to hell” (which still isn’t capitalized for some reason), and that the punishment is to be sentenced to death. Aenghus claims that “Druidic law doesn’t apply here” only for Atticus to shoot back that it applies wherever he goes. This would make more sense if we knew, like, anything about Druidic law or how it works.

Aenghus tells him he’s got no authority to enforce Druid law here, and Atticus responds by saying his authority is in the sword, because… Might Makes Right with Druids, I guess? He waves it to blow a gust of wind at Aenghus, which “blew him backward onto his silver-plated derriere.”

LAUGH DA— it’s not worth the effort at this point. I’m tired.

You will respect my authori-tah! Oberon said, in a passable imitation of Eric Cartman.

A South Park reference.

Hearne put a South Park reference here.

…

THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FINAL BATTLE AGAINST HIS LIFELONG ENEMY, AND HEARNE SHOVED A SOUTH PARK REFERENCE IN HERE WHAT THE ACTUAL—

[gets dragged away from desk before more things get broken]

[several hours later, sipping from a gallon bottle of apple juice]

This book… I take comfort that it’s not, like, a massive critically-acclaimed novel lauded as genre-busting or having saved the genre. But it’s disheartening that I see this series on a lot of recommendation lists for people who like urban fantasy. I get that there aren’t that many high profile urban fantasy books, but this book… we’re in what should be the final battle, and what are we getting instead of them just fighting? What happens to the main antagonist instead of anything dramatic?

A goddess pooped in his face. He got knocked on his butt. And to cap it off Oberon makes a South Park reference.

This isn’t even a joke! It’s a reference! You can’t even give it the excuse of “It’s here to lighten the mood!” As if the mood wasn’t already a joke. Hearne just stopped the action so that he can turn to the reader and say, “Hey, you’ve watched South Park haven’t you? So have I! Aren’t I so clever and funny?”

No, you’re not.

[And I actually don’t watch South Park but that’s neither here nor there.]

In summary:

Moving forward, the werewolves are mentioned as sitting back and watching. For Reasons. I’d do the same thing, but we’re meant to believe they’re actually friends with Atticus or something, willing to die for him ‘cause he said so, so it’s a bit off. Atticus stands his ground, and Aenghus throws some hellfire at him. It doesn’t kill him because his amulet, or some other bulshimflarkus, look, I don’t care. If you’re wondering how much Hearne doesn’t care either, Atticus compares it to a Hot Pocket that you’ve picked up before it’s cooled down.

Because this doesn’t kill Atticus, Aenghus is flabbergasted, again, and is screaming and frothing at the mouth, again, because this is what he does instead of having a personality. Death, who is still sitting on his pale horse, in case you were wondering, starts laughing and everyone’s weirded out by that, and Atticus chooses that moment to attack.

I wanted one of those fabulous anime moments where the hero stiks the sword into the bad guy’s guts and everything quivers, even the sweat droplets, and the bad guy vomits blood and says something a tiny surprised voice, like, “That really was a Hattori Hanzo sword,” right before he dies. Alas it was not to be.

Atticus watches anime?

See, ‘cause this entire book, he’s been mocking nerd culture. But right now, he makes this comment, and now I think Hearne just can’t decide whether or not this character is a nerd or not. And again, from the outset he makes a point to tell us, “Real fights aren’t like they are in movies!” in a disdainful tone, as if we’re too dumb to realize that and movie fight scenes are stupid. Except here, where Atticus says, “Man, I wish this was like anime!”

Make up your mind.

So they sword fight, and Aenghus actually can fight because “unlike Bres,” Aenghus “had serious battlefield cred” and who talks like this? Seriously? I know that in Dresden Files the protagonist makes off-hand commentary about weight class and such in fights, but those actually feel as if the character’s explaining complicated magical ideas of power in terms the layperson would understand. This is not that. “Battlefield cred”?

Aenghus keeps up his defense, and Atticus summarizes his cursing with an oh-so-appropriate “blah blah blah” to indicate how seriously we should be taking this and… uh… wait a second.

Can’t Fragarach cut through anything?

So why isn’t it cutting through Aenghus Og’s sword? I know that the meta, Doylist answer is “Because Hearne wanted a cool sword fight,” but there’s no explanation given in text as to why Atticus’s sword isn’t cutting straight through Aenghus Og’s as it should. It’s a sword that can cut through anything. This scene should be going very differently.

Have you read The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milan? It’s going to remain unfinished because the author passed away in 2018, but it’s very good, because it’s a fantasy series where the knights ride dinosaurs. There’s a scene in the climax of the second book, The Dinosaur Knights, in which one of the protagonists duels an enemy carrying a scythe that can cut through anything. Said protagonist is mentioned as being a master swordsman, but everyone expects the villain to cut through his sword easily. Except he doesn’t—because it explicitly tells us that Karyl is deflecting his enemy’s weapon by the flat of the blade, so the edge doesn’t cut his sword.

Here, there is no such explanation given. Atticus doesn’t cut through Aenghus Og’s sword for Reasons.

The two keep sword fighting, until Atticus realizes something: “were were both fighting in the old Irish patterns—which was perhaps all he knew.” Yeah, turns out that in two thousand years, Aenghus didn’t pick up a single flick of the wrist of any sort of martial art that wasn’t ancient Celtic sword fighting! And Atticus, on the other hand, has spent a lot more time killing people in different ways across different continents.

I hadn’t spent centuries in Asia and the last ten years sparring with a vampire to fall into old ruts like that.

On the one hand, this makes sense. Atticus has experience with plenty of styles of combat so of course he can come up with ways to counter a guy who only knows one. But on the other hand, this is really, really stupid. Because apparently this guy who was planning on taking over his pantheon, cutting deals with literal demons and has the ability to mind control people, didn’t bother to learn a new style of fighting in two thousand years. Furthermore, it just reeks of how a stupid person thinks martial arts works. It reminds me of the BBC Robin Hood where one character is just so badass because he learned “the deadly arts of the Far East.”

That’s basically what Atticus is saying here! “I learned martial arts in Asia, so of course I’m a badass!” What martial arts did he learn? [shrugs] Y’know, those… ones. From Asia. Hearne doesn’t tell us it’s wushu, or kendo, or karate, or taekwondo, or Muay Thai, or anything I learned from five seconds on Wikipedia. It’s just those martial arts he learned in Asia and practiced with an Icelandic vampire.

And never mind that knowing martial arts don’t make you invincible! Never mind that Europe has a lot of martial arts too! Longsword fencing, wrestling, boxing, savate… just because they don’t have Asian names and don’t get fetishized by American action movies, doesn’t mean they aren’t just as legitimate and effective as the ones you know! But nope, Atticus was in Asia, because he wasn’t one of those mindless sheep slaughtering people in the Crusades, he was busy slaughtering people for the Mongols and other would-be world conquerers.

If you’re curious, you can find a list of martial arts from around the world on Wikipedia.

Anyhow they sword fight, and Atticus cuts into Aenghus Og’s arm, and he bellows in rage because that’s the only trait Hearne gave this character. He doesn’t have enough time to heal his arm.

“You’ve hounded me for centuries,” I growled. “And you might have hounded me for many more, but your petty jealousy of Brighid has brought you to this end.”

“Your end, you mean!” Aenghus roared, completely unhinged by my reducing all his elaborate schemes to a case of sibling rivalry.

Is it? Sibling rivalry, I mean?

Because I really don’t know. Brighid only off-handedly mentions that Aenghus Og is her brother. We get absolutely nothing about Aenghus’s motivations or his relationship with any of the other gods, much less his own sister. It’s just thrown in there. I’m not saying that villains need to be sympathetic, but is it too much to ask that they have actual personalities?

Why did Aenghus Og want to rule the Tuatha de Danann? What would he get out of it? Why did he have such an antagonistic relationship with his sister, the queen? And why did he go through this convoluted scheme that required the magic sword?

[shrugs] I dunno. I bet Hearne doesn’t either. But if you’re wondering where the title of this book comes from, it’s right there.

Oh and Atticus’s response to this is “NO, U!”

“No, I meant your end,” I said.

LAUGH DAMNIT!

But I knew how he fought now—the same old way. I saw it coming, and I knew I was faster, and stronger too.

Hey, isn’t it great when the protagonist is smarter and stronger and faster and more powerful than the antagonist in every way? So the Final Battle isn’t about an underdog, or a small, outgunned good guy triumphing over a greater evil, but instead about one big crushing his enemies? And by ‘great’ I mean ‘terrible.’ I like when we see a hero win using his own strengths and traits in unexpected ways. Whether it’s the Power of Love, or outsmarting an overconfident villain, or relying on the villain’s character flaws… those are all good endings because they make sense. But here? Atticus gets a power boost from the Morrigan, so he’s just MOAR POWAHFUL than Aenghus Og and quite easily dispatches him. I’m tempted to say it’s like levelling up in a video game, but in video games you actually have to work to level up. Atticus doesn’t even do that.

Atticus lops off Aenghus’s head, gives his “NO, U!” line, and then Death picks up Aenghus’s head and rides into the pit to Hell. Aenghus is still kind of alive or conscious, I guess? Is it because he’s a god? Hearne doesn’t tell us. Aenghus Og is horrified, because he assumed that if he got killed, he’d be taken to Tir na nOg by the Morrigan where he was going to be reborn, or something? Look, I’m guessing because the book doesn’t tell me. But instead he’s dragged to Hell.

For Reasons.

And this ends the chapter. I think we’re supposed to be cheering now? I’m grateful this is almost over, but I can’t help but think this is a poor Final Battle for a fantasy novel. The mooks gave Atticus more trouble than the actual main villain of the piece. And again, Atticus wins not because of some cleverness on his part, nor from exploiting the villain’s weakness that he knew about beforehand, or from a character strength that Atticus has. He wins because it just so happens that the Morrigan gives him a power boost to win, and that Aenghus Og is a rabid idiot that can’t match Atticus’s skillz.

I get that this is the first book in the series, but the writing and plotting and character development here is just a mess! There’s little motivating Atticus except that Aenghus Og is kind of in his way, and despite his proclamation that he’s going to be more proactive, this Final Battle is launched because Aenghus had his lapdog and Oberon kidnapped, rather than because Atticus was seeking out his enemy. And when they meet, it’s barely a contest at all, because Atticus is just so much more powerful and smarter and faster than Aenghus anyway; turns out that Aenghus Og is a moron! Meaning that this entire millennia-long feud between them could have been ended at any time if Atticus had just gotten off of his butt and fought him centuries ago.

There’s little drama, little tension, and there’s certainly no reward to this victory. It’s just… there. It doesn’t mean anything.

But don’t worry. We’re almost finished.

Comment [6]

Oh hey, we’re on the last chapter and the epilogue! Finishing this book is like a birthday present I’ve given to myself, almost a week early.

Aenghus Og was just dragged to Hell. So how do we open the next chapter following Atticus’s lifelong enemy getting so morbid an end? How does Hearne begin the final chapter before the epilogue? What’s the very next sentence we get to read?

All right, that’s over. Now get me off this chain and buy me a steak, Oberon said.

Hearne can’t even pretend to care about his own Plot, can he? “All right, that’s over”? Can you get any more flippant about your story?

Atticus breaks Hal free first, so that the werewolves can chill about one of their own being tied up. The silver chains are apparently too thick to easily break with magic, and Atticus sits and wonders about who has the key, when with half a brain would tell him to use that magic sword he’s got that can cut through anything. Anyhow, after the hood is removed from his head, Hal reveals a Plot Twist:

It was Flidais who kidnapped the two of them in the first place!

“What? I thought that was Emily.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No. She drove car. Flidais talked us into … backseat.”

When asked why he didn’t mention this before, Oberon points out that Atticus has been telling him to stay quiet so he could concentrate. He then asks Hal who has the key to these chains, and Hal says it’s the splatted witch. Atticus then goes wandering through the gore and guts to find it, which is dumb, because he has a sword that can cut through anything.

[That weird spacing between the ellipsis and the words isn’t me—that’s in the text. I don’t know why it’s like that.]

Imagine writing a man so dumb that when he has a sword that can cut through anything, and a friend chained to a tree with a lock, he can’t think of anything to do but try to find the key. There’s no mention of the lock or the chains being magicked at all; Atticus is that stupid.

Hal tells Atticus he’ll turn into a wolf as soon as he gets free, because he’s “wound up” and in this book series werewolves are like the Hulk. Atticus tells him not to go after Flidais, because she promised to help healing the wounded. He orders him instead to go after Emilya, specifically bringing back her head. Why Hal should have to follow any orders Atticus gives are never really explained, other than it makes things easy and this world exists to serve Atticus.

The Morrigan drops in, appearing as a naked woman again because Hearne desperately thinks that will make us interested in this book. She informs Atticus that with Radomila’s death, all the traps around the hill have conveniently evaporated so they’re safe from any of that. Hal is freed, he turns into a wolf and he and his friends all go to hunt down Emilya.

The Morrigan tells Atticus she killed that escaped blood-sucking demon for him. He asks her about their deal, if she ever told Aenghus that she’d never take him, or ever come for him, both of which the Morrigan takes as sexual comments and says that she plans on sleeping with him because this book, like the universe, is designed to cause me pain. Yes, the final chapter has another goddess promising to have sex with Atticus. So he spends this conversation trying to think about baseball, because we’re basically all but told that he’s getting a boner while she whispers in his ear and feels him up.

She confirms that yes, she told Aenghus Og about their deal, so that Aenghus Og would summon Death, so that Death would take Aenghus Og to Hell and she would never have to deal with him again. And she says this:

Thus I am eternally revenged for millennia of petty annoyances.

Wow, you’re a dick.

They’ve been enemies for thousands of years, and yet all he’s done to her are… “petty annoyances”? They’re gods, for God’s sake! Their feuds should be massive, epic, sweeping things, but the way the Morrigan puts it, she just hates the guy because he’s annoying. So this doesn’t read like the Morrigan outwitting a longtime enemy, it reads like the Morrigan sentenced this guy to Hell because she hates that he whistles when he walks down the street.

Also! Smith and I discussed this in the comments for the last chapter, because Aenghus Og assumes that the Morrigan is taking his side when she appears. Already we know that’s dumb: after all, the Morrigan was the one who told Atticus to take the magic sword from him in the first place, thousands of years ago. AND Aenghus Og knows that the Morrigan and Atticus are friends; this is established in Chapter 2, because the reason she arrives at his shop to warn him that Aenghus Og is coming is because he hinted as much to her. Except now we’re told that Aenghus Og knew that the Morrigan and Atticus had a deal that she wouldn’t take him to the afterlife, and he went through the trouble of bringing in Death to make sure Atticus stayed dead. So why would Aenghus Og in the last chapter think that the Morrigan would take his side? There’s no reason to it, other than to make him stupid.

Atticus then asks why did Aenghus Og want Fragarach so badly, and again, if you’re in the last chapter and the protagonist is still asking what the villain’s motivations are, maybe you should rethink your book! If it was a mystery he was trying to figure out the entire time, it’d make more sense, but it’s not; Atticus idly wonders why a villain bent on domination might want a sword that can cut through anything how is this man this stupid?!

The Morrigan tells him that there are people in Faerie who think that Atticus, who is neither Tuatha De Danann nor a faerie, has no right to the sword, and that Brighid is too liberal for letting him have it. Or something.

What?!

This isn’t… this makes no sense! We’re told why Aenghus himself wanted the sword earlier! The Morrigan was the one who told him to pick it up! And now the book’s telling us, “Oh, well this is actually a part of some massive inter-factional conflict separate from Aenghus Og’s take-over-the-pantheon Plot that the entire book’s been about!” It’s like that bit at the end of books that tells us that the Plot of this one was actually Part of Something Bigger, except that Something Bigger doesn’t jive with what we’ve already been told.

I like the idea of the Plots of stories being part of Something Bigger, but only when it makes sense! This isn’t remotely hinted at before this point; the politics of Tir na nOg have been mostly a mystery, other than that Aenghus Og was planning a takeover, with only Bres as backup, and nobody else we’ve heard of (Brighid, Flidais, Morrigan, Mac Lir) seemed to be okay with it! Atticus has not cared one bit about the politics of the gods he worships but right now it’s set up like it’s going to be an overarching plot.

So the Morrigan is about to start jerking Atticus off (I’m not kidding) when she senses Flidais arriving, so she disappears and the not-hunting goddess arrives. She goes to heal the doctor werewolf, but two other werewolves are dead, which makes Atticus sad becaus—oh wait, no it doesn’t, he’s perfectly swell letting people he calls friends die for him when it’s convenient.

Flidais heals a couple of werewolves when Atticus gets angry about her kidnapping his two friends. She explains that she did it only under Brighid’s orders. He’s baffled by this, but Flidais tells him that they both know that he wouldn’t have gotten off his butt and fought Aenghus Og unless his friends dog was in danger. Brighid ensured that her rival was dead.

I was flabbergasted by the extent to which I had been manipulated

I know we’re in his inner monologue, but a bit on-the-nose with telling us directly how he feels, innit?

Atticus, you’re an idiot. The reason Flidais and Brighid manipulated you in this instance is because you would not get off your butt to kill your enemy unless he actually grabbed your dog. That’s the only other thing you care about!

How did he not know he was being used in some capacity? It was obvious from the get go that Flidais was using him for something. Brighid straight-up told him that she wanted him to do something for her. The Morrigan has been using him as a thorn in Aenghus Og’s side from the get-go. And now Atticus is like, “GASP! They used me!” I know he hasn’t been paying attention to anything that isn’t his own dick for the past two thousand years, but C’MON!

Atticus tells us that if he said something else, he’d get in trouble, so he thanks Flidais for the help and she goes off to hunt a demon that escaped.

“Thanks for taking one for the team, Snorri,” I said.

Imagine demanding someone take a bullet for you. NO I WILL NOT GET OVER THIS

Laksha walks up, and Atticus gives her the necklace Radomila had, and promises that he’s planning on giving Granny the money to fly east and find a new meat suit for her, and enough cash to set up a new life for herself. How much money? Why, thirty thousand dollars, of course!

“You have this kind of money to give away?”

I shrugged. “Ten grand just came from the coven. As for the rest, I live simply and I make a killing on long-term investments.

What?!

Atticus can just throw away thirty thousand dollars?! Are you screwing with me?! Long-term investments in what? And he doesn’t live simply; he runs a New Age shop, he lives in a cushy suburban house, buys and sells antique books, and hires expensive lawyers! “Living simply” would be if he lived in a small apartment or in a cabin growing his own food. He does the opposite of that! Atticus has this money because Plot, that’s why. This is terrible writing, guys! You can’t just have your main character pull thirty thousand dollars out of his own butthole!

After that promise, Laksha thanks Atticus and she switches to Grannie, who starts puking because there’s blood and guts everywhere. Atticus is all like, “You have to see how dangerous and gross this world can be!”

…I had lots of help staying alive tonight. By rights I should be dead. And you should know that magic users rarely die peacefully in their sleep… I don’t want you entering into this with any romanticized ideals.

And I like the idea of this but I hate the execution. When Atticus is talking to Granuaile about becoming a Druid and entering the world of magic, he describes the years of hard work that go into it, the horrors of the supernatural world that one has to face, the dangers out there and this all makes sense, and it would be good writing in any sensible story. But this entire Plot our hero has breezed his way through every danger. Atticus can tell his apprentice that she has to be prepared and have her wits about her at all times, but let’s not forget that when the Morrigan appeared in Chapter 2 and warned him that his deadliest enemy was personally going to arrive in town in order to try to kill him once and for all, Atticus’s first reaction was to assume that she screwed up her divination spell, despite knowing that Aenghus Og’s minions had found him.

Atticus barely has to try to do anything in the story. And yes, he’s an immortal, and he’s been around the block a few times, but so have his enemies. So there’s no reason that several of them shouldn’t have presented a challenge. But they don’t. The fae at the beginning? He slaughters a couple of them and leaves the rest to be eaten by a convenient iron elemental that doesn’t appear again in the story. The Fir Bolgs? He and his vampire friend make short work of them. Bres? Kills him without a fight. The witches? The werewolves and Laksha take care of them for him. The demons? Most of them are taken out by a spell that Brighid gave him; the rest he either kills with the magic sword or scared off by the Morrigan, who lends him strength to kill the Big Bad.

Heck, what sets off this entire Plot is an incident in the backstory where the MacGuffin Sword happens to land in front of him, and he just picks it up and runs off! So this schtick about how hard this life can be falls completely flat! It’s apparently a breeze for Atticus. The guy hasn’t had to work since he became a Druid!

And yeah, Atticus can say, “My friends helped out!” but that leaves out that he has someone volunteer to potentially die for him, without a second thought. This sounds like something John Constantine would do, except in Constantine’s case everyone would follow this up with “Wow, you’re such a bastard, John!” And they’d be right! Except no one as much as mentions it to Atticus! Apparently those werewolves that died, and the ones who were injured, are just happy to lay down their lives for him without even being asked!

The werewolves come back carrying Emilya’s head. Grannie wants to not see it, but Atticus insists that she does because “This is part of it.” Her head has aged significantly, as now that she’s dead she’s not using magic to hide her true age. He decides that the remaining witches, those who didn’t side with Radomila, for the record, can use this head as a reminder of what he can do.

Basically he’s keeping the head as a trophy. I remind you that Emilya’s backstory, as told to us earlier, was that she became a witch in this coven after having been saved from Nazis trying to rape her? That’s the beginning of a sympathetic backstory, and here Atticus is waving around her head crowing about how he’s using her head as a way to show how powerful he is.

I don’t know where I’m going with this other than that it’s terrible writing and Atticus is a monster. I’m not saying that you can’t have an interesting villain or antagonist who is traumatized by Nazis; you definitely can! Just look at Magneto in the X-Men films. But Emilya isn’t given interesting characterization. She’s just That Skank Ho that’s mean to Atticus, who just happens to have almost been raped by Nazis. It’s a backstory that doesn’t make any difference in the Plot or in anyone’s character arc, so it might as well have not been there, except now it feels awkward because our hero is using the head of an old woman Nazi survivor as a trophy.

Atticus takes Aenghus’s sword because, screw it, why not have TWO magic swordz, amirite? He says “it now belonged to me by virtue of my victory” which I guess makes sense, but doesn’t read like something a nominally heroic two-thousand-year-old Druid would say, more like the young upstart protagonist that needs his ego taken down a few pegs.

He tells us he dropped Grannie off at her home, then calls Leif to call up his ghoul friends to eat the leftovers (can they eat demon remains?), and then Atticus and Hal come up with a cover story to tell the cops. Basically their story is that after getting shot, Atticus was very distraught and he went to his girlfriend’s house for a couple of days—

Hang on, a couple of days? It hasn’t been that long. As I understand it, the timeline is:

-Got shot, taken to the hospital, and got “patched up”
-Was released that night, spent the night in the park sleeping
-Woke up, went about his business, then went to the Irish pub
-At the pub got the hostage phone call from Emilya
-He and the Wolf Pack make preparations and then go to the park
-They fight the witches and Aenghus Og that night
-It is now the following morning

There is one day that’s not accounted for, and he was out and about in public, either in the bar, the park, or in his neighborhood. So it’s really that night that the police should be wondering about. I think Hearne is assuming that because the police aren’t personally watching him that entire time, they don’t have a clue what he’s up to, as if they lack object permanence or something, but again, he’s been walking around in public with a sword strapped to his back. His whereabouts would be easily accounted for. So him telling the police that he’s been in someone else’s apartment for a couple of days, when they have no reason to think he’s been gone that long, is a crap cover story.

Grannie is going to pretend to be his girlfriend for this cover work, despite them not having dated? People are going to notice that the two of them haven’t really hung out before yesterday. The police could easily walk up to Grannie’s former boss at the bar, Liam, and ask if she’d been dating this guy, and Liam could point out that while those two have been flirting for a while, they haven’t been dating as far as he, or anyone else who regularly goes to this bar can tell (and apparently, this bar has a ton of regulars). Even if Grannie claims that they’ve kept their relationship low-key, it would still be pretty suspicious, and the police already have reason to think Atticus is a liar.

After telling the police he had a nervous breakdown, Atticus calls up Malina to brag in her face that he’s still alive. She’s the leader of the witches who didn’t side against him, but because he hates women witches, Atticus was originally planning on mailing her Emilya’s head. But Malina doesn’t try to threaten Atticus so he actually decides not to do that. He asks her what she plans to do next, and Malina points out that there are actually a lot of low level supernatural threats that her coven has been dealing with under the radar.

Our coven has kept undesirables out of the East Valley for many years now. We have chased off innumerable brujas over the years and a spate of voodoo priests after Katrina hit New Orleans. Last year we quietly took care of a Kali death cult. I also know that there is a group of Bacchants in Vegas that would love to expand here, but we have repulsed every foray into our territory.

Atticus is completely caught off guard. It turns out that this self-described “paranoid” man who has spells out the wazoo and magical vision didn’t notice several dangerous supernatural groups popping in and out of town. It’s mind-boggling how we’re supposed to see Atticus as anything other than an idiot.

Malina and Atticus come to an agreement, to be drawn up in writing by Atticus’s lawyer. Because he decides he doesn’t need to mail Emilya’s head to Malina, he instead decides to go bury it in Mr. Semerdjian’s yard. You remember, his elderly neighbor, who doesn’t like him? Atticus claims it’s because his a mean fuddy duddy who hates his dog and immigrants, but Atticus keeps asking Oberon to poop in his yard, fights monsters in the street in front of him, and has his vampire lawyer mind rape him? Yeah, him. Atticus goes to his yard, uses magic to open a hole under his eucalyptus tree, and buries Emilya’s head there.

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen, harassing senior citizens!

He makes a couple more phone calls, like to Perry the Goth telling him to run the store in his absence, and to the Leprechaun to tell her that he’s still alive. Then when Atticus goes outside to recharge on the ground, the Morrigan reappears—she wants back the strength that she lent him for the fight. She takes it back, and Atticus flops down “like a dead fish.” The Morrigan tells him he’ll be out of it for a couple of days and then buzzes off, and that’s the end of the chapter.

And that’s the final chapter. On to the epilogue!

I wasn’t planning on sporking the epilogue along with the last chapter, but it’s so short that I see no reason why not to. If I sporked it by itself it’d feel pointless. I mean, it is a pointless epilogue, but no need to make the sporking pointless.

So our epilogue finds Atticus with Oberon in the Chiricahua Mountains, relaxing in the desert. They’re hunting, of course, because Atticus can’t really think of anything else to do with his dog other than kill things? Okay, I know that I’m being harsh, and living where I do I know that there are plenty of fine people who hunt as a sport, but it’s a bit weird that last chapter Atticus is getting enraged at the way Aenghus Og is treating the Earth, and the next time we see him he’s out killing wildlife with his dog.

This is what I’d fought and lived for—a world without Aenghus Og in it.

Except that Atticus didn’t fight Aenghus Og until he had to. This statement makes it sound like he’d spent centuries fighting Aenghus Og, but he explicitly hasn’t. In the backstory Atticus has been running away the entire time, and over the course of this book he only stayed because the Plot demanded it. He didn’t put much effort into it either; remember when he told us that his preparation for the Fir Bolgs besieging his house amounted to nothing more than sleeping all night? And even then, he didn’t fight Aenghus Og himself, despite his promise to be more proactive, until his dog and lawyer were kidnapped. Which, as we learned in Chapter 25, was engineered by Brighid through Flidais.

So basically, Atticus didn’t fight the bad guy until the gods made him do it or it was right in front of his face. Atticus’s assertion here that this was the world he’d fought for rings completely hollow. The entire book has been like this (if he’d ever been in any actual danger):

Oberon asks how long they can stay out there, and Atticus wants to stay out there forever, but he can’t, because eventually he’s got to get back to his daily life. Atticus also reminds us that he needs to heal that dead land that Aenghus Og blighted with his Hell magic, but despite how this is apparently a Druid’s sacred duty, it’s not a priority right now. Can’t make make our protagonist inconvenience himself!

Atticus tells Oberon there’s a surprise when they get back home. Oberon asks if it’s that movie about Genghis Khan, but Atticus says it’s something else. There’s some buildup as they travel back, as Oberon smells something in his territory, and wonders if Flidais is back, but it’s Atticus’s surprise for him: a harem of French poodles.

No really.

French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!

And everyone one of them in heat.

Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can’t wait to sniff their asses!

I… I hate this book. We’ve talked about how it’s very weird that Oberon, a character of at least near-human level intelligence is obsessed with having sex with dogs that aren’t. And like, yeah, he’s a dog, dogs want to mate, but… really? Kevin Hearne consciously decided that he’d have a running gag about how Oberon wants to have sex with poodles… and the epilogue is dedicated to giving in to that obsession.

So that’s what the book ends on! It ends on dog sex! That’s what Hearne wants to leave us with.

I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one step and stopped, looking up at me with a mournful expression, his ears drooping and a tiny whine escaping his snout.

Only five?

THOSE ARE THE CLOSING LINES I HATE THIS BOOK

Yes, Oberon is complaining that five female dogs aren’t enough for him right now. He wants to be having MOAR dog sex. The book’s final line is dialogue from an actual horndog. Aren’t you guys glad that this subplot got a resolution? Isn’t this hilarious? C’mon, isn’t it?! ISN’T IT?!?

[breaks down in something that sounds like an imitation of laughter but quickly becomes crying]

This book suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks!

Holy fudge this book is bad! What am I supposed to do with this? How am I supposed to finish reading the epilogue, which is about dog sex, and tell you this is anything but a bad book? Who read this and said, “Yup, that’s a good way to end a story!”? Who let Hearne do this?

I don’t know. But we’re done. Well, we’re close. My Kindle edition also comes with a couple of short stories, but we won’t spork those, because from what I recall they’re not bad. There’s not much point to me sporking them, unless I want to go out of my way to find something wrong with them, and look, I’m constantly depressed enough as it is. What we are going to do is I’m going to do a post or two summing up my thoughts on the book, breaking down its elements: Plot, Characters, Humor, Dialogue; that sort of thing. I’ll also be citing the Acknowledgements a couple of times, because it’s also got some bits worth talking about (apparently Hearne consulted someone about the Leprechaun’s accent).

But the book itself? The actual text of Hounded is done.

We’re DONE!

I’ll see you on the flip side.

Comment [2]

[bursts into the room playing a kazoo]

The Hounded sporking is FINISHED!!

If you’re new to the sporking, or if you just wanted to skip years’ worth of bullshimflarkus and get to the actual point of the sporking, I’m going to go ahead and say it so you can rest easy: Hounded by Kevin Hearne is not a good book. It’s a bad book. Admittedly, it’s not garbage fire, and I’ve read worse…

[Looks at a copy of Angelopolis and flicks holy water on it, and it immediately steams and hisses.]

I know that sounds like a low bar, but after that monstrosity I tend to value these things quite a bit. If you have been reading the sporking, I know you’re probably saying something like, “C’mon, we went through this with you! You can’t possibly say, ‘It’s not that bad!’” And, yeah, I can. The characters in Hounded are terrible, but they’re still more memorable than the ones in Angelopolis. The chapters themselves are consistent; we don’t have details contradicting each other every couple of pages. And as reprehensible as Atticus is, at least he’s not a Nazi, like the angelololologits are in Angelopolis.

But let’s not kid ourselves with this comparison: “Not as bad as Angeloplis Award” is like a Cookie for Basic Decency. Hounded is a bad book. Atticus is a terrible protagonist, the other characters exist to serve him, the thin veneer of Plot warps itself to Atticus’s convenience, and the world this story’s set in makes no sense. The dialogue sucks, the humor sucks, the action sucks… this book just sucks all around!

Let’s take a deeper look.

CHARACTERS

Atticus O’Sullivan

Our protagonist and narrator.

Atticus is a terrible choice of protagonist. I don’t just mean that he’s a terrible person the reader can’t relate to (though that is also true), I mean he doesn’t make sense as the hero of the story. In theory, I understand the desire to have an immortal and powerful Druid as the protagonist, but Hearne failed to make it work. What this means is that Atticus is a character who has ended his Hero’s Journey. He doesn’t want for anything, he’s not on a quest for something; he already has the Macguffin that everyone’s freaking out about. He’s not trying to save anyone or anything, or get revenge. He has no love interest he’s actively pursuing. He doesn’t have to go anywhere or figure out anything. His only goal is to be left alone, which in and of itself could be a fun story, a sort of urban mythological fantasy version of John Wick. Except it’s not, because Atticus doesn’t care. He sits around and waits for things to happen to him, not concerned about a threat until it plops in front of him, despite his continued insistence that he’s paranoid and this paranoia has kept him alive for so long. He has such a massive lack of agency, he has to be manipulated into fighting the villain in the end.

And anything that could be interesting character development or conflict is dropped with little fanfare. Faeries attack? He’s a badass fighter who heals and has an iron elemental on speed dial that doesn’t appear or get mentioned for the rest of the book. Atticus is the last Druid? Not only does he apparently not care at all, it’s never explained why being so powerful were rendered almost extinct. Atticus has a powerful magical artifact? It turns out he only has it because it happened to land in front of him thousands of years ago, and he picked it up because he was told to. His immortal enemy is rolling into town? No problem, the Morrigan just made him immortal. His father was abusive? Who cares, he’s long dead! Here’s a shout-out to Field of Dreams. His neighbor witnesses him kill an enemy? Good thing he knows about her personal history in the Troubles so that he can claim the guy was English and she helps him bury the body! She doesn’t even hold it against him when he tells her the truth about the supernatural world! He can’t beat the entire coven of witches on his own? No worries, his werewolf friends will help without being asked, half the witches will leave, and a helpful and powerful witch will appear out of nowhere to kill Radomila! It’s not just that there’s no effort on the part of the character to do anything, it’s that the author refuses to let him grow at all as a person. This is the first book in the series, and Hearne’s first novel ever, so I’m not surprised that it’s not an introspective character study. But he slams the door shut at every opportunity to give this character any depth or admirable qualities.

Because make no mistake: Atticus is a terrible person. He pals around with a serial-killing vampire who has a clean-up crew on standby, he makes deals with the Irish goddess of violent death, he cheerfully admits to killing his allies when it gets him what he wants, lets the Morrigan kill civilians without bothering to try to stop her, he sells drugs to college students, he steals municipal money, harasses his elderly neighbor, kills zoo animals for funzies, assumes his so-called friends will die for him without being asked, and delights in other people’s misery.

Which might be interesting if he was a smart villain protagonist, but he’s not. For starters, Atticus is dumb as a box of rocks. Every time he hears that enemies are on their way or that he’s being watched, he goes about his day as if nothing’s wrong. He avoids his house when the police are watching it, but he still walks around town with a sword, goes to his neighbor’s house and hangs out on her front porch, and goes to his favorite pub; essentially, he hides from the police by going to all of the public places he’s known to frequent. When Atticus needs to heal, he lays out in his yard all night assuming no one will just bomb his yard from the next house over. He constantly tells us why he tries to fight smart, adding things like, “Yeah, it’s dishonorable/not like the movies, but that’s how you win!” and then goes and does something completely unrealistic, like making an enemy rip his own feet off. When he’s questioned by Malina, he decides he has to answer with the truth, for no reason, but stipulates that he doesn’t have to give the whole truth. And when asked about whether or not he has Aenghus’s sword, he thinks he’s clever by replying “It’s not his,” and acts like this was a clever thing despite it telling Malina exactly what she wanted to know—that he has it. He’s constantly telling us witches can’t be trusted, but he’s always trusting them and when he learns that the witches are against him he acts shocked. And Atticus continues to act shocked every time it’s brought up. Towards the end of the novel, he keeps asking why the villain would possibly want a sword that can cut through anything. Then he’s trying to free his chained friend, and doesn’t realize that maybe he can use his cut-through-anything sword to break the chains.

But the novel tries to convince us that Atticus is actually a clever individual. He’s constantly patting himself over the back at how he’s outsmarting his opponents, even when he’s giving them exactly what they want. Hearne thinks that because Atticus talks back to policemen and can recite Shakespeare by heart that he’s created a smart character; never mind that the former is a terrible idea no matter where you are, and the latter doesn’t make any sense for the character, a proud immortal Irish man.

But it doesn’t matter, because the character’s so ridiculously overpowered that his stupidity never causes any problems. We’re told that as a Druid, his only real power is “binding,” but that apparently includes shapeshifting, potion-making, super strength, healing, invisibility, and whatever else the author feels like at the moment. Along with that, he has friends who will happily clean up his messes for him, he’s an expert swordsman, immortal, and has a magic amulet that helps him defy the rules of regular magic and makes him deadly to the touch of magical creatures.

In summary: our lead is an annoying evil git who is overpowered and gets away with everything. We’re supposed to be getting the impression of someone like Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden or Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus; instead we’ve got a moronic frat bro who won’t shut up about how awesome he is.

Oberon

Oberon is Atticus’s dog, and the method by which Hearne delivers a lot of his “witty” one-liners. Most of them are pretty stupid and lead to several conversations that go on for too long, killing any tension or urgency in scenes because he keeps cracking “jokes” about Genghis Khan or how he wants a harem, or quoting South Park in the middle of the final duel.

We’re supposed to care about him, by virtue of him being a dog I think, and to Hearne’s credit he does have sympathetic moments. When he’s mind-controlled into killing a man, when he wakes up he’s very confused and terrified about what he’s done. Too bad this doesn’t form a character arc. If he has a character arc in this story, it’s about how he wants to have sex with poodles. Never mind that as a creature of near-human intelligence, his fixation on having sex with dogs who don’t share that intelligence is creepy. Never mind that he won’t shut up about poodles.

It’s disturbing that I can honestly tell you guys that I read a book in which there’s a subplot about dog sex.

Widow McDonagh

I call her “the Leprechaun” because she speaks with a ridiculous caricature of an Irish accent. According to the acknowledgements section, Hearne actually consulted someone about keeping the accent consistent. And that someone teaches at a university. Think about that for a few seconds.

She’s barely a character for most of the novel, other than to be “The Cool Old Lady” that Atticus can talk to and make inappropriate comments. One of the first things we’re told is that when he’s working in her yard, she tells Atticus that if she were younger she’d have sex with him. She tells us she’s a devout Catholic, but goes to Mass drunk. She also hates British people and wants them all dead.

What makes her stand out is also what makes her infuriating. She witnesses Atticus kill an enemy, and she helps him hide the body because Atticus tells her that the man was British and it just so happens that her husband was part of the IRA and was killed in the Troubles, so she carries a seething hatred of anyone British! Isn’t that handy?

She’s a Plot Device like most of the characters, but a more irritating one than most because of how she drags the Irish Troubles into the Plot just to make things easier for Atticus. I hate her.

Hal Hauk

Atticus’s werewolf lawyer. He barely has any character. There’s this nice character thing about how he’s been guessing how old Atticus is, but that’s about it. He exists to be the lawyer who gets Atticus out of trouble.

Leif Helgarson

Atticus’s vampire lawyer. He has less personality. He’s a serial killer with a clean up crew on speed dial, and one of Atticus’s closest friends. But he gets Atticus out of trouble, and that makes him A-OK in Hearne’s eyes.

Granuaile

A HAWT recent college grad bartender at Atticus’s favorite bar who doesn’t do anything but flirt with Atticus until right before the climax, where she reveals that A) she shares her head with an Indian witch that’s possessing her, and B) she wants to be Atticus’s apprentice Druid.

That’s… kind of it.

I have no idea how to say her name, and I hate spelling out every time, so I call her ‘Grannie.’

Laksha

The Indian witch possessing Granuaile. She doesn’t appear at all until right before the climax, where it just so happens that she has motivation to help Atticus, and helps him defeat the witches. We’re supposed to get the “She’s into creepy magic but helps because their motivations align” thing from her, but she hasn’t do anything worse than Atticus himself has done.

Radomila

She’s not a character, she’s a cardboard cutout. Hearne acts like she’s a character, this witch that betrayed Atticus and is plotting with Aenghus Og. But Atticus keeps telling the reader that witches can’t be trusted, so this is the opposite of a shock. And she doesn’t appear until the end, and even then doesn’t talk or really do anything to display she has a personality.

Then Laksha makes her head implode, and we’re supposed to cheer, I guess.

Emilya

Her name is Emilia, but she goes by ‘Emily’ in America because… I don’t know why. Apparently she thinks people in the US wouldn’t accept someone named ‘Emilia.’ Her backstory is that she was saved from being raped by Nazis by Malina, another witch, and so she joined their coven. You’d think that because of this backstory, she’d be a sympathetic or complex character. Nope! Every scene she’s in, Atticus is practically screaming “She’s a skank ho!” to the audience. She’s stupid and shallow, and Atticus has his werewolf friends rip off her head so he can use it as a trophy. Except he doesn’t end up using it, so he buries it in his neighbor’s yard.

Malina

She’s the witch that isn’t plotting against Atticus. That’s it—she’s not a jerk. That’s all she is. It surprises Atticus because he automatically distrusts women witches.

The Morrigan

The Irish goddess of war and violent death. She’s often cast in a villainous role, though I think there’s a way to do an interesting, sympathetic portrayal of her.

This isn’t it.

You wouldn’t think that a goddess of violent death would ever be reduced to the protagonist’s flunkey. That’s basically what she is! She arrives early on to warn Atticus that Aenghus Og is coming, and also to have a scene in which she’s naked. Throughout the book she shows up to tell the protagonist what’s going to happen next, provide him eye candy, and help him for no reason.

And she kills people that insult her. Not that Atticus cares.

Also, she makes the protagonist invincible during her first appearance in the second chapter. I wish that was a joke. As a psychopomp who takes those who die in battle to the next life, she offers to never take him to the afterlife in exchange for learning the secrets of making Atticus’s magic iron amulet. There are some loopholes presented, but they’re so miniscule and unlikely, especially since Hearne never inconveniences his protagonist enough that he’s in a situation that some other psychopomp would take Atticus to the afterlife.

The Morrigan is transparently infatuated with Atticus, given how she does stuff for him without being asked, frequently appears naked in front of him, starts groping him, and shows up to warn him of incoming threats. She’s been doing this for centuries. Atticus doesn’t notice; he seems to think that it’s perfectly normal for everyone to be subservient to him, and to be fair everyone else in the story is. Making it worse though is his refusal to take her seriously; when she warns him that Aenghus Og is coming, and cites all her evidence, Atticus dismisses it and tells her she must have done it wrong because he’s a sexist pig.

Aenghus Og

Aenghus Og is a mess of an antagonist. It continues to baffle me that Hearne chose to make Aenghus Og the villain of the story, because the Irish god of love isn’t even remotely villainous in the original mythology. Hearne, through Atticus, tries to justify it by telling us morally reprehensible things that Aenghus has done in the myths, but reading those myths, those actions are put in-context and you see that none of them are unjustified. If anything, the myths paint Aenghus as something of a trickster antihero: not entirely moral, but definitely not evil either. Which, weirdly enough, is the vibe we’re supposed to get from Atticus.

If Hearne had actually gone with this personality, then Aenghus would have made an interesting antagonist. Because we’d have two trickster characters trying to out-do each other in a battle of wits and magic. But Hearne doesn’t do anything interesting with Aenghus Og; instead, he’s just some dickhead who wants power for its own sake. He doesn’t show up until the final couple of chapters, and even then his lines are generic and boring. He’s not interesting, he’s not fun, he’s not anything really; Aenghus Og is just some douchebag that exists to be someone for Atticus to complain about and then kill. None of what he does in the story makes sense, especially when we find out that he could have mind-controlled someone into shooting Atticus at any point. He spent two thousand years hunting down Atticus, and this convoluted plan, which I remind you, includes rendering himself impotent (?!), is the best he could come up with?

This was Hearne’s first book, so I wouldn’t expect a perfect villain, but you would think he or his editors could have at least worked out how to make a halfway competent or entertaining villain. Aenghus Og isn’t anything but a talking cardboard cutout for Atticus to hit.

PLOT

The gist of the Plot is meant to be that Atticus, the last of the Druids, is retired in Tempe, Arizona and must face his old enemy Aenghus Og, who has finally caught up with him. As I said within the sporking more than once, in theory it’s an urban fantasy with a Plot like John Wick. Except Atticus is overpowered and the world never does anything to inconvenience him. So instead of him pursuing his enemies before they get him, Atticus just goes about his day until some monster or god shows up.

In Das_Sporking’s spork of Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer, Mervin mentions that the book has a Plot, but the characters all ignore it. We’ve got a similar deal here. Several times Atticus is told what’s going to happen, and though he insists that he’s a paranoid loner running away from his problems and who is prepared for everything, he doesn’t care. When he’s told that ogres are going to lay siege to his house, he informs us that all he does is get a good night’s sleep. The pace of the Plot keeps slowing down so Atticus can leisurely go about his business as if nothing’s going on, or explain something in-detail that could be shown to us instead.

This is part of why this book doesn’t work. The main character doesn’t care! And so why should we care?

DIALOGUE

It’s not great.

Atticus and company frequently add obscenity into sentences for no reason other than because he wants to sound adult. It doesn’t sound adult, it sounds like a teenager who just learned swear words and doesn’t know how to use them correctly. I’m not saying I dislike books with swearing, but here it felt unnecessary. There are good books that have characters swear a lot, and do it well: American Gods or Orcs come to mind. Heck, recently Eoin Colfer’s book Highfire wasn’t really my cup of tea, but the characters all swear worse than sailors and it still reads more natural than Atticus ending a chapter with “Bring it, muthafuckas.”

That line is meant to be representative of how a modern person speaks, by the way.

Aside from that, even without swearing, no one really talks like a real person? The Leprechaun speaks with a Lucky Charms accent. She’s not the only one with a ridiculous accent tacked on, but the most egregious example.

Atticus constantly uses “hip” modern language and pop culture references, insisting that it makes him so much cooler and smarter than the immortal or long-lived beings who don’t keep up with pop culture. Except that so much of that modern language consists of things that are now pretty dated or really stupid, like ‘PWNED’ or jokes about Cylons. And then there’s the time he apparently made a Jedi Mind Trick joke to immigration services when they appeared on his doorstep. This is meant to make him sound cool, I think? Instead, it reads like a teenager’s idea of a cool action hero, minus any sympathetic traits.

This goes back to the ‘Atticus thinks he’s clever’ thing. Actually, this goes to the idea that Hearne thinks Atticus is clever. He and others keep making “witty” quips that are more groan-worthy than amusing, especially when they’re stretched out for long past their welcome, like Oberon’s poodle fetish or the gibes about Bres’s armor. The final battle has Atticus and Aenghus shouting “NO, U!” at each other. It’s not funny, it’s just annoying.

IRISH MYTHOLOGY

Look, I don’t know where Hearne expects his audience to be on the subject of Irish mythology.

There are times when the book acts as if you’re already supposed to know quite a bit about Irish myth. When describing how he received Fragarach in the first place, Atticus vomits a bunch of details about a particular battle, and doesn’t explain what any of these terms mean nor explain the background behind them. He gives vague hints as to certain things, like Airmid’s herblore or how Mac Lir takes souls to the Tir na nOg.

But then there are times when the book definitely assumes you know nothing. There are mountains of exposition when context could have given us enough. But more frustrating is when he describes Irish mythological characters in a way that’s contrary to the myths. I’m not a purist when it comes to fiction: I don’t think that an author needs to stick to the myths too closely as long as he or she can tell a good story. But things like Aenghus Og’s characterization come out of left field, and the novel acts like this is totally in line with who he is in the myths, citing actions that in-context aren’t really villainous. There are other minor details that don’t quite add up either. Bres has quite a bad rap sheet in Irish myth, as when he became king he favored his Fomorian heritage and had the gods enslaved. None of this is brought up—the “heroes” characterize him as worthy of death because he’s ugly and stupid. Him having enslaved the gods is apparently not worth mentioning, and he’s killed minutes after he arrives.

I’m not even really sure that Hearne has a solid grasp of Irish myth. Maybe I’m nitpicking, but he frequently refers to it as “Celtic mythology;” and while Irish mythology is a Celtic mythology, it’s not the only one, and in a world in which apparently all myths are true, that’s an important distinction to make, as there must certainly be Welsh and Gaulish deities somewhere in this setting.

The Irish gods that appear in the story seem to have their names and a couple of basic traits in place, like the only research Hearne did was a ten second look on Google. And if this was a book like American Gods which featured a bunch of different gods, many of whom are mostly glorified cameos, and interacting outside of their original setting, I’d give it a pass. But this isn’t that; the central character is someone who is an ancient Irish man steeped in Irish lore and mythology. So I should feel that these are characters steeped in myth and legend, and instead I just feel I’d be doing more research than Hearne by glancing at the Wikipedia pages for ten minutes.

Mind you, this applies to pretty much anything. Atticus apparently didn’t realize that the reason demons are depicted with goat features is about demonizing fauns and satyrs.

WORLDBUILDING

It’s a mess.

There’s magic that’s not very well-explained, and that’s fine, because I don’t think magic needs to be that well-explained. It’s magic. Fine. But if you give us an explanation, you better stick to it. Hearne doesn’t. He tells us that the only real power Druids have is “binding,” but then goes on to have that include not only things like healing and shapeshifting, but also night vision, super strength, potion-making, controlling the winds, invisibility, seeing through illusions, and giving people wedgies.

We’re also told that Druid magic is inherently good and righteous, and that a Druid’s duty is to protect the Earth. But we don’t see him care about that at all until the very end, where Aenghus is blighting the land by calling up demons from Hell.

And speaking of demons from Hell: the mythology of this series is a massive stupid mess. Plenty of fantasy serieses have this, and usually I don’t mind. Dresden Files doesn’t bother to explain how the figures from different mythologies simultaneously exist, which is fine. But this book tries to give the explanation of ‘mythological being exist because people believe in them,’ and that just doesn’t work because it doesn’t add up. It worked in Discworld or The Sandman or American Gods which were making statements about culture and human nature, but when it just exists without that commentary, it leads to strange contradictions. Atticus tries to play it off as the world “being as big as your mind can encompass,” when that’s not really how it is at all.

I’m also baffled why he went with this system, and then tells us that the Irish gods actually don’t work like that. The Irish gods are explicitly something like uber-Druids that got deified. So why is this “Gods Need Belief to Exist” system in place when the main group of mythological beings he interacts with in this book don’t follow that system at all? It unnecessarily muddles how this world works.

And then demons from Hell are thrown in to make things more dramatic, I guess.

WITCHES

Witches suck. Atticus can’t begin to explain how much he hates them, and he tells us this over and over again, that they’re weird and creepy and can’t be trusted, despite constantly trusting them and being shocked when he’s proven right.

The Acknowledgments section has the claim that he had someone talk a lot to him “on the subject of witches” but I suspect that maybe this person was the Witchfinder General considering how they’re depicted here. From what I can tell, what makes witches different from Druids is that witches get their magic by making deals with immortal beings, oftentimes demons or other spirits. But the coven in the book draw their power from the Triple Goddess they worship, the Zoryas (and no, the Zoryas aren’t a triple goddess in the myths, he cribbed that from American Gods but here we are), who as far as we know isn’t particularly sketch. Still, Atticus acts like all witches just make deals with demons for funzies on their weekends.

They’re not immortal in the same way, as they just use glamour to disguise how old they look, unlike Atticus whose body actually is that young because of potion shenanigans. This is mostly used to illustrate how they’re lamer than Atticus, because unlike him, they’re not actually hawt. The audacity, right?

And there’s this weird emphasis on how the coven in town is Polish. So you have our lead talking about how his magic is so much better and stronger and less evil than theirs, mocking the fact that they aren’t really as gorgeous as they make themselves look, that they can’t be trusted, and he brings up more often than he really needs to that they’re Polish. I don’t think that he’s meant to come across as racist, sexist trash, but with him constantly saying he hates witches I don’t know what else to get from this whole… whatever.

THEMES

I’m sorry, I just really like that gif.

Pragmatism Versus Honor

Several times, especially during fights when he’s stabbing someone in the back while invisible, Atticus tells the audience that it’s much better to be practical than to be honorable. It’s too heavy-handed, as in most cases they’re tactics that make sense, fighting enemies who are actively trying to kill him. So Atticus insisting that this is the smart thing to do, and you’re an idiot if you say otherwise, is hamfisted and annoying. It’s like that person you know who is trying to eat healthy, except every time he or she orders food it comes with an explanation as to why this is healthier than going to Burger King. Stop talking about it all the time and just do it!

And of course, this entire thing falls flat because Atticus doesn’t act practically in most situations, other than combat. He and the other characters keep telling us that he’s paranoid, and that this has kept him alive for all these centuries, but this is an Informed Attribute. At no point does he actually act in a way that indicates he’s overly careful or even rational. When Aenghus Og, the witches, and the police are all turned against him, he goes about his business as if nothing’s wrong, only taking slight deviations from his daily life because otherwise he’d be inconvenienced. When he’s wounded, he spends the night healing in his yard; invisible, yeah, and sure his house is magically protected, but if it had rained he wouldn’t have slept, and if Aenghus Og had just hired some goon to lob an explosive into the yard he would have been screwed.

Making things even worse is that I have a hard time caring about practicality in combat the one time he uses it, because Atticus is so overpowered that the narrative is nonsensical. Even before he gains invincibility in the second chapter he’s got super strength, amazing sword skillz, a healing factor, and an iron elemental on standby that comes right the fudge out of nowhere and disappears without being mentioned again for the rest of the book. I remind you all of that is in the first chapter. When he picks up invincibility all his talk of practicality goes out the window. It’s explained that even if he doesn’t die, he can still be wounded, and those wounds would be very painful until he healed himself. But it still stands: he can’t die, unless under extremely specific circumstances like someone summoning another psychopomp.

So we have a character who explicitly can’t die constantly lecturing the audience how you’re stupid if you don’t do what he does to stay alive. It’s like a hereditary millionaire giving you condescending advice on how to get a job.

Furthermore, not only is Atticus not an honorable fighter, which I couldn’t care less about, he’s a morally reprehensible person. The book doesn’t play it for laughs as much as ignore it altogether. The minute he got his hands on Fragarach, he tells us that he ran and cut down fighters on both sides of the battle, including those who were his allies before he got a magic cut-through-anything sword. He pals around with a serial-killing vampire. He steals millions from the city. He’s completely and totally evil, but sure, keeps judging others and declaring how practical he is when everything he does is for his own enjoyment.

A Man Out of Time—Immortality

Atticus is a two thousand-year-old Druid living in modern-day Arizona. He frequently comments on how things have changed. Several of the other immortal characters don’t quite understand the modern world. But this is always depicted in the most shallow way possible. It’s not rampant capitalism, or secular culture, or the school system that throws them. The goddess Flidais doesn’t know how basic electrical appliances work. It’s supposed to be funny, I think, but it comes across as really stupid that she doesn’t know to plug things in. What have the gods been doing if they don’t keep with the modern world? Flidais apparently goes hunting and travelling the wild place of the world, but she has no idea what a bighorn sheep is? She also doesn’t know anything about Christianity, as she’s had to be told who Moses is, when there’s been Christianity in Ireland for over a thousand years.

Worse, Hearne is trying so hard to convince us that his protagonist isn’t like those other stupid immortals who don’t keep up with pop culture. But again, this is done in the most shallow way imaginable, with him dropping pop culture references and slang and acting like that’s the proper way to talk, despite it being dated or a transparent attempt to sound like a Cool, Edgy Kid. I imagine it wasn’t dated when the book came out, but it was obvious that attempting to use pop culture expressions wouldn’t really age well.

When Atticus references his immorality, it’s always in the most obvious way. He’ll name drop historical events and figures, but they’re always ones you would have heard of if you failed middle school history class. So tells us he watched Shakespeare’s plays in the Globe Theater when they were big, or hung out with Galileo or rode in the armies of Genghis Khan (this last one gets brought up quite a few times for some reason), all on the first page or so, but then goes on to say that he tries to keep a low profile.

Here’s a man who claims to do his best to not draw attention to himself, but apparently spent the last thousand years hanging around with all of the biggest name celebrities in history. And as I said before, they’re people you would have heard of even if you knew nothing about history, and not anyone else that was famous or notable in the past that isn’t as well-known to the Average American Joe. Like with Irish myth, it feels like Hearne’s knowledge of history comes from browsing quick Google searches.

This book depicts how lazy writers represent immortal characters. There are plenty of interesting ways to do it, and Hearne picks none of them. Like in Dresden Files where the immortals have very easily adapted to modern day because while they don’t understand pop culture, human nature is still very much the same. Or in Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel where you have an immortal so old he’s going insane because the human brain isn’t designed to hold that much memory. Or Young Justice where Vandal Savage has developed a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality and is bent on taking over the world and turning humanity into the center of a galactic empire. Or like Connor McLeod from Highlander who doesn’t let himself get too attached to people because he knows he’ll outlive them all. Or like Vern in Highfire that’s suicidally depressed after witnessing the extinction of his kind and spends his days watching TV and drinking because of his survivor’s guilt.

[Side note: while it wasn’t really my thing, I noticed that Highfire by Eoin Colfer has a similar-ish premise to Hounded and yet it’s actually done well, with likable characters and a Plot that has (gasp) stakes!]

These are just some takes on immortals that writers have shown. Hearne goes with nothing. To put into perspective, Atticus is older than steam power, older than feudalism, older than Yoda, older than Christianity… and yet it’s almost entirely played as “Check it out, I’m immortal. Isn’t that cool?” There is one point where Atticus reflects on how almost everyone he knows dies, and how sometimes he feels sad, but considering that he’s the last Druid and this causes him apparently no grief whatsoever, this doesn’t feel genuine or in-character at all.

Might Makes Right

I think that the whole idea behind Atticus’s characterization is that, magically speaking, he’s a weaker character who gets by on his applying the power he does have in clever ways. A sort of trickster hero, who isn’t traditionally moral but you still root for, because he’s sympathetic and the underdog in the conflict, like Bartimaeus or some versions of John Constantine.

This doesn’t work because Atticus is far too powerful for the narrative’s good. He claims he’s not as powerful as the Irish gods, but he kills two of them in this book with little effort. Bres, because he sees through his glamour, knocks him down and lops of his head in a matter of seconds. Aenghus Og, who he admittedly has to get a power boost from the Morrigan to fight, but only because he’s drained a lot of his own power fighting mooks. Once they do duel, he’s quick to point out that Aenghus Og hasn’t learned any new fencing tricks in two thousand years, and he easily overwhelms him with superior skillz.

Atticus has healing, and strength, and the magic sword, and friends who happily give him what he wants. So it feels as if what the narrative is saying is that Atticus isn’t a good hero because he outwits his opponents (who are mostly dumber than he is to begin with), or because he’s unpredictable in how he fights against enemies; he’s of course none of those things. The narrative wants us to believe that Atticus is a good hero because he’s stronger than everyone else. It’d be more forgivable if Atticus had at least worked for his powers and such, but the magic sword just landed in front of him, and he picked it up because he was told to. He can defeat Radomila because Laksha does it for him. He gets through to the witches because the werewolves do all the work. He got over his fatigue to fight Aenghus Og because the Morrigan gives him her power.

He doesn’t figure anything out. The hero wins because he’s more powerful. Because Might Makes Right.

CONCLUSION

Boy is this a mess of a book. Yes, it’s a debut novel, but you would think that a high school English teacher would have an idea what makes a good protagonist, or a good antagonist, or a good plot. It’s not a garbage fire of a book, but it’s certainly not a good book. It’s got notable flaws all-around: it’s Plot that only bothers our protagonist when it’s convenient, its stupid characters who all exist to serve the protagonist, a sense of humor that’s grating, and a terrible villain. But I think if there’s one thing that really breaks the book and makes it beyond saving, it’s the protagonist, Atticus O’Sullivan.

I remember reading another book Hearne helped to write, and though it had a lot of the same problems, it was at least more bearable because it didn’t have Atticus in it. He is the main problem with Hounded. He’s what makes it terrible. His personality, his power, all the other characters bending to his will…. Atticus is a terribly-written character, and because the story is warped around him to suit his needs, it all falls apart.

There are stories that, even if you hate the main protagonist, you can still enjoy by latching on to a secondary character, or getting invested in the setting or the plot. This isn’t one of those stories because Hounded is all about catering to the protagonist. It’s about letting him do what he wants without consequences, beating his stupid enemies, having more power than everyone else, having sex with hawt goddesses, allies who will happily kowtow to your every whim, and having all the right people love you. And when I put it that way, it sounds like a horrendous wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Which, given how the story reads, is a difficult hypothesis to refute.

And that’s a wrap!

I’m going to take a small break from sporking, I think. I have a couple of ideas for other articles (including one on Star Wars), but it’ll be a while before I spork again, I think. The next book I’ll spork will probably be the sequel to this mess, Hexed, though there’s another book that’s also crossed my mind to spork. But it’s been years since I read that one, and I’m hesitant to pick it up again.

Anyhow, whatever we’re doing, I’ll see you next time.

[salutes and then downs a shot of apple juice]

Comment [2]

‘Sup, homies. So we’re kind of in an international viral crisis right now, and I hope you guys are safe and healthy in quarantine with your Plague Peeps, and if not then at least you’re able to make it through this sickness.

Anyways, Disney and Lucasfilm should be ashamed of their management of the Sequel Trilogy.

Let me clarify: I am not saying that the movies of the Sequel Trilogy are bad, or that if you enjoy any of them that you’re wrong or you’re a bad person. I have issues with all three movies, but there were also a lot of things I love about them; neither of those are why we’re here today. This isn’t a review. We’re here to talk about how the planning of the story and management of these films by Lucasfilm under Disney has been abysmal, for one simple reason:

There was no planning.

Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, and then immediately started pre-production on a new Star Wars film trilogy, promising a new film release every year… and they didn’t have a game plan for their new trilogy. Think about how monumentally stupid that is. Think how stupid you’d have to be in order to start making a continuation of one of the most beloved and lore-heavy franchises in modern history, with one of the most notoriously hard-to-please fanbases of all time, and not have an idea of how this is going to turn out. Not even an outline that they stuck to, guys.

Every so often, someone will float the defense of “Well Lucas didn’t have everything planned out when he created the Original Trilogy!” Which is true. But that was while he was creating the first stories of a brand new universe he’d just created. Lucasfilm as it exists under Disney has a story team and forty years worth of history under its belt. That excuse doesn’t fly for the Sequel Trilogy. Lucas couldn’t have known what he was getting into in making his original films; Disney absolutely did.

I understand that they were hoping to have each film in the new trilogy have a different director who brought a different style and outlook on the story, giving each of them more creative freedom. And pitched that way, that sounds good until we circle back to the point: there wasn’t even a solid outline in place to ensure that there was a story that consistently fit together. If there was even a vague outline (which I heavily doubt), it was thrown out of whack by Carrie Fisher’s death and by Colin Trevorrow being booted from Episode IX. For Reasons.

But all signs point to the idea that there wasn’t an overarching strategy for the trilogy. People have been arguing day and night whether it’d be better, but from what I can tell from plot details in the leaked Trevorrow script, outside of basic acknowledgment of what came before, continuity was not a strong point. For instance, if Trevorrow had made his Duel of the Fates there would have been Plot and character developments such as

-The reveal that Rey’s parents were actually murdered by Kylo Ren, which he only could have done if he was a child at the time (which is unlikely given what we’ve been told so far).

And

-Rey being romantically attached to Poe, an idea that is only teased in a small sequence at the end of the novelization of The Force Awakens that got adapted into this scene in The Last Jedi.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like Rey’s romantic life needs to be the focus of her character arc, but The Force Awakens spends almost its entire run time teasing the idea of Rey and Finn as a couple, and then The Last Jedi spends a huge chunk of its run time teasing Rey and Kylo Ren, it’d be a bit out of left field to then suddenly pair her with a third character she’s barely interacted with outside of that film. Yes, there will always be continuity errors in fiction, and such things aren’t new to Star Wars, but these were really obvious ones that someone. And to be fair, that script didn’t get used, but, uh, let’s not kid ourselves: Rise of Skywalker also has some downright baffling continuity issues in its story, such as (SPOILERS):

-Palpatine’s resurrection coming right out of nowhere, and him pulling an armada and insane Force powers right out of his own rectum

-Being able to heal someone near death with the Force, as not being able to do that is explicitly a huge part of Anakin’s motivation for becoming Vader

-Snoke being a clone puppet of Palpatine, and that he needs Rey alive, when Snoke very explicitly is trying to kill Rey

Among other things. And it’s not as if The Last Jedi also doesn’t have consistency issues even outside of its different tone and direction, doing things like rewriting Snoke’s personality entirely into a cartoon villain.¹

Outside of that it’s still clear that there are certain important canon details that aren’t explained even to the makers of the films or its supplementary materials, despite it being the sort of thing that the people making the movies should definitely know. Instead it’s left to tie-in media written afterward, so we get things like a prequel comic explaining how Kylo Ren fell to the Dark Side (it’s all built on a misunderstanding and some accidents, apparently), or the Disney+ show explaining how the First Order exists in the first place. Sure, a good chunk of that supplementary material is really good and made by talented creators, but it definitely comes across as if the management is skipping the basic groundwork in order to stick it in the media you have to pay more money to gain access to later, like the film equivalent of paid DLC. I shouldn’t have to read a comic to understand one of the main characters’ motivations or how the setting makes sense.

I’ve seen the defense “It’s not necessary for the story, so the audience doesn’t need to know,” but when even the writers have no clue and are clearly making up every single key piece of worldbuilding and character development as they go along, can we agree that there’s a problem? And if there are elements and characters who aren’t important to the story, then why are they there to begin with?

So what went wrong? Given what we know, I’d guess these three things:

-First, that there wasn’t one mind behind the entire story. Which doesn’t necessarily mean disaster for continuity and consistency of tone, but Lucasfilm went out of its way to encourage each director to tell a completely different kind of story, and if you tell a writer to go nuts with what he or she wants in a story, then it’s not all going to fit together in a way that makes sense.

J.J. Abrams is really good at setting up questions and mysteries, but he didn’t have any answers to those mysteries when he asked them in the first place, hoping that other directors would make up cool answers for him. Rian Johnson, on the other hand, basically admits that he doesn’t care about the wider universe or worldbuilding of a piece of fiction. That works perfectly for a standalone film like Looper but it’s a downright baffling attitude to carry on with making a film in the middle of a trilogy in a forty-year-old science-fantasy franchise that’s claimed by a fanbase notoriously obsessed with details.

-Second: the release schedule. When both the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy were released, each film in the trilogy was three years apart: the original Star Wars in 1977, then Empire Strikes Back in 1980, and Return of the Jedi in 1983. The Phantom Menace in 1999, _Attack of the Clones in 2002, and Revenge of the Sith in 2005.

Disney, however, promised a new film every year, and while that included spin-offs like Rogue One they tightened the schedule so that they could release a new film in what was now dubbed “The Skywalker Saga” every two years: The Force Awakens in 2015, The Last Jedi in 2017 and Rise of Skywalker in 2019. Which means that there’s less time to work on these movies. They had less than a year to gauge audience reactions and incorporate them into the next film’s production.

-Thirdly, they’re trying really, really hard to appeal to the fans in each of the films. The Force Awakens for instance, is going after fan nostalgia by hosting a narrative setup almost identical to that of A New Hope: a lone orphan raised on a desert planet becoming the warrior that fights against a sprawling oppressive galactic facist entity that employs Stormtroopers and is led by a wielder of the Dark Side and his warrior apprentice. It didn’t make a lot of sense, in terms of backstory, how this situation came to be², and it more or less rendered the ending of the Original Trilogy pointless, but it was the setup fans recognized and loved. And it made an admittedly really well-done film that deservedly got all the moneyz.

But there were viewers who felt, rather loudly and not without good reason, that The Force Awakens was too safe, and took too heavily from A New Hope. Which… yeah, it did. It has the exact same Plot. So in response we got a film that was… not that. While I’ve seen convincing arguments that The Last Jedi follows a similar outline to Empire Strikes Back I think overall it is its own animal. It deliberately deconstructs a lot of ideas in Star Wars and includes things like social commentary and self-criticism and Plot Twists out the wazoo.

Except there were vocal fans that didn’t like that either! Because it turns out that while film critics that never much liked genre fiction anyway go nuts for films that play with their expectations, longtime fans who are invested in lore and character arcs don’t particularly like it when you unceremoniously drop story arcs.

So in trying to appeal to the analytical fans, Lucasfilm ended up bothering another vocal group of their audience. And since the original director got axed from the project, Lucasfilm turned back to Abrams to make the end of the trilogy, since he started it and the ensuing film was so well-regarded. The result was Rise of Skywalker which retconned a couple of the more controversial story decisions of the previous film, or hastily explained or resolved threads that got dropped, while trying to desperately appeal to that nostalgia crowd again that made The Force Awakens so popular with older fans. And so the film, while not a bad film, feels rushed and completely out-of-synch with the other two in the trilogy, something a lot of fans and critics picked up on.

[That being said, the Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes is 86%, so there were plenty of fans who liked the film well-enough.]

In trying to please the fans each time, they ended up not really creating a trilogy that seems to hold together very well. Now I’m not suggesting as a content creator that you shouldn’t care what fans think; in many cases, writers and artists being influenced by their audiences has led to positive developments and writing choices. But you shouldn’t be completely dictated by them either. Especially in episodic films like Star Wars and you’re rushing out each installment as quickly as possible. We end up with three different movies that all feel as if they’re trying to please a different part of a fanbase which is pretty close to unpleasable. Let’s not forget that Empire Strikes Back, a film which is now almost universally considered the greatest film in the entire series, received mixed reviews upon its release in 1980 because it was darker than the original.

The weird thing is, with Disney and Lucasfilm none of these actually needed to be problems. Yeah, timing and different directors were ways they could build up hype, but a Star Wars movie was always going to make money if Disney did a decent job marketing it. They didn’t need to rush them out, or pander that hard in order to make a profit. But in an attempt to get as much money as they could as fast as they could, Disney ended up with a narrative mess. Mind you, that narrative mess made them billions of dollars, so I’m not sure they care but we should, as critics and storytellers ourselves.

It’s disappointing because Disney is currently the most powerful movie studio that there is in the industry right now. It should be a trendsetter, the one creating bold new films that tell brand new stories that leave us awed. But they’re not; they’re very obviously not, aside from a few special cases. Yes, a lot of good honest work was put into these films, and it shows, and I don’t want to downplay that. The management, on the other hand? Given how Disney has elected to pour most of their investments into blockbuster live-action remakes of their greatest animated hits, refusing to let directors screentest for paranoia about spoilers, shafting the marketing on their films that aren’t established franchises, bullying theaters into forking over more money, and replacing real life scenes and stunts of their performers in-costume with CGI in Marvel movies to make sure that their suits all look skin-tight. Disney has so much power, and yet they’re not letting its projects be all that they can because they would rather have a quick buck than give their creators adequate time to make movies, or disregard vocal fandom minorities, or sit down and work out where it’s all going to end.

It’s frustrating and a little heartbreaking to look at all the fan-made work and speculation that popped up in the wake of The Force Awakens about who these characters are, and where they’re going, and the shape of the story and what every little detail meant. Because the answer is: nothing. None of these details actually meant anything. There wasn’t a plan to do anything with any of these characters or subplots. Like I said, the individuals working on these particular projects clearly cared and did their best to create the best films that they could; but in the end, it’s pretty damn shameful that Disney didn’t bother to sit down and hash out what exactly they were planning to do with the whole trilogy beforehand, instead of rushing out them out as much as they could in order to make a bajillion dollars as quickly as they could.

Which… they did, admittedly, so maybe it doesn’t matter. But sometimes I imagine if they made oodles and oodles of money while also delivering a coherent Star Wars trilogy, and I’m confused as to why they didn’t do that instead. The more I think about it, the more I think Disney and Lucasfilm should be ashamed of how they’ve handled this. The biggest, most powerful movie studio in history had the task of making an epic film trilogy of the most famous space opera and didn’t have an agenda on how to do that. The studio just wanted to roll around in money.

—-

If you’re stuck at home and you’re really bored, some links to look into that might cheer you up:

-Look at this list of museums around the world you can virtually tour!

-Watch Brandon Sanderson’s Writing Lectures Online!

-Check out my friend’s sporkings of the Tiger’s Curse series and the delightfully bad Moon People science-fiction novel!

-Get free art books from the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

-Read Badass of the Week!

-Use Google to virtually tour US National Parks!

-Find free public domain books to read online on Project Gutenberg!

-The blog How To Write Badly Well!

-Download free textbook PDFs from Cambridge University Press!

-Read Limyaael’s Fantasy Rants!

¹ I’m going to reiterate though: that doesn’t make any of them bad movies. A movie can be enjoyable or even good with noticeable consistency issues. These criticisms are meant to indicate how they don’t all connect as a congruous whole.

² But that’s not why we’re here, so we won’t go into that now.

Comment [12]

[takes a huge swig of apple juice]

Let’s talk about Atticus O’Sullivan’s taste in fiction.

A while back I did an article about intertextuality in fiction, particularly in regard to Rick Riordan’s more recent work and the use of pop culture references. I’d love for you all to go check that one out, but in case you don’t feel like it, here’s a reminder:

Intertextuality is a fancy way of talking about when texts refer to other texts. And when I say ‘text’ I don’t just mean books. In this sense, ‘text’ can mean any form of media or medium of art—books, poems, stories, songs, movies, television shows, paintings, sculptures, video games, and so on and so forth. Kind of like when a movie quotes the Bible, or a nerd character on TV quotes Star Trek.

Last time I talked about using current pop culture references for intertextuality, and how in many cases it’s a cheap way to sound relevant and cool to your audience, but that it will make the work sound dated very quickly once those bits of pop culture become irrelevant. Mentioning one of the hottest songs on the radio’s not going to make much sense years after that song’s gone out of the popular focus, especially if the band ends up a One Hit Wonder. I talked a bit then about how intertextuality can relate to characterization, but I’m going to try to talk about it more here, in regards to Atticus. He’s a perfect example of what not to do in characterization and intertextuality, among many other things because he’s a terrible character. Maybe this one’s too similar to the last article I did on the topic, but ImpishIdea’s been kind of dead the past few months and I need something to do with my time other than cry in the corner.

So the second book of the Iron Druid Chronicles is titled Hexed and yes there is a sporking in development, hold on to your pants. But upon my reread I came again upon the part where Atticus is playing a stupid stoner type to fool the cops (again), and then decides he’d subvert expectations by revealing that he’s memorized all of Shakespeare’s works (no really).¹

Why does Atticus know all of Shakespeare by heart? [shrugs] I dunno. At least, I don’t know in-story why he does. There’s no Watsonian explanation. The Doylist, meta explanation is this: Hearne was a high school English teacher, and he thinks Shakespeare is cool, and since Atticus is the Coolest, Cleverest, and Sexiest of Men, he therefore must also love Shakespeare and know his works by heart. There’s no other reason.

And to be fair, from an outside-the-text perspective it’s at least consistent. Atticus acts a certain way and likes specific things because those are things that Kevin Hearne thinks are cool. That’s not in and of itself a bad thing, a character being a reflection of the author’s interests, but if it’s not consistent, it’s bad writing.

Because again, there’s no in-story reason for his love of Shakespeare. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: for a character who is supposed to be the most Irish Irishman to ever Irish, Atticus doesn’t give two craps about Ireland or Irish culture. If the man cared about Irish literature or art, he’d be all over Oscar Wilde, or W.E.B. Yeats, or George Bernard Shaw, or James Joyce, or Pat O’Shea, or Bram Stoker, or Eoin Colfer, or Jonathan Swift, or Lord Dunsany, or Sheridan LeFanu.

Now one could argue that this is because Atticus isn’t really Irish. He seems to have very little attachment to Ireland after he left in the Iron Age. His attitude towards the Troubles in Ireland reads very much like he’s stamping it with ‘Not My Problem’ and not caring at all. But this is contradicted when we see other aspects of his personality. He has an Irish bar he goes to all the time. He worships the Irish gods. He has an Irish wolfhound. His public persona is as a young Irish-American college-aged man. In essence, he has some tacked-on Irish traits that makes me suspect that we are supposed to think of him as a very Irish person. And yet his Irish identity is all surface-deep.

But Shakespeare? Why on Earth would Atticus drift towards the works of William Shakespeare? Not just that he likes them, but that he adores them enough to memorize them. He cares more about Shakespeare than his own gods, if that gives you an idea of how absurd this is. Shakespeare’s often called universal, but mostly by Englishmen and American Anglophiles. He’s a very English author to get worked up about.

Furthermore, there are several points in the books where Atticus, talking about mythical or fantastical creatures, will riff on modern pop cultural depictions, and say something like, “Oh these stupid people don’t know that’s not what faeries are really like! Those idiots!” and then go on to explain how they are in Hearne’s fictional world. Shakespeare is apparently the exception though; the faeries of the Hearne’s books are (in-theory) based in Irish mythology, but A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly isn’t. Yet this apparently doesn’t bother Atticus, who named his dog after the Shakespeare character (or possibly the folklore character Shakespeare based him off of, but I suspect given what we’ve been told and the specific spelling that it’s probably a Shakespeare reference).

So why is he such a fan of the Bard?

I imagine a large part of this is because Hearne, in naming Shakespeare as one of Atticus’s faves, is pulling a famous name that (if you live in the US) you’re bound to have heard of even if you failed every history class since middle school. That’s why he spent so many years hanging out with Genghis Khan, but doesn’t so much as mention Ogodei Khan, or Bato Khan, or Timur Lane, or Oda Nobunaga. Because they’re Asian conquerors you might not have heard of, despite being massively influential in their roles in history and being very well-known in their own times and cultures, so of course Atticus doesn’t so much as mention them.

That’s why Atticus likes Shakespeare. Because it’s recognizable to everyone in the English-speaking world. It’s certainly not because it fits with his character. The book tells us that Atticus is a paranoid and cautious man who avoids drawing attention to himself. Now let’s be honest based on what we actually see: Atticus is a violent sociopath who gets off on killing things for his own benefit. In either case, there’s no reason he would hang out with the equivalents of big name celebrities of different places in different parts of history. And why would he memorize Shakespeare? It’s like it’s supposed to be an example of what TV Tropes calls ‘Hidden Depths’, where a character shows a side you wouldn’t expect. But it’s not that this is a different side of a well-rounded character, it’s just… tacked onto a character it doesn’t make sense for.

Have you ever read Artemis Fowl? The title character has a bodyguard named Butler. Big bloke, good with guns and martial arts. Very serious. One of the tie-in books has interviews with all of the characters, and Butler’s interview has him admit that he doesn’t actually like action movies, because they’re too much like his own real life. He prefers romantic comedies. Then he says if the interviewer tells anyone that he’ll hunt them down. Now that is a hidden depth, because it shows a side of the character we’ve never seen before, but it doesn’t contradict what we’ve already seen. In fact, it kind of makes sense that he prefers to keep his mind off of work when he’s trying to relax.

Whereas with Atticus, we’re shown that he likes killing, he likes screwing with people using magic, he likes proving he’s Better Than You, and he likes sex. And yes, for the sake of fairness I must acknowledge that Shakespeare’s work has all of those things in it, but we don’t see that Atticus likes going to the theater or even reading. I don’t know if he really reads or watches anything that isn’t already incredibly popular. He very explicitly does not read books about Irish mythology, despite being an ancient Irish pagan; he tells the audience in the first book that he had to Google Irish myths on Aenghus Og to see what people today thought about him. He doesn’t know the first thing about Jane Austen, as he seems to think that all the characters spend their time swooning. He quotes Kill Bill and then refers to it as an anime. There is no mention of going to the theater, the opera, the library, or even seeing a movie or television that isn’t a mainstream pop cultural mainstay, like Star Wars or South Park. He seems to mock anyone with “nerd interests,” as well as the idea of getting acquainted with the politics in the country he currently lives in. I wouldn’t be surprised if he expressed disdain for the idea of reading, telling us that it’s uncool.² After all, he keeps telling us how all the supernaturals should fit into the normal world, and then expressing the shallowest understanding of how modern people think and act, based on stereotypes dumber than the ones you’d get in political cartoons mocking millennials.

All of this adds up to a man who, by all reason, should not care one whit about the works of William Shakespeare. Whatever you think about Willy Shakes, his is a set of works immersed very heavily in politics and the arts. If you’re into Shakespeare, you will find yourself on the arts scene, and you will see people trying to apply it to politics both modern and historical.

And this is a shame because there are so many cool things you can do with characterization and intertextuality. For instance, my go-to example for intertextuality is always Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan because Khan goes to his death quoting Moby-Dick. And he has it memorized, because that’s one of the few books he had to read in his exile, but also because it is something he identifies with; Khan has this overwhelming hatred for Captain Kirk, just as Ahab does for the white whale. And he knows it’s unreasonable and in the end he knows he’s doomed, but he doesn’t care; he just needs to keep trying to kill this guy, even when it’s in his advantage to surrender, because he. Just. Can’t. Stop. Hating. This man.

Or with another science-fiction example: James Holden of The Expanse is such a huge fan of Don Quixote that he names his ship the Rocinante after the title character’s horse. And it fits, because Holden’s such a massive idealist who is willing to recklessly go and do things because they’re right, even if it messes with the status quo. And because the books aren’t stupid, it’s pointed out that Don Quixote isn’t actually supposed to be endorsing this kind of behavior; if anything, it’s mocking it, showing how it’s stupid and foolhardy. So when Holden sticks to this philosophy he’s always getting himself into unnecessary trouble that could have easily been avoided. Just like whoever wrote the musical Man of La Mancha, Holden doesn’t get that Cervantes didn’t want you to be like Don Quixote. And the narrative of The Expanse keeps showing us why.

Or hey, if we want to hop back to Shakespeare, from the first volume we see the title character of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman quoting Shakespeare. And considering that he is Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, the personification of creativity, yeah, it makes sense that he’s quoting someone who is considered by many in the English-speaking world to be one of the greatest writers of all time. But we learn later that he actually knew Shakespeare, and commissioned him to write the play he’s quoting, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as a gift to the king and queen of Faerie.

Or… fun example, the Pixar movie Coco. The song that Miguel’s ancestor Imelda falls back on in the film when she decides to sing is “La Llorona.” This is a song that has a lot of history in Mexico; a lot of its lyrics were written in the Mexican Revolution. The movie doesn’t really do much with dates, so it’s unclear when the deceased ancestors lived in an ordinary viewing. But by having this be the song that Imelda knows by heart, that she falls back on when she displays her singing abilities, indicates that she lived some time around the Mexican Revolution. More than that, it says a lot about her character; “La Llorona” is not about the ghost story, it’s about a woman who has been left by her lover and is completely devastated (hence she is “la llorona” or “the weeping woman”). And though Imelda tries to hide her pain by a tough exterior, her singing shows exactly how she really feels about her husband leaving her family.

We could keep doing this all day long: the movie Bruce Wayne saw before his parents died? Zorro, the prototypical superhero story about a badass who pretends to be a rich buffoon in public while using his wits and martial arts skills to fight for the people at night. The Creature in Frankenstein gets really attached to Paradise Lost because he feels, like Satan, to be someone rebelling against his creator, and also utterly hates himself. V for_V for Vendetta_ is obsessed with The Count of Monte Cristo because he thinks of himself as Edmond Dantes, a man wrongfully imprisoned who escapes and makes a convoluted revenge plan, not realizing, much like Dantes, that revenge will consume his reason and humanity.

But Shakespeare and Atticus is none of these things. It’s not a point of character development.

Atticus’s love of Shakespeare isn’t because it fits the character. Like Rick Riordan throwing pop culture references at you, it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s built entirely on the Rule of Cool. And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with writing based on the Rule of Cool, but it has to actually be, y’know, cool.

Atticus knowing all of Shakespeare isn’t there because Hearne genuinely cares about Shakespeare. To him, this is the height of intelligence. Atticus is not just an incredibly hawt guy who has goddesses in his bed regularly, he’s not just an uber-Druid who can heal from an injury and overpower all his foes with eco-friendly magic, he’s not just a clever, witty youth who can run circles around his stupid enemies, he’s ALSO so smart that he has all of Shakespeare memorized. I’d not be surprised if as the series went on Hearne also decided that he’s also a world-class chess player who can defeat champions in three moves and understands mathematics better than Stephen Hawking.

This isn’t good writing. This is pretty bad writing, actually. This is like having your Bad Boy leading man playing piano—a tacked-on trait to make someone feel smart. This is like putting quotes at the beginning of your book that have nothing to do with anything. This is like having your protagonist beat someone at checkers/chess in a few moves. It’s telling you that a character is smart without doing any of the work to show you.

And it’s a shame. Because if you’re writing a character, and your character has an obsession with a piece of art or an author, there should be a reason for it. Maybe it doesn’t have to have Plot Relevance, but it should have Character Relevance.

If you’re going to go through the effort of telling us that your character is a fan of this or that author, or watches this or that show, there has to be a reason behind it. Don’t just make your characters fans of the same fiction that you are if it doesn’t make any sense for them to be. Atticus has no reason to care about Shakespeare. It’s another (failed) attempt to impress the reader with how smart and cool he is.

Maybe I’m overreacting; this is far from the most egregious thing to happen in the Iron Druid Chronicles from a critical perspective. Maybe I just care because intertextuality is my jam. But hear me out: Hearne specifically made Atticus a fanboy of one of the most popular and talked about writers in the history of the English-speaking world, having him go so far as to memorize all of his work, which would take years of effort… and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just there to prove how his protagonist is Better Than You. Not to indicate how far this character will go to try to prove that he’s better than everyone else, like an actual character flaw; no, you’re supposed to read about this trait and be utterly in awe of this manly and witty specimen of a man.

And we’re not. We’re just disgusted by this gross, monstrous character, and baffled by the author’s numerous attempts to tell us he’s an admirable man instead of the lecherous, violent sociopath he is.

¹ “Wait a minute,” you might be saying. “Wouldn’t revealing that he’s memorized Shakespeare prove that he’s not the stupid stoner he’s pretending to be? And blow his cover? And make this whole charade pointless? Doesn’t that make him incredibly short-sighted and stupid?” Yes, dear reader. Yes it does. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Hearne plays the entire situation as if Atticus the cleverest man alive.

² This sounds counterintuitive, a book telling you that books are uncool. But it’s happened to me before: the book fantasy novel Fell (which is about talking wolves) has several Author Tracts about how using stories to teach lessons is harmful propaganda meant to enslave us and fairy tales are the opiates of the masses. Yes, really.

Comment [11]

Hey guys, I’m the Ghost of Christmas Sporking, and we’re back. Merry Christmas.

I’m sorry I haven’t updated lately. Fact is, life has been a bit rough, even outside the pandemic, though that sure as heck hasn’t helped. The week after my last post, I started feeling ill in my stomach for weeks at a time. I’ve had it investigated and medicated, and so far it doesn’t look like anything serious, just a bit annoying and that I should be more careful about eating. Also I have a full time job now, which is great, because I get PAID! But it also means that I have much less time to write for ImpishIdea or play PS4. But I’m going to be doing my best all the same!

So… Hexed.

You remember Hounded don’t you? The first book in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles is about a Mary Sue. Atticus O’Sullivan is the last Druid, because Reasons, having survived into the modern day and is now living in Tempe, Arizona. His old enemy Aenghus Og (the Irish god of love just go with it) rolls into town, and things kind of… happen, and Atticus kills all the bad guys and goes on with his life as if everything’s fine. It’s a pretty dull, meandering story where there are no stakes, the protagonist is dumb but his enemies are dumber, and he solves his problems by using brute magical force or having his allies do it for him. We’re obviously meant to think of this as a hilarious and witty romp through an Irish myth-flavored urban fantasy, but it’s more of a nonsensical wish fulfillment with stupid characters, forgetable action, and a world that twisted to suit the protagonist’s needs. It’s by no means the worst novel I’ve ever read, but that’s a low bar when you’ve got Angelopolis on your Goodreads list.

Of course, Hounded is the first in a series of novels, so naturally there are sequels! Eight sequels, if we’re not counting all of the short stories. And there’s a spinoff series now. I’m not committing to all of them, but I did say I would try to spork the first three novels in the series, because those three form the first major story arc. I think? Maybe past them the following books become better. I don’t know. I don’t care! I’m here to spork bad books, and I’ve learned better than to expect Hearne to have gotten better at his craft.

So let’s hopped into Book 2 of the series: Hexed.

The book opens with Atticus telling us that since he’s killed Aenghus Og, the news had made its way around the mythological community.

Turns out that when you kill a god, people want to talk to you. Paranormal insurance salesmen with special “godslayer” term life policies. Charlatans with “god-proof” armor and extraplanar safe houses for rent. But, most notably, other gods, who want to first congratulate you on your achievement, second warn you not to try such shenanigans on them, and finally suggest that you try to slay one of their rivals—purely as a shenanigan, of course.

[rubs forehead]

There’s a lot to cover in this opening paragraph, and some of it is just nitpicking on my part, but let’s start with—

Better Than You: 1

Yes, that’s a new thing I’m trying out. It’s a counter. Basically every time one of these babies goes up a point is when something is going to be repeated and rubbed in your face all the time. Don’t make a drinking game out of it, because then you’ll die. This one, Better Than You is when Kevin Hearne is trying to tell you just how amazing and awesome his protagonist is, and how everyone’s just in awe of him.

Almost right off the bat, we’re told that after killing a god, and the other gods here about it, what happens? A bunch of gods show up on his doorstep and the first thing they do is congratulate him. Yes, this man killed two of their own, something that’s apparently so rare it’s frontline news in their community, and their reaction is to go personally tell him how awesome he is. They get to threatening him after, but think about this:

The gods are congratulating the protagonist on being awesome enough to kill two of them.

Yes, really.

A more realistic reaction would be just zapping his house with a lightning bolt or an earthquake or something. If this was really a story about a paranoid Druid, he’d be on the run because all the gods of the world, seeing that he’s a godkiller, would be out to kill him before he got on their case. They should be looking at him like Kratos, not like he’s just some lucky schmuck. As it is, apparently all the gods know where he lives, and he doesn’t care.

So—new count.

You Keep Using That Word: 1

[Thank Smith for the suggestion about the name. No I did not just steal it from Apep.]

This is for when, despite all of his claims at being the most paranoid man ever, he’s incredibly complacent about everything that happens around him. He talks about keeping a low profile, and in one of the short stories he makes a point of saying he doesn’t want the larger supernatural community to know where he lives. And yet here we’re told that they start showing up at his house, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t start packing. Atticus just… goes on with his life as if nothing’s changed.

But moving on to pointless nitpicking: paranormal insurance salesmen? Supernatural charlatans? What the fudge? We get little indication before now that the supernatural community of the world in this series is anywhere near cohesive enough to have these services. It mostly seemed as if Atticus had his friends and they dicked around and covered for each other when someone got in trouble. I didn’t think the ghouls that Leif had on speed dial were like, a service, they were just some guys he knew to clean up his messes. When Malina tells Atticus about all the supernatural threats the witches have dealt with, he’s shocked because he had no clue about any of them. The impression I get from this book, and the one before it, is that supernatural entities and groups just kind of keep to themselves, occasionally forming local alliances or enmities based on convenience. Telling us that there are insurance salesmen and charlatans feels as if there’s a huge supernatural world out there.

And Hearne doesn’t do anything with it, because we don’t get any other indication of this wider supernatural community that I can recall. At least, not in this book. There are monsters and gods to fight, yeah, but the community? It’s just dropped in there and moved past. And I get that Hearne wants to get to Plot, okay, fine, but it feels as if he’s got another chance to develop this world and he walks past it again because screw it, we need to get back to everyone salivating over Atticus. There’s an outside world out there, and neither Hearne nor Atticus care.

Oh yeah, and everyone and their mother is apparently trying to get him to kill another god. If you paid attention last time you can probably see where this is going.

Ever since word got around to the various pantheons that I snuffed not one but two of the Tuatha De Danann…I had been visited by various potentates, heralds, and ambassadors from most of the world’s belief systems. All of them wanted me to leave them alone but pick a fight with someone else, and if I successfully lanced the immortal boil that vexed them, I’d be rewarded beyond my wildest dreams, blah blah barf yak.

Again: Atticus doesn’t want anything. In a well-written story, at least one of these offers would tempt him, because he would be a character who wanted something because having a motivation is how to write a protagonist. You’d think Hearne, who was a high school English teacher, would have worked that out when writing his own series of novels. But Atticus is such a ridiculous wish fulfillment self-insert that he literally has the gods offer him anything in the world, and it’s skipped over and dismissed because he already has everything he ever wanted. Sure, it’d be really cliched if he wanted to bring a loved one back from the dead or something like that, but it would be a motivation. Instead Hearne decided it was better to just make stuff happen to him or have Atticus get pulled into the Plot and go along with it because he has nothing better to do.

I’ll try not to pull this out too much in this sporking, but to recap his list of character traits and powers, Atticus is:

-Ageless
-Immune to DEATH
-Able to maintain a fairly active sex life, sometimes with literal goddesses
-Fatal to magical beings when he touches them
-Able to shapeshift into four different animal forms
-Able to control the wind
-The owner of a New Age store
-The owner of a nice house in the suburbs of a college town
-Able to heal any injury as long as he’s touching the soil
-Able to control plants
-A master swordsman
-Super strong
-The client of a wealthy law firm
-Able to turn nearly invisible
-Able to kill demons with supernatural fire
-Able to create magic potions
-Able to see through glamour
-Able to turn off his pain receptors
-Able to give people wedgies with his mind

There are ways to do powerful protagonists. This isn’t it! It’s like someone made a checklist of how to make the least engaging and sympathetic protagonist and applied it.

So after dismissing the gifts of the gods, he then complains that Brighid’s promised reward had yet to materialize, but considering she had to make him do it by having his lapdog and Oberon kidnapped, I think she can argue that he doesn’t get any reward at all.

The Japanese wanted me to mess with the Chinese, and vice versa. The old Russian gods wanted me to stick it to the Hungarians. The Greeks wanted me to knock off their Roman copycats in a bizarre manifestation of self-loathing and internecine jealousy. The weirdest by far—

Wait wait wait.

Okay, I know that next to no one cares, and given that this is a throwaway line I don’t have to either, but you do know that the Roman gods aren’t just the Greek gods with a new coat of paint? Like, the Italian people before the Roman Republic, the Etruscans, had a religion that was sort of merged with the Greek one? Like, Minerva isn’t just Athena with a new name, she’s a fusion of the Greek Athena and the Etruscan Menvra. Rick Riordan gets this wrong too in the Heroes of Olympus series, depicting the Roman gods as mostly Greek ones with Roman names and values attached, but in his defense that’s a book series aimed at children. And again, this is a throwaway line (for now) so it shouldn’t matter and I’m not going to take off points for it, but it does bother me that Hearne’s understanding of Roman myth is just… the names are different.

[The weirdest he mentions are the gods of Easter Island who apparently want him to “mess around with some rotting totem poles in the Seattle area” if you’re curious where I cut off the quote.]

Right, the point:

But everyone—at least, it sure seemed like everyone—wanted me to slay Thor as soon as I had a free moment. The whole world was tired of his shenanigans, I guess.

And to be fair, the recent God of War game does this too, with both Thor and Odin, but it actually has a compelling story and likable characters. Iron Druid Chronicles has no such redeeming qualities.

“Foremost” of the people begging him to kill Thor is Atticus’s bloodsucking lawyer, Leif Helgarson. No, he’s actually a bloodsucking lawyer, he’s a vampire and a serial killer who hates Thor so much that sometimes he kills carpenters because they use hammers and that ticks him off. And he’s one of our hero’s BFFs! Atticus doesn’t know why he hates Thor so much because Leif refuses to say.

So Atticus comes home the night after Samhain to find Leif on his porch. He tells us that he celebrated Samhain, honoring Brighid and the Morrigan as he did so, and he was happy to teach his new apprentice Granuaile about it, and this all makes me wonder why Hearne didn’t just… write that scene into the story? You wouldn’t think that Atticus was at all religious if he didn’t sometimes insert random bits about celebrating Samhain and the like, but the main character having meaningful interactions about his faith? That’d be good character development! So of course it can’t happen here.

It’s just here to explain why he’s in a good mood, and why he greets Leif like this:

“Leif, you spooky bastard, how the hell are ya?”

Atticus sure is the smartest of smart people all right.

Leif replies that he is not a bastard, that he’ll accept ‘spooky’, but he isn’t as “jocund” as Atticus is, and Atticus questions his use of the word, so he uses “jovial” instead and then—

“No one uses those words anymore, Leif, except for old farts like us.” I leaned my bike against the porch rails and mounted the three steps to take a seat next to him. “You really should spend some decent time learning how to blend in. Make it a project.

Bringing us to our next count—

This is when Atticus rather derisively insists that young people nowadays do things a certain way, and no one in their right mind would use a word like ‘jovial’ or assume that ‘fencing’ was something other than selling stolen goods. Because modern people are stupid, tee-hee! And because Atticus is the smartest smart person, he can act stupid just like the stupid people! Now to be clear, most of the slang Atticus insists that people say now is dated, and was probably dated when the book was released in the first place, making it even more grating.

Popular culture is mutating at a much faster rate these days. It’s not like the Middle Ages, when you had the Church and the aristocracy keeping everything nice and stagnant.”

Fudge, another count? Already?

Didn’t Do Homework: 1

[sigh] Okay, like, I know that Hearne probably has a high school grasp of history, but, like, things happened in the Middle Ages, you know? Other than war? This common myth that culture didn’t do anything? That it was just the Dark Ages when peasants just rolled in dung all the time while the aristocrats and clergy rolled in money and declared everything remotely scientific to be witchcraft? That’s not a view historians have. And Atticus, as an immortal person who lived through those times (albeit, he was probably killing people with the Mongols at the time and calling himself enlightened for it), should know this. I get a little angry whenever someone even says the phrase ‘Dark Ages’ because it’s indicative of a very childish view of history!

There was poetry. There was literature. There was art. There was philosophy. There was (admittedly basic by our standards) science. Now no, a lot of this wasn’t as widely circulated, as most people couldn’t read, and I would argue that before the invention of the printing press it wasn’t really feasible to get all of this in wide circulation. But it was there. And peasants and lower class people, even if they couldn’t read, still had art and culture and developments.

And you know what else changed a lot during this time period? Language! Specifically, the English language! It came a long way from Anglo-Saxon to Middle English, and eventually to modern English (in what we’d probably call the Renaissance). So Atticus, saying that language changes now unlike it did in medieval Europe, in a language that evolved significantly during the medieval period strikes me as very stupid and I want to hit him.

So Leif says “Very well” and asks how he should respond, and Atticus informs him that nobody says ‘well’ anymore because that’s old fashioned, and the kids say “I’m good,”

The Kids These Days: 2

which Leif points out isn’t grammatically correct, but Atticus says

“These people don’t care about proper. You can tell them they’re trying to use an adjective as an adverb and they’ll just stare at you like you’re a toad.”

The Kids These Days: 3

Better Than You: 2

Does Hearne know his audience is made up of modern people? I feel like repeatedly calling his audience idiots is not a great marketing tactic.

This conversation goes on for a while, and I think it belays that Atticus/Hearne doesn’t understand language? Leif is confused about the use of the term ‘chill’ because it doesn’t make sense to him, and Atticus agrees it’s stupid, but ‘chill’ actually makes sense? Because when you’re angry, or upset, the emotions are generally associated with heat and energy, as opposed to things that are cool, or chilled, which are at a manageable temperature you use to preserve things or avoid getting spoiled.

Atticus insists that Leif has to learn the slang in order to blend in. It’s weird, because the fact is that him being a person who uses old fashioned language isn’t going to be that big of a social obstacle I think. Yeah, people think it’s weird, but not that weird. It’s hardly a crippling facet of his social life. At worst, people will think you’re like an amped up version of Captain Holt on Brooklyn 99 or something.

And I’m confused as to why anyone cares? Leif doesn’t seem to want to hang out with people other than to suck their blood, which he can just mind control people for anyway. This isn’t a pep talk to get him more friends or professional contacts or anything. It’s just… Atticus is annoyed that someone out there doesn’t talk in slang that he’s deemed stupid anyway.

One of the complaints I generally see about this series repeated over and over again, both in the comments of these sporkings and in other places is that Atticus doesn’t sound at all like an ancient immortal being. And yeah, we’re supposed to get that he’s putting up a facade to sound like a young person, or rather a stereotype of a young person, but that’s hard to buy because that’s just how he is. Atticus is a selfish, shallow, sex-obsessed worm that frequently disregards anything that isn’t right in front of him. So the suggestion that he talks like this because it’s a deliberate act he puts on doesn’t fit.

This feels, to me at least, as if Hearne is trying to justify the dialogue or address critics’ complaints by saying that Atticus is doing this because he has to fit in. But it doesn’t work because again, it still doesn’t feel like he has a handle on how people talk. It’s like if I wrote a novel about middle schoolers, and the dialogue based on my classmates’ Instant Messenger logs from middle school (I never got into IM’ing myself). It wouldn’t reflect how they actually talked, it would sound stupid, and no one would find it believable. Yeah, I’d have an excuse, but that doesn’t make it good.

Atticus also gives us this:

I hang out with these college kids and they have no clue that I’m not one of them. They think my money comes from an inheritance trust fund, and they want to have a drink with me.”

Hey, isn’t it weird that his two thousand-year-old guy likes hanging out with college kids? I mean, it’s not necessarily creepy, but considering he’s mentioned a very active sex life, and Atticus is pretty much constantly thinking about sex, what we have here is a considerably older man who likes spending time around young people who only just reached adulthood. Even if we take out the sexual angle, outside of the werewolves and vampire, Atticus is an older man that prefers spending time with much younger people, pretending to be one of them. Is that not, at the very least, incredibly sketch?

Also he sells them magic drugs at his shop.

And hey, he has been pretending to be a college kid for years. One would think that people would pick up that this guy has been the same age for a long time.

So Leif changes the subject, saying that he needs to talk about something for a bit—

Listen to yourself, Leif! Do you want to blend in or not? The span of an hour? Who says shit like that anymore?”

The Kids These Days: 4

You know what’s not blending in? Shouting about slang on your front porch!

GET TO THE POINT HEARNE!

No wonder you can’t carry on a half hour’s conversation with a sorority girl!

Huh?

Again, stuff like this makes me think that Atticus is probably only trying to blend in for the skeeviest reasons imaginable—to get laid. With college girls. Like, I suppose he could technically be looking for friendship, but this is Atticus we’re talking about, who values women on how hawt they are. I understand that it’s not as if there are a lot of women that are Atticus’s age, but again, these are women who have just reached adulthood, and Atticus’s type is either a goddess or a college girl, and that he consistently sleeps with college-aged women, a group of people he dismisses because they’re modern and thus stupid.

Atticus’s type in sexual partners, when not literal goddesses, is women that he values only for their bodies. THINK ABOUT THAT.

[I hadn’t planned this, but now I’m considering doing a ‘Atticus is a perv’ count. Suggest names in the comments!]

Oberon telepathically talks to Atticus because Hearne decided this scene needed MOAR padding and in their conversation they mention that his favorite Irish pub is mad at them for taking Granuaile away from working there. I don’t care. Moving on.

So after even more criticism of his language, Leif explains that he wants Atticus to kill Thor. Atticus and Oberon point out that there’s a line of people who want him dead, and Leif jumps on this as a reason he should do it—he should find plenty of people willing to help him do it, and everyone will love him once he does it. Atticus asks the obvious question: if everyone wants him dead, why hasn’t anyone else done it already?

Leif claims it’s because of Ragnarok. Basically because there’s a prophecy about the end of the world in Norse mythology (that’s Ragnarok), and Thor has a part in it. So everyone assumes that because of that, he HAS to survive until then, and so every attempt to kill him will fail. Because Prophecy. But if that’s so, why is everyone asking Atticus to kill him? And if it’s a cross-pantheon thing… well, it’s not like other mythologies believe in the Norse Ragnarok, do they?

Also if the Norse gods exist because people believe in them, then… how the fudge does this even work?

Leif basically says it’s all nonsense anyway, calling it “some ancient tale dreamed up in the frozen brains of my ancestors” but again, in this world, stuff becomes true when people believe in it! So this assertion that Ragnarok isn’t going to happen because Reasons… I don’t know if this makes sense or not! Do enough people believe in Norse religion for it to work?

Aenghus Og and Bres both came to me and picked a fight, and all I did was finish it. And, you know, it could have easily gone the other way. You weren’t there: I nearly didn’t make it.

HA! This is laughable. Yes, Atticus shows his disfigured ear to show that he got hurt, but let’s tally the scores a bit: he kills Bres without even a fight, knocking him down and lopping off his head over the course of a single page. And Aenghus Og gives him trouble because he gets weakened by the mooks—once he gets back to full power, because the Morrigan lended him strength, Atticus duels Aenghus Og and beats him fairly easily, noting that his opponent hasn’t learned any new fighting skillz or tricks in thousands of years whereas Atticus learned martial arts in Asia.

Which martial arts, you ask? Y’know. Those ones. From Asia.

NO, it was not a close call. Atticus did not survive because of his wits, barely scraping by as dastardly villains plotted against him. He survived because he’s an overpowered git and all the antagonists are stupid. I remind you that part of Aenghus Og’s plan to kill Atticus involved rendering himself impotent. Atticus consistently had more trouble fighting the henchmen than he did with the gods themselves. All the wounds he received in the last book were from mooks, not bosses.

Atticus also claims that gods from all the other world’s religions would come after him for killing Thor, as it sets bad precedent to kill a major deity like that, even though the beginning of this chapter, and this conversation, all tell us that everyone wants Thor dead. Consistency? What’s that? We’re getting to Angelopolis levels of continuity here.

He explains to Leif (and us) that there are also multiple versions of Thor running around, including the Marvel comic book version? And basically all of them would be angry about killing the original Thor from Norse mythology, and HOW THE FUDGE DOES THAT EVEN WORK?! Why are there different versions of Thor running around? Theoretically, shouldn’t there also be different versions of Aenghus running around too? Because the one from the books is nothing like the one from the original mythology. Or the one from Irish literature. So theoretically, that one should be gunning for Atticus’s head right about now too. But can’t make it too difficult for our protagonist, I guess.

And if there are different versions of Thor, why does this Ragnarok thing matter so much? If you kill one, shouldn’t one of the others running step up and take his spot for Ragnarok? Again, a bunch of information is dumped on us, but Hearne doesn’t bother to explain how it fits into what we know. It’s just… there.

Leif then offers that he gets a crew together—basically, if he assembles a team willing to go kill Thor, would Atticus join? And Atticus still refuses. This is one of the few times that Atticus in any way embodies any of the caution he consistently claims he’s always exhibiting. Going and fighting a major deity is a great way to draw unwanted attention and he doesn’t want that.

Atticus is all too happy to tell Leif to go do it and get himself killed though, telling him “I recommend avoiding Loki,” because you can’t trust that guy. Which Leif, being an actual Norseman, would know. Is there a word for this? Druidsplaining, maybe? It feels like it’s thrown in there so Hearne can say, “Look guys, I know about Norse mythology! Aren’t I clever?” Except it’s as basic as you get, and it makes no sense for Atticus to say this to someone who should know this better than he himself does.

Imagine, for instance, advising your Jewish friend to stay away from golden calves, because God doesn’t like those, lol. Of course a Jewish person should know that. It’s a basic thing in that religion.

Leif gets surprisingly dark though, and says he just doesn’t want to coexist in the same reality as Thor because he wants his revenge. What exactly for, Atticus asks, but before Leif can answer he notices that Atticus’s iron amulet is glowing and asks what the fudge that’s about. It’s not until after it’s pointed out that it’s also apparently giving off a lot of heat, enough that there’s a sizzling noise and “a little piece of me frying like bacon.”

“I’m under magical attack!” I hissed through clenched teeth.

And because he’s convinced Leif is stupid (no really, he says he has to “connect the dots for Leif, in case he was missing out on the salient point”) he adds the final sentence of the chapter “Someone’s trying to kill me!”

Alright so the first book didn’t have a great opening, but this one’s somehow worse. Hounded began with him being ambushed by faeries and fighting them off, and that scene was ruined by him stopping the action to explain things every few minutes, and he’s more powerful than them anyway, healing from the wounds they give him almost instantly and having an iron elemental on standby to conveniently kill them and then disappear for the rest of the book.

Hexed starts with Atticus summarizing much more interesting conversations than the one we get, telling us how much he doesn’t care about it anyway, and then his friend showing up telling him to do a thing, which he doesn’t want to do, and then someone’s attacking him magically, but not enough to actually, y’know, seriously hurt him.

I mean, yeah, the amulet’s burning his skin, but he can regenerate so that’s near nothing to him. It probably hurts more than anything else, and we were told in the last book that if he wants he can turn off his pain receptors. Basically this magic amulet is blocking the magic from doing any serious harm, and so any drama in this scene is just… not there?

As you can probably guess, this is a pretty good indicator of things to come. This is a book with a fallen angel, bloodthirsty followers of Bacchus, Nazi witches, the Virgin Mary, Coyote, and a slaughter at a night club. And guess what? Atticus barely has to exert himself to deal with any of it. It all just kind of happens around him.

Join me next time, as Atticus tells us, yet again, how much he hates witches.

COUNTS (and double check to make sure I got this right; math’s not my strong suite):

Better Than You: 2
Didn’t Do Homework: 1
The Kids These Days: 4
You Keep Using That Word: 1

Comment [15]

Happy Valentine’s Day! Welcome back to Hexed! Did you miss Atticus? No? Too bad! This chapter’s pretty boring, so I apologize. That is, in part, why it took so long for me to spork this.

So we begin with Leif launching himself into Atticus’s front yard with his fangs out, which is apparently not very noticeable in this suburban neighborhood, but okay. Atticus notes that whoever was casting this spell could easily do it from a distance, and so had no reason to be anywhere within sight.

The spell didn’t work, and it’s already starting to fade, because of our next count:

Make It Easy!: 1

Yeah, Atticus has already shut off his pain receptors and is healing himself, taking off his shoes so that he can walk barefoot in his yard and get healing Earth power. The worst part is that the amulet has apparently fused itself to his skin, because it was so hot, but given Atticus’s healing powers that’s hardly likely to be permanent either, is it?

Also dialogue in this book sux. Have I made that clear?

“I would agree that you are a victim of witchcraft, but I sense no one nearby but the usual residents,” Leif said as he continued to search for trouble. “However, now that you have delicately broached the subject—”

“Is that what I just did?” I said, tension straining my voice. “Delicately broached the subject of witches? Because I thought I was doing something else entirely, like getting my ass flame-broiled by witches.”

“I beg your pardon. I was flailing about for a segue and utterly failed to find a facile one.

Leif’s dialogue doesn’t read like an old-fashioned person or someone who uses big words. I mean the first bit isn’t that bad, but his reply to Atticus? Like, when I’m trying to write in a way that sounds overly formal or old-fashioned, I tend to just watch a bunch of clips from Elementary and model the dialogue after Sherlock Holmes. The reply reads as if Hearne raided a thesaurus store for words. Like he’s intentionally trying to tick me off.

Anyhow, Leif goes on to explain that he had an official reason for meeting Atticus tonight that wasn’t to beg him to go kill his enemies for him. See, Malina Sokolowski, the good witch from the last book? Well, she made a formal agreement with Atticus, a nonaggression treaty, which Leif has come to report that she agreed on the treaty without making any special requests.

Atticus, because he hates women witches, jumps to the conclusion that Malina, a character with no motivation to do so, was the one who tried to kill him. He assumes that because the nonaggression treaty hasn’t actually been signed yet, Malina can get away with taking a shot at him. Or something. He briefly recaps the witches’ role in the last book before adding that “despite all Malina’s noises about doves and olive branches, I still believed she would take any chance she got to avenge them.”

Again, this makes no sense. Now to be fair, coherent motivations weren’t the last book’s strength either—the villain was the Irish god of love, morphed into a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth sociopath for no discernible reason—but we are shown time and again that Malina has been nothing but polite and helpful to Atticus, even when he’s being rude to her face. And because Atticus hates witches, for reasons that aren’t clear other than probably sexism and definitely elitism, he repeatedly tells us that he expects her to betray him.

I just want you to think about that. Our protagonists hates a certain group of people for the reasons of “They can’t by nature be trusted,” and “I’m a better class of mage than them.”

Anyhoo.

When Leif asks if he wants him, as the lawyer, to go visit Malina, Atticus resolves to visit the witch in person, to which Leif replies “You relieve me excessively.”

I told you this dialogue sucked.

But Mr. Semerdjian, Atticus’s elderly neighbor who hates him for entirely justifiable reasons, is apparently snooping around, watching through his window. Atticus asks Leif if he can sense anything supernatural about him, because he thinks the only reason anyone would dislike him is because they’re a supernatural monster with a vendetta, I guess. Leif says there’s nothing weird about him.

Leif chuckled wryly and shook his head. “The world will never plumb the depths of your paranoia.”

[sigh]

You Keep Using That Word: 2

I want to reiterate: the gods of apparently every mythology, and the entire supernatural community, all know where Atticus lives and are willing to send emissaries, scam artists, and salesmen to his house…and Atticus doesn’t care. The whole point of moving to Arizona was, according to Atticus, to be away from the gods, and yet they can just pop in whenever anyway.

Atticus is as paranoid as my sock drawer.

“I hope not, because then it might catch me unprepared for something.

Atticus is NEVER prepared for anything! So much of what happened in the last book caught him completely by surprise. He got through it because the villains were really, really stupid. He always reacts with absolute surprise when someone delivers news to him, and then he doesn’t do anything. His “preparedness” is entirely built on him being too powerful for anything the narrative throws at him! He’s the most reactive protagonist I’ve ever seen! He’s not like Batman even his worst incarnations, because he’s too stupid!

I remind you that in the last book, when he thinks it’s possible that Radomila, the evil witch that betrayed him, has taken away the sample of her blood he has, the one bit of insurance to prevent her from using magic against him, you know what he does? Does he go and check to make sure he still has it?

Nope. He just goes about his business, telling himself he’ll ask about it later. After all, he’s got to go to his favorite bar, flirt with the bartender, and talk to his werewolf friend.

[Who, like half an hour later, gets kidnapped, and he doesn’t even notice.]

Atticus asks what Mr. Semerdjian smells like and Leif says “Like a chili dog with mustard and cheap light beer. His blood courses with grease and alcohol.” I don’t know what to say other than Hearne wants to dump on this character as much as possible.

Also there’s a joke where Oberon says he thinks that smells good because… I don’t know, Hearne thinks this is comedy I guess. I’m on the border of starting the new bad joke count right now.

Nah, we’ll move on.

Leif says he’ll go home so that Atticus can do his witch hunting business. But before he goes, he requests that Atticus “at least consider” joining up with a group of people to go kill Thor, as favor because they’re friends. Atticus says he will as a favor to his friend—

But, honestly, Leif, I do not wish to give you any false hope here. Killing Thor is an honor I dream not of.”

I mean this is a pretentious way of saying, “Sure I’ll consider it friend, but f*** you I’m never going to do it.” Like, I get that going and storming Asgard to go kill Thor is a really stupid idea, even by Iron Druid standards, but Leif has made it clear this whole thing is apparently causing no small amount of anguish to himself, and if Atticus was any sort of friend he’d try to at least talk Leif down and try to help him resolve his issues.

[SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t do that. He eventually agrees to storm Asgard because he’s an idiot.]

Icy glares from vampires are far icier than icy glares from people. And when the vampire giving you an icy glare is originally from Iceland, you are confronted with the archetypal origin of the term, and you shouldn’t be surprised if your core body temperature drops a few degrees.

…Iceland’s the green one.

Anyhow this exchange is stupid because what happens is this:

Leif threw me one such glare at me for a few seconds, then said quietly: “Are you mocking me? When you quote Shakespeare, it is often to mock someone or to point out their folly.”

Whoa, he’s got you there, Atticus, Oberon said.

“No, Leif, I’m just under a bit of stress here,” I said, gesturing at my sweating face and the still-steaming amulet dangling from my neck.

“I think you are lying.”

“Come on, Leif—”

“Forgive me, but our association has allowed me some small knowledge about the way you think. You quoted Juliet just now. Are you suggesting I am something like Romeo here, Fortune’s fool, perhaps driven to rash and ill-considered confrontation with Tybalt out of revenge for Mercutio’s death? And you think perhaps I will end tragically, like Romeo, if I pursue this course of action against Thor?”

…heh?

But wait… there’s MOAR!!!

“That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all,” I said, “but if that were my intent, I would have chosen to speak as Benvolio rather than Juliet: ‘Part, fools! You know not what you do.’”

Leif stared at me, utterly still, the way only vampires and pet rocks can manage. “I’ve always preferred _Hamlet,_” he finally said. “‘Now could I drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.’”

Alright, first a

And now a

And finally:

Better Than You: 3

See how smart these guys are? They can quote Shakespeare at each other! And explain the quotes! It’s not just quoting Shakespeare, which by itself wouldn’t be that bad, but Hearne is drawing attention to the fact that they’re doing it, and then has Leif explain what one of those quotes mean. Someone just tried to assassinate our main character, and everything grinds to a halt so that we can make jokes about Atticus’s nosy neighbor and these two can measure their dicks show off how smart they are by quoting and explaining Shakespeare.

It’s like Hearne’s trying to beat you over the head with how clever these people are.

Also right after a conversation about modern people are stupid and talk stupid and you’ve got to talk like them or you won’t fit in, loser.

Dude. If that was a Shakespearean quote duel, he just kicked your ass.

I know. But I slipped in some T.S. Eliot and he didn’t catch it. Hopefully next time I won’t be recovering from an assassination attempt, and then I’ll do better.

Huh? All Leif did was say he wants to kill Thor! That’s basically it! That he’s tired of waiting, and wants to go ahead and do it! He didn’t win anything! He didn’t demonstrate better mastery of Shakespeare quotes than Atticus! He just explained that he understood them and that he thinks Atticus is calling him an idiot, and then shoots back a vampire-appropriate quote to explain he’s going to kill Thor.

You both know what you’re talking about! That’s all! I supposed if they were doing Shakespearean insults. at each other, one can win, but that’s not what Leif did just now. It was just… him saying he wants to kill Thor. In Shakespeare. Who cares?

Atticus wants to do something about this murder attempt, but because his neighbor’s watching, he can’t. So he asks Oberon to distract Mr. Semerdjian by going into his yard and staring at him. Not do anything, just sit in the yard and stare at the man, because they know it’ll unnerve him.

It was a shame that Mr. Semerdjian and I didn’t get along. A slightly pudgy Lebanese gentleman on the wrong side of sixty, he tended to get excited quickly and loudly and would probably have been great fun to watch a baseball game with. We might have gotten along famously if he hadn’t been such a jerk from the moment I moved in—which is kind of like saying the drowning victim might have lived if only he had been able to breathe water.

“Yeah, it’s a shame that he’s such a jerk. Why is he a jerk? Because he doesn’t like me!”

As has been mentioned, Atticus expects everyone to just bow to his whims, and when his neighbor, weirded out by his weird behavior and claims to be an ordinary twenty-one-year-old who owns his own store and house in the suburbs and can apparently hand out thousands of dollars on a whim, very justifiably acts like there’s something fishy about this guy, he’s just a jerk, ya know?

So while Mr. Semerdjian is staring at Oberon, Atticus calls up some fog to hide himself and then heals himself. Then he goes to his garden hose and pours water on his amulet to cool it down. When Mr. Semerdjian starts telling Oberon to get off of his lawn, and Atticus instructs him to growl if he gets closer, which he does, and Semerdjian immediately backs off and calls for Atticus to get his dog out of there. Atticus tries to act as if nothing is wrong.

Mr. Semerdjian threatens to call the police, and Atticus reminds him of the last time he called the police on him, which because of Leif’s brainwashing powers, he remembers as a false alarm that he got in trouble for. He retreats back to his house, calling Atticus “a spooky bastard”* (which he is).

Oberon and Atticus have a quick conversation, in which Atticus has to tell his dog what the word ‘prank’ is, and then he compares them to the Merry Pranksters of 1964? For Reasons? That was a group of people who went around the country doing hallucinogenic drugs (because 60’s, am I right?). See, because they’re gaslighting Mr. Semerdjian, screwing with his head, it’s like they’re giving him drugs, isn’t that funny, te-he!

…they’re psychologically torturing this man.

Atticus is going to call Malina and brag that her spell (because she’s totally the one who did it, right?) didn’t kill him. Then Oberon informs us that Mr. Semerdjian smells like demon. And even though they’ve walked down the street, Oberon still smells it. But Atticus deduces that it’s not Mr. Semerdjian, it’s something else! He says they’ve got to run back to the house to get his sword now.

A block ahead of us, something shifted in the shadows. It moved unnaturally above the ground, the size of a small Volkswagen, and then I discerned what was moving it: grotesquely long insectile legs, supporting a bulk that vaguely resembled a grasshopper. Insect size is supposed to be restricted to six inches or so, due to the limits of their tracheal systems, but apparently this demon didn’t get the memo.

See, it’s not a bad description, but it’s in this book so I can’t help but find things wrong with it. Like, why does the demon look like a bug? We talked about this a bit at the end of the last book, but mythological beings are supposed to be shaped by the beliefs of people? And look, most people who believe in demons don’t think of them as looking like giant insects. So while this isn’t a bad idea for a demon image (Dresden Files has something similar, with Imariel appearing as a large mantis-like creature), this goes against established worldbuilding.

Also, the need to tell us that insects being that large contradicts how insects’ bodies work. This coming up in any other work I think I’d let it pass, but coming from Atticus, right here instead of in dialogue or something, makes me feel like Hearne just tacked it on to make himself look smart. In a scene that’s supposed to be tense, because of there’s an actual demon lurking in his neighborhood, Atticus stops to tell us that it’s a biological impossibility.

Well duh.

Atticus tells Oberon to run home, and the demon starts chasing after them. We’re told that they won’t make it to the house, and so there’s no time to grab the sword.

Isn’t he so paranoid? That he leaves his house without a means of defense? The guy is apparently worried about being jumped by bad guys all the time, but the second one shows up, he tells us that he needs to go grab a weapon. And no, him walking around with a sword idea wouldn’t be smart either (except he did it in the last book), but you’d think if he was anywhere near as paranoid and well-prepared as he claimed just earlier this chapter, he would have some other kind of weapon or spell on him, or some way of summoning the sword to himself on short notice.

You Keep Using That Word: 3

You know, maybe we should combine two chapters? Put Chapter 3 in here too. How does Chapter 3 start anyway?

[flips page]

Demons smell like ass—nasty ass that slithers down your throat

[shuts book]

Okay never mind.

[puts in a folder labelled ‘Next Time’s Problem’]

Make it Easy!: 1
Better Than You: 3
You Keep Using That Word: 3

Comment [4]

Right so where were we?

Demons smell like ass—nasty ass that slithers down your throat, finds your gag reflex, and sits on it with authority.

LAUGH, DAMNIT: 1

I’ve put off this count for way too long.

So in this chapter, Atticus fights a demon. Does he beat the demon? Of course not, he gets someone else to do it for him because otherwise he might break a nail.

At least something interesting happens in this chapter.

He explains to us that this is one of the demons that Aenghus Og summoned at the end of the last book. Some of them ran off, if you’ll remember, but even though we’re told that Flidais hunted them all down this book retcons it, with Atticus telling us “I knew a few must still be out there and they’d eventually come looking for me.”

I don’t quite understand how this works, because from what I understood the demons that Aenghus Og summoned that escaped were those that didn’t get bound by Aenghus Og, and didn’t have to listen to what he said. Atticus explains here that they were bound, they were just strong enough to resist it for a bit and are obligated to obey Aenghus’s commands, despite Aenghus being dead. It just so happens to track him down now because… Plot I guess.

Also he refers to Flidais as “Celtic goddess of the hunt” and I know we went over this last time, but to reiterate:

FIRST: She’s probably not. While she’s often believed in New Age circles as being the goddess of deer, hunting, and the wilds, as a sort of Irish Artemis/Diana, in real Irish literature she was more often associated with cattle than with deer, and there’s no indication that she was a hunting goddess.

Hearne just took a New Age concept and ran with it and acts like it’s genuine mythology. It’s not. This isn’t too egregious by itself, as there’s nothing wrong with taking liberties or basing your fantasy story off of New Age concepts. But Atticus is so condescending when explaining things we’re clearly meant to think that Hearne knows what he’s talking about when he clearly doesn’t. Hearne just figured he’d make Flidais a generic hunter goddess in the mold of Artemis/Diana (without that pesky chastity to get in the way of her sleeping with Atticus), took away what little personality was there, and called it a day.

SECOND: Once again, Hearne is using the word “Celtic” to mean “Irish.” Yes, the Celtic peoples were related, but that’s a bit like using the word ‘Mediterannean’ to describe Greek culture. Irish mythology is one of the best preserved of the different Celtic mythologies, but it IS Irish. The Britons/Welsh certainly didn’t worship the exact same pantheon (although again, they were related); theirs was a separate mythology altogether.

Let’s give it a

Did Not Do Homework: 2

All of this is the opening of the chapter, making you forget that right now Atticus is supposed to be running for his life. He tells Oberon that they don’t have a chance in a straight fight. He doesn’t have his sword on him, and unless he’s touching the ground he doesn’t have enough power to use Cold Fire, that neat demon-killing spell Brighid taught him in the last book. AND using Cold Fire wears him out, so he’d be vulnerable after using it.

Here’s the thing: Atticus is always telling us he’s so paranoid and that he’s prepared for everything. He told us this last chapter. And yet a demon shows up and what does he do? He runs, because he needs his sword and his earth magic, otherwise he’s defenseless. I wouldn’t mind this at all, the idea that there are some things that the main character isn’t equipped to deal with right away. But we’re constantly told over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that Atticus is always ready for anything because he’s Oh So Paranoid.

But a demon appears and what is Atticus’s reaction? “I gotta run, I’m not prepared for this.”

You Keep Using That Word: 4

The earth is all too willing to help out with getting rid of demons: They don’t belong on the earth, are in fact anathema to it, and thus it takes very little coaxing to set up a demonic ward around one’s house.

Why would the Earth (if we’re referring to it as an entity, I should think that it’d be capitalized, Hearne) care more about demons than… I don’t know, say, gods or the undead? The Tuatha shouldn’t be a problem, because they’re based off of Druidic magic, but other gods are non-Earthly beings born of belief. But fine, let’s put that aside. Shouldn’t the Earth really hate something like Leif for subverting the natural cycle of life?

I’m reminded of the bit in Shadow of War (which is, admittedly, not a masterpiece of storytelling but it’s great fun) in which the nature spirit Carnan meets Talion, a dead man walking because he’s possessed by a wraith and wearing a Ring of Power. And even though she teams up with him to fight a Balrog, she’s confused and repulsed by Talion because unlike the mortal characters, she can tell he’s not alive, he’s an undead abomination. He doesn’t grow, he doesn’t change, he doesn’t even really heal. His body doesn’t change. It’s just… stuck with how it is, fixed enough to keep running.

The Earth, and by extension Druids, should have a similar reaction to vampires and other undead. But given that Hearne has put no effort whatsoever into his vampires, I can’t say it’s surprising that it doesn’t come up. The closest we get is that Flidais finds the undead distasteful and gross, but that’s treated more like a kind of bigotry than anything else (not that it stops Atticus from having sex with her).

The way Atticus explains: basically, the Earth can react to demons and destroy them, but the Earth is… a little slow on the uptake. The Earth doesn’t notice the passage of time the way humans do. So instead of the wards around his house calling up a demon-killing spell from the Earth, it calls up an elemental from the desert.

I know I just complained about Atticus not being prepared, and I feel as if someone would quickly point out that the spell around his house that calls an elemental in case of demon attack is some sort of preparation. But I still don’t accept this as preparation, because it relies on Atticus being close enough to his property for the spell to work. If Atticus had been unable to reach his yard, or going for a walk to his shop, this wouldn’t have worked.

Also this?

Every ten years I like to meditate for a week and commune with its spirit, which people like to call Gaia nowadays, and she chats fondly about the Cretacious period as if it were something that happened just last month.

Atticus talks to the spirit of the Earth? This is kind of dropped on us at one of the weirdest times. This sounds like the sort of thing you’d mention in the first book, when we’re establishing the character, his backstory, and his powers. And again, it’s not actually part of the Plot of this book, it’s just a thing he mentioned as part of his life that Hearne thinks isn’t important enough to actually be relevant to the story. It’s just “Oh, by the way, I talk to Gaia sometimes.” I understand that this is an early entry in a series, and he assumes that it’s something he can deliver later on, but Hearne does this so much that it reads more as if he’s just throwing nonsense into Atticus’s backstory and powers and hoping that he can pull a Plot Point out of it later on, rather than planning to.

Atticus having an abusive father, a kid, and once-a-decade chats with Gaia—none of these are Plot relevant! None of these are even that character-relevant. They’re just random things Hearne threw in because he thought they made Atticus sound cool, or funny.

Hey, is the spirit of the world Gaia? Because if all mythologies are true, then there should be a Gaia. A lot of people believe in a vague ‘Mother Earth’ too, so would that be the Greek Gaia, or would it be a separate version of Mother Earth? Is this like in Marvel comics where all the Mother Earth figures from various mythologies are all just different names for the same being?

[shrugs] I dunno.

Once Atticus steps onto his yard, he immediately starts getting some power and energy and he uses the spell “Coinnigh” to try to trap the bug demon’s leg in the ground, but it doesn’t work. Also worth noting from last book is that when TMary tried looking this up in an online Irish dictionary, she found that ‘coinnigh’ doesn’t mean ‘hold’ as in ‘grab’ as much as ‘keep’ or ‘maintain’. “To hold” in a figurative sense, really, rather than literally holding. Mind you, she also mentioned this is just from looking at a dictionary, but I bet you that’s more than Hearne did, given how well he does research.

The bug demon escapes the ground, it trips his wards, and a bunch of vines shoot out to grab the demon. The narration chooses now to explain that the demon isn’t actually grasshopper-like at all, but in fact it’s much closer to a wheel bug. Which doesn’t… really look like a grasshopper other than having long back legs, so I don’t know why a Druid, a magical being apparently in-touch with nature, would get the two confused.

Also if demons are so antithetical to nature, why would they look like creatures from nature? Wouldn’t they look more… unnatural? Something very strange? Like the Bosch paintings Hearne said demons looked like in the last book but never delivered on?

“O’Sullivan! What the fuck is that thing?”

I did promise that something interesting would happen in this chapter, didn’t I?

See, with all the fog gone (which wouldn’t actually obscure that much anyway), Mr. Semerdjian can now see Atticus battling a giant demon bug. Atticus tries to wave him off with “Uh, a little busy!” which is a lame thing to say, but admittedly he tells us he doesn’t know how he would try to explain this anyway.

“You’re going to need a damn big can of bug spray!” he called. “Or maybe a rocket-propelled grenade. I have one in the garage, you want it?”

Atticus, in the rare moment of acting like he actually cares about another human being, tells his neighbor to stay back and not get involved, though to be honest he does tell us it’s because if he lets Mr. Semerdjian distract him, Atticus will get himself killed. Always for the self-interest, this man. That his neighbor has explosive weapons in his garage doesn’t phase him in the slightest, because…Reasons.

Our hero is about to use the Cold Fire spell, but lo and behold “Behind the wheel bug, a huge saguaro cactus was growing from the churned sod of my lawn at a ridiculous rate.” Yes, a giant cactus has joined the fray! It’s a “Sonoran Desert” elemental that was called by his yard’s wards, and it grows right the fudge out of nowhere, and beats the snot out of the demon. When the demon smacks and injures it, the cactus don’t care because A) it’s an elemental spirit inhabiting a body, and B) it’s a magic cactus, which just regenerates. So the cactus wins, and rips the demon in two.

Also! “Saguaro” is a fun word.

I mean, a giant cactus pummeling a demon is actually kind of awesome; let’s give Hearne some credit for that. But let’s put this in context: Atticus had to have his butt saved by a cactus, one that came right the fudge out of nowhere and disappears right the fudge into nowhere again when it’s done. Basically, the narrative introduces someone/something to solve Atticus’s problems, and that’s it. It even decides to magically fix Atticus’s yard afterward! And clean up the demon carcass!

Make It Easy!: 2

It didn’t want to absorb the demon into the ground, but it seemed to realize I couldn’t stuff a giant wheel bug down the garbage disposal either.

[raises hand] Hey.

If Irish gods like Flidais don’t even know how electricity works, how the fudge does a desert elemental know what garbage disposal is? Maybe Atticus doesn’t literally mean that the elemental mentioned a garbage disposal, but it’s unclear.

Atticus tells the thing to have it all crushed, squeezed into liquid, and Atticus will give the demon juice to the ghouls Leif has on speed dial because “demon juice was like Jagermeister to them” and that’s horrifying, but neither Atticus nor Hearne care. So not only did the fight get resolved by someone fixing it for Atticus, the cleanup is fixed by that same someone too. Atticus’s only real contribution to this scene was running to his yard and setting off the alarm.

Figures.

Make It Easy!: 3

Surprisingly, Hearne hasn’t forgotten that Mr. Semerdjian is there. He witnessed everything, including the yard magically fixing itself, and asks “What are you?” A legit question. The answer is: an absolute bastard. But instead we get this:

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and grinned winningly at him. “Why, I’m the Antichrist, of course.”

If I lived in this universe, I would accept that answer.

I don’t know why Atticus says this, and he doesn’t offer any explanation. Mr. Semerdjian faints at this reply, which Atticus finds very strange, because Mr. Semerdjian isn’t even Christian—he’s Muslim. So not only does it not make sense for him to have such a reaction to the claim of Atticus being the Antichrist, there’s no reason for Atticus to even bring it up as a way to mess with his head.

The plan is to pretend none of this ever happened whenever Mr. Semerdjian wakes up, and since no one would believe it there’s not much risk in him telling anyone. Hooray for gaslighting the elderly?

If he woke up calling me the Antichrist, he’d get a strong dose of sedatives and maybe one of those snug little straitjackets to play around in.

You know Atticus reminds me of Gaston from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast sometimes.

That’s not a good thing.

The cactus sort of sinks back into the ground, Oberon comes back out into the open, and Atticus calls his werewolf lawyer Hal Hauk (his “daylight lawyer” as he puts it) to get the ghouls to drink demon drugs. Also, he thinks Leif is probably mad at him, and also “probably having an ASU student for breakfast.”

Isn’t it cute that our lead has a serial killer as one of his best friends?

So then he calls Malina Sokolowski, the friendly witch Atticus is convinced is evil. For Reasons.

“Hello Malina,” I said with relish when she answered the phone. “I’m still around. Your little spell didn’t work.”

“You were attacked too? Those bitches!” she spat. “Damn them!” She was clearly upset; she’d never used anything but the politest, formal language with me. “It makes me wonder who else got hit tonight and who else is dead now.”

That wasn’t the response I expected at all.

Yup. Turns out that the friendly witch who had no reason to want him dead wasn’t the one who tried to kill him! Who could have guessed? (Answer: anyone other than Atticus). For a guy who talks about how careful and clever he is all the time, he’s all too happy to accuse someone of attempted murder with the flimsiest of evidence. And again, we’re supposed to think of Atticus as the Smartest Smart Man to Ever Smart.

You Keep Using That Word: 5

So he asks what’s going on, and she tells him “You’d better get over here.” Thus ends our chapter!

But really, the thing that surprises him most in the chapter isn’t that his (in his eyes anyway) nosy, annoying neighbor is barely phased by a giant demon and has an RPG in his garage, but that the person who has shown no ill will towards him…has no ill will towards him. Yes, that’s the bit that shocks him.

Atticus is such an idiot.

Comment [18]

Alright, I’ve been… avoiding talking about this chapter because it offends me. It does so in a way that I suspect won’t bother most of my audience, but it bothers me, and I have been struggling for a way to talk about it in a way that fits the tone of this sporking and doesn’t get us too far off track. We’re going to try though.

[deep breath]

Alright then. [straps on helmet and goggles] Let’s rock this Taco Tuesday.

So because Malina said the word ‘bitches’ over the phone, and Atticus repeated it in confusion, Oberon assumes that he’ll get to have sex with another harem of female dogs or something because this book was written to cause me pain.

Did I just hear you say something about bitches? Oberon asked hopefully.

Haha I hate these characters.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 2

Atticus informs him that no, they’re not talking about female dogs, and they’re going to go visit Malina Sokolowski. Oberon asks if she’s “the witch who doesn’t like dogs,” and Atticus replies by saying that most witches don’t like dogs, because they’re mostly cat people.

Okay I know asking for Hearne to do research is like expecting a squirrel to swear off of nuts, but for you playing at home: one of the sacred animals of Hecate, the Greek goddess of witches, is a dog.

Before they do that, Oberon asks for a sausage, and Atticus goes inside to get it (and his magic sword Fragarach), and then a subplot knocks on the door. Or rather, Oberon telepathically tells him that there’s a man outside who “smells kind of like a dog”.

I hauled open the door and beheld a slim Native American man in the street. Straight black hair spilled past his shoulders from underneath a cowboy hat, and he was dressed in a white sleeveless undershirt, blue jeans, and scuffed brown boots. He held a grease-stained brown paper bag in his left hand, and he had a smirk on his face.

It’s Coyote. Hearne hasn’t told us this yet, but it is, because it’s not like I care about surprises at this point.

And because Hearne loves tormenting us, he has an accent.

He waved leisurely with his right hand and said in a slow, friendly voice, “Evenin’, Mr. Druid. I reckon you know who I am?”

If I see Hearne violently murdering accents, then you have to see it as well. What is this, a Southern accent? Or something? This isn’t an Arizona accent, is it? A “Native American” accent? I don’t know. If you know, feel free to tell me.

And oh, it gets worse. Because Hearne decided that ONE badly written accent in this character’s scenes wasn’t enough. So he has Atticus copy Coyote’s accent in his own dialogue, because he thinks this is how you get people to like you.

No really.

I relaxed and fell into the unhurried rhythms of his speech. By speaking like him, I would make him relax as well, and he’d be more likely to trust me. It was the first rule of fitting in: Talk like a native. As soon as people hear a foreign accent, it’s like ringing the doorbell of xenophobia. They immediately classify you as the other instead of as a brother, and it was this fundamental aspect of human nature that Leif had seemingly forgotten. It applies to dialects and regional accents as well, which is why I’m obsessed with mimicking those properly whenever I can. Ask any Boston Yankee what happens when they get pulled over by police in the Deep South, and they’ll tell you that accent matters. So I took my time with my reply, as if I had all day to get to the end of a sentence, because that’s the way my visitor spoke. “I surely do, Coyote. Only question is which tribe you’re callin’ from this time.”

Here’s the thing: I don’t think this is completely off base. I think you are more likely to be at ease with someone who talks the same way you do, or at least like the people you’re used to being around. You come across foreign accents, even if you’re an open-minded person, you’re going to unconsciously accept that there’s some level separation between the two of you.

Here’s why that doesn’t work in this situation though: not only is Atticus’s natural speaking voice and accent not like this, but Coyote knows it. Coyote knows who Atticus is, he knows he’s an ancient Druid from Ireland. It’s unclear how familiar they are with each other, but Coyote at least knows who he is. So Atticus is deliberately imitating an accent that the person he’s addressing knows he does not have.

So let’s try this: if you started talking to someone that began addressing you in a fake accent (that you know is fake), what impression does that give? It’s incredibly sketch. He’s basically presenting a blatant lie to Coyote’s face throughout the entire conversation here, and then turning to the audience and explaining that this is actually brilliant diplomacy.

Once again, Atticus is being stupid, and Hearne is acting like he’s the smartest smart person to ever smart.

What’s more, this feels as if Hearne is writing an excuse for the stupid accents he makes Atticus use sometimes. Or again, to try to retroactively explain why, despite consistently telling us he’s a clever two-thousand-year-old immortal, he talks like a vague approximation of a college frat guy from a television show. “It’s to put modern people at ease!”

Coyote explains that this is his Dine (Navajo) incarnation and asks if he can talk to Atticus over a beer. Atticus gets him one, and Coyote gives some sausages to his dog. Before he does, Atticus asks what kind of sausage, and Coyote says “Old paranoid Druid. You never change. Normal sausages, perfectly safe. Chicken-apple flavor.”

You Keep Using That Word: 6

Alright, stop. He asks what kind of sausage it is, Coyote tells him, and then he just… decides that Coyote’s not lying? Look, a trickster god shows up unexpectedly after an attempt on your life by both witchcraft AND a demon, you know he’s going to ask you for something, and then offers to feed your dog. And so you ask, “Hey, what are you feeding my dog?” And he’s like, “Oh nothing bad, you’re so paranoid, te-he!” And that’s the end of that?

Look, if Atticus were anything within the orbit of paranoid, he’d be double-checking to make sure that the sausages were exactly what Coyote said they were. Instead, he looks at them, decides Coyote’s right, and feeds them to his dog.

Let me repeat: A TRICKSTER GOD SHOWS UP AT HIS HOUSE TO ASK FOR SOMETHING, AND ATTICUS LETS HIM FEED HIS DOG

Which is flipping WEIRD, because just earlier this very book Atticus tells Leif “Never trust Loki, he’s a trickster by nature,” (although again, Leif being an ACTUAL NORSEMAN should know that already), and when an actual trickster god shows up he only barely questions the food that he gives to his supposed best friend in the world.

Oberon says the sausages are awesome, and before Atticus can relay that to Coyote (because Oberon speaks telepathically, you know), Coyote answers that he’s glad that he likes them, indicating that he too can talk to animals, though he acts like it’s not a big deal. Atticus takes notice of it.

“So, seen any demons ‘round here?”

This gets a reaction out of both Atticus and Oberon, and in the following exchange Coyote’s terrible accent explains that he saw the demon coming in this direction and followed. So you see, Coyote’s got an interest in these demons, and he blames Atticus for them being around munching on people.

“What do you care if a demon makes mischief in town?” I asked.

“What do I care? If a demon went ‘round eatin’ white men like you, you’re right, I wouldn’t care. But I said they’re eatin’ people, an’ by that I mean they’re eatin’ my people, Mr. Druid. My people are feedin’ a demon that’s here because of you. So we have somethin’ to talk about, you an’ I.”

What’s this? Do I hear trumpets sound? Do I see Four Horsemen approaching? Do Fenrir’s bonds break? Because for once, a character is making Atticus take responsibility for something. This is astounding. This is nigh unbelievable, guys. Because Coyote tells Atticus to clean his own messes, and he does it. Okay, Coyote has to threaten him (we’ll get to that), but you know how rare this kind of thing is?

Atticus starts asking questions, like where this demon was eating people, and Coyote tells him that it apparently ate a girl outside a nearby high school during lunch when she was off by herself. Everyone else was inside, apparently—Atticus asks about this specifically, because he thought it was weird that a demon might grab someone in broad daylight. When receiving a description of the demon, Atticus recognizes it as one of the first to come through the portal that Aenghus Og opened.

So Coyote asks Atticus how he’s going to handle it, and Atticus informs that he’s going to go with his usual plan: sit on his butt and wait for the Plot to happen to him.

“Lemme suggest a different plan,” Coyote said, his half smile still playing about his face. He pointed the mouth of his beer bottle at me. “You’ll go out to that school tomorrow an’ kill that demon afore it kills again. There are more of my people at that school, an’ I don’t wanna lose another one ‘cause you wanna wait.”

Again: for once, someone is calling out Atticus on something, and it actually yields results. Because Atticus’s plan is to not have one, to wait for Plot to happen and just “be prepared” by which we mean pull a solution out of his armpit. This is, if you remember, how Atticus dealt with all of his problems in the last book. He pointedly ignores the Plot even after he insists he’s going to take it seriously, going about his day as if nothing’s wrong. He was going to do that again, but Coyote makes him pretend he gives a crap.

Atticus tries to pass the buck by saying, “Well if you care so much why don’t YOU do it?” Which… isn’t an unfair point, but again, it IS Atticus’s fault that the demons are here to begin with. Except instead of saying that, Coyote tries to tell him that as the demon is from a different belief system, Coyote’s own powers won’t be as effective against it as a white man’s. And that’s actually a flawed bit of reasoning, and Atticus even points that out: Atticus isn’t from the same belief system either! He’s an Irish pagan, not Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim, or any Abrahamic faith that has remotely the same kind of demons in them), and not a particularly devout pagan at that. He just killed two of his gods, after all.

I know that maybe being a Native American religious figure means he doesn’t have a great grasp on all of the depths of different religions from other parts of the world; considering that Flidais has to be told about the Parting of the Red Sea and all, it’s in line with what Hearne has written. But it’s still dumb, and you’d think that with Coyote even knowing that Atticus is a Druid he’d know that he isn’t of a faith equipped to combat demons from Hell.

Coyote apparently just thinks because “it’s a demon from the white man’s religion” that all white men have the same religion, I guess? Coyote’s been around long enough to know better.

Atticus more or less says, “Look, I don’t have Christian power on my side, and I’m dealing with my own stuff right now.” Which Coyote doesn’t take for an answer either.

Coyote’s perpetual smirk vanished, and he glared at me from underneath his hat brim. “This is your problem, Mr. Druid. Or didn’t I make that clear? You’ll fix this situation or you’ll answer to me. An’ to Pima Coyote. An’ Tohono Coyote, an’ Apache Coyote too. An’ while ever’ single one of us might die in the first fight, an’ maybe the second an’ third fights too, you know we’ll keep coming back. How many times can you come back from the dead, Mr. Druid? Me an’ my brothers can come back all we want, but I reckon we only have to kill you once.”

That’s right, Coyote goes so far as to threaten Atticus’s life, and he’s not treated like a villain/antagonist for Atticus to kill. It’s a bit weird, and inconsistent with what we’ve seen, although I suspect that Hearne assumed that Atticus trying to kill the one Native American character that’s shown up would not be a good look.

[Also this seems to confirm that different cultural incarnations of the same mythological figures all exist simultaneously. Take that how you will.]

Now, mind you, Atticus is almost completely immune to death, but he does tell the audience that Coyote could make his life a living hell. Kind of like Aenghus Og supposedly did? Again, this would usually put a character in antagonist territory. He hates Malina, after all, who has done nowhere near this amount of smack talking.

So Atticus asks for a ride, because it’s out of town and he doesn’t have a car—he rides a bike to work, remember? Coyote doesn’t have one either, but tells Atticus he can get one by tomorrow afternoon. Atticus agrees, and tells him to come by at ten in the morning and to bring a bow—they’re going to shoot the flying demon. Coyote expresses some surprise at this, because regular arrows wouldn’t do much. But Atticus assures him that he can get some holy, demon-killing arrows. Coyote asks about that, because he “ain’t never seen any for sale in any of those Cath’lick churches.”

“When were you ever in a Cath’lick church?” I asked incredulously, and Coyote started to laugh. It was infectious laughter, the kind you cannot help but smile at. “I mean, how would you know, right? They could be passin’ out holy arrows with their Jesus crackers and you’d never know any different.”*

[takes a deep breath]

Okay I’m going to try to approach this calmly, so—THAT IS THE BODY OF CHRIST YOU HUMAN-SHAPED SACK OF EXCREMENT AND IF YOU—

[gets dragged away from computer]

[sits back down drinking straight out of a gallon bottle of apple juice with a long squiggly straw]

Okay, I could have handled that better. I just think that in light of everything—

Coyote hooted and hollered and howled his laughter, and it wasn’t long before I was doing the same. He doubled over; he slapped his thighs; he laughed silently for a while because he was out of breath; he laughed until he had tears streaming from his eyes. “I bet it was just like that, Mr. Druid!” Coyote finally managed to gasp. “Them priests would come on up to the soldiers and say, ‘In the name of the Father and the Son, here’s a cracker, now go kill some fuckin’ Indians!”

[back with a three-gallon bottle of apple juice and a donut]

Okay, let’s talk about this.

I’m Catholic. I don’t generally talk about my religion here because that’s not what we’re here for, but I haven’t made this a secret either. But I want to make this clear: this is among the most offensive things someone could say to a Catholic. The Eucharist is considered the Body of Christ, and profaning the Eucharist is on the List of Very Bad Things. I don’t want to get too deeply into this, but Hearne just profaned Jesus, as a joke, and I want to make it abundantly clear that I Am Not Okay With This, and Hearne can suck a brick. I’m not one of those people who says you can’t make jokes about theology or Jesus or religion, or anything like that—I’m particularly fond of this one Tomics strip —but this isn’t a fun little prod or light mocking, okay?

There’s also a lot wrong with this that isn’t down to theology or Catholicism.

Like, okay, we can’t split hairs here: Native Americans in general, especially in the Southwest, do not have a great relationship with Christianity. I get that. I can sit here and be like, “Well actually!” and cherry pick examples where this wasn’t the case but historically, it’s not a great set of interactions to go off of and if I did that, it would feel like I’m trying to cheapen genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas. I don’t want to do that. So Coyote’s mockery of Christianity, while I hate it, is arguably a character trait that fits with who he is.

But here’s the thing: they live in a world in which what people believe about religious and mythological figures is all real. Atticus even tells the Leprechaun in the last book that Jesus is out there somewhere, and if He is connected to belief—hey guys, you just made offensive jokes about someone who has over 2 billion believers worldwide. And no, Jesus doesn’t normally smite ordinary people on the spot for that sort of thing (that I know of), or else Hearne would have been smote before handing this to his editor—

[I mean I would argue that his editor should have been smited after okay’ing the first book but I’m not a divine being so…]

—but Atticus is explicitly not an ordinary person, he’s a Druid who does know for a fact that there’s a Jesus and he just insulted him to get a laugh out of Coyote, the trickster spirit that just threatened to kill him? (Put a pin in that too.) I’m reminded of the bit in Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief in which Percy says “Zeus must be crazy!” and immediately there’s a rumble of thunder and his best friend Grover tells him, “We don’t use the c-word to describe the Lord of the Sky.”

Essentially this: in a setting where God and Jesus explicitly exist and interact with people, Atticus casually profaned Him. “Well I don’t think God is like that!” Guess what? In this universe every version of a religious/mythological figure simultaneously exists! Coyote confirmed it earlier in this chapter! So a wrathful God IS out there, because let me tell you, enough people believe in Him!

Also there’s this whole thing about how they’re sitting on the porch laughing, and Coyote’s laughter is infectious, and Atticus waxes on about how Coyote’s laughing so hard he’s crying, and, hey, Atticus? You forget something? Like, uh, I don’t know, that Coyote was threatening to kill you a minute ago? This is swept under the rug. I can’t say what the audience is supposed to be getting off of Coyote, but Atticus should not be that casual with someone that talked about killing him seconds ago.

And I know I’m not the best person to judge this, but… it’s not that funny, is it? If you’re the sort who goes for that sort of humor, maybe it’s amusing, but not, like, laughing so hard you’re crying? Let’s give it another

Laugh, DAMNIT!: 3

Anyhow, after this last bit of dialogue, they stop laughing because “It was simply too close to the truth to be funny.” I mean, no, that’s not exactly how white Christian/Navajo relations would have gone, even at their worst but—

I cannot speak for what Coyote was thinking, but personally I was haunted by the ghosts of those who had trespassed against me; I was the only survivor of the Holy Roman Church’s war against Druidry.

Hearne, what the fork are you talking about?

Did Not Do Homework: 3

Okay, look, Coyote will get something close to a pass here, but Atticus? No. Because we’re pulling out a list again!

ONE: Atticus is pointedly not haunted by being the last of his kind. It barely comes up in the first book, the one establishing his character. He simply does not care about the fact that the other Druids are all dead. This is the first time it’s even mentioned what actually happened to the other ones.

TWO: You know in real life that’s not what happened, right? There wasn’t a Crusade against Druids? I know that most people’s idea of historical Christianity is basically what you see in Dan Brown novels (which is another whole can of worms of stupidity but we’re staying on topic here), but for the most part, the conversion of Britain and Ireland were, from the records we have, peaceful affairs. And even if they weren’t, there weren’t widespread witch hunts against druids¹. From what I can tell (and I will admit I haven’t done a ton of research on this), druids in real life just kind… went away, the same way as milkmen. When everyone was Christian, they became village wise men, sort of unrelated to Celtic religion. And eventually, the demand for that died out, so druids just… stopped. Druiding. There wasn’t much of a point. In this universe, Druids aren’t even tied to a specific religion, so it’s unclear why one couldn’t be Catholic and a Druid.

Or why Druids are confined to Celtic peoples, actually—if they’re not tied to those religions in particular then there’s no reason that there aren’t Druids all over the world. But that’s another piece of stupidity.

The pagan Roman Empire did persecute druids, historically speaking, making concerted efforts to destroy them because they were the ones organizing Celtic resistance against conquest. And Atticus references this in the last book, saying that’s part of why he left Europe when he did—it was too close to/controlled by the Romans, and he knew he wouldn’t be welcome there.

And THREE: hey. Hey. Hearne. Atticus. Got a question:

Let us assume that in-universe, the Catholic Church historically made a campaign out of stamping out all the Druids. How the flying fudge does one wage a war on Druids, anyhow?

No, they’re not all eternally young and immune to death like Atticus. And it takes a long time to train new Druids. Okay, fine. But allowing those conditions, they’ve all got healing powers, control of plants and wind, make potions better than anyone, can shapeshift, see through illusions, and are super strong. Essentially, every single one of them should be like an unholy combination of Wolverine, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Geralt of Rivia. And you’re telling me that the Christians, who as far as I can tell in this setting do not have magic, decided to kill them all? And then… just did that?

How?

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW?

[Personally though, I subscribe to Smith’s theory that seeing what Atticus was like, the Druids all killed themselves out of shame.]

Coyote says goodbye, saying “You’d be a good guy if ya wasn’t so damn white” and Atticus shakes his hand and replies “An’ you’d be a good guy if ya wasn’t a damn dog,” and Coyote finds this hilarious, and turns into an actual coyote as walks off Atticus’s porch and runs off. He doesn’t even leave any of his clothes behind, which Oberon thinks is cool and tells Atticus he should learn to do that.

Also, once again, apparently no one sees this happen despite it being his front porch in a suburban neighborhood.

Atticus ends the chapter announcing that now they’re going to go talk to Malina, which Oberon is less than excited about. And given I know how this book goes, I can’t say I’m excited about it either.

Better Than You: 3
Did Not Do Homework: 3
The Kids These Days: 4
You Keep Using That Word: 6
Make It Easy!: 3
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 3

¹ For historical discussion of druids, I’m using a lowercase letter. As Hearne capitalizes the word in the book, I use capital-D “Druid” to refer to the ones as described in this series. In case you were wondering about the switch. Also this.

Comment [9]

I hope you brought something to do, because this chapter is a butt-ton of exposition and not much else of note.

The one where Atticus finally talks to Malina. I say ‘finally’ but this is only the fifth chapter? It’s just that a lot of things have come into the Plot already so it feels longer than it actually is. That, and we know that Malina isn’t behind this because anyone with half a brain knew that, but ‘anyone with half a brain’ is a category that excludes Atticus O’Sullivan, so he’s been accusing her left and right of trying to kill him since the second she showed up in the first book.

Atticus senses that Oberon is not thrilled by the idea of meeting witches, so the “paranoid” Druid decides he’ll leave his dog at home while he goes and talks to Malina about the people trying to murder him. I suppose his house is magically protected, so it’s not that bad. But it’s a bit weird, to me at least, that he doesn’t so much as mention those protections right now. He just sets up Oberon to watch a Dirty Harry movie and goes about his business.

“Someone’s trying to kill me! Let me just leave my dog alone to watch a movie while I go about my business. It’s not like anyone’s ever kidnapped Oberon before—” OH WAIT.

Also, Atticus tells us that he’s begun carrying around Fragarach, the magic sword that everyone was killing for in the last book? He just wears it on his back. He tells us that most people assume he’s a nerd with a replica or that he likes LARPing or something. And I get that, but this is the actual artifact that the villain wanted all of last book! People were killing over it! And now he’s just walking around with it openly?

You Keep Using That Word: 7

Have you ever been so paranoid you carried your most valuable possession in public in full sight of everyone else around you?

Atticus explains to us that Malina and the entire coven lives in the Bridgeview condos (which are a real place, if you care), and they own the ninth floor. Since the evil witches died in the last book, there are some openings. Atticus’s apprentice Granuaile lives on the floor below them, under what was Radomila’s apartment. Atticus goes to visit Granny before talking to Malina.

You guys ready for Atticus to drool over a hawt woman? Because that’s what he’s doing now. Maybe that should have been a count. She answers the door in “something scanty” and we’re told she’s in a low-cut nightie and Atticus has to make himself avoid looking at her and think of baseball to avoid having sexual thoughts about his student. He has trouble even talking to her. That’s where we’re at guys.

Look, this is another one of those things that doesn’t make sense for a guy who is supposed to be two thousand years old. Seeing an attractive woman in a nightie reduces him to babbling? Really? If he was the age that he acts, then it’s fine, but Hearne repeatedly tells us that Atticus is supposed to be an ancient Druid, yet he always acts like a caricature of a horny college frat bro.

For instance, when Granny notices that he’s looking up (to avoid looking at her, though she apparently doesn’t know that), she asks if there’s something above her door and goes to look and he says this:

“There’s some tit, uh, titillating wallpaper up there! Yes! Fantastic interior decorating here, I just noticed.”

She points out that he’s seen it before. Atticus does manage to explain that he’s been attacked, and he wanted to make sure she was okay. When Granny asks for more details, he babbles out the full recap of the first couple of chapters. She’s more confused than ever, so he tells her that she should stay inside and lock her doors and windows. He doesn’t expect anything to happen to her, but just to be safe.

Granny’s uncertain, but agrees and goes back into her apartment.

…you know, you would think, if Atticus is constantly convinced that the witches are out to get him, he wouldn’t let his apprentice live in the same building. But what do I know?

Druid’s Log, November 1: Buy attractive apprentice some shapeless, ugly clothes as soon as possible; maybe convince her to shave her head as well. Tell her all the cool Druid initiates are doing it.

I get that this is a joke but it’s really stupid that Atticus apparently can’t concentrate when he’s too busy checking out his apprentice’s body.

Also Kindle tells me that this quote was highlighted by 184 readers.

Now I saw a review on Goodreads that called out this specific scene because the reviewer thought it was pretty stupid that Granuaile doesn’t realize that Atticus is hot for her during this conversation. And let’s be real, you’d have to be dumber than a box of rocks to not notice. Atticus isn’t precisely subtle when he’s horny.

I’m not entirely convinced that she doesn’t know what’s going through her teacher’s mind in this scene. Alright, I suspect that Hearne thought so when he wrote it, because Comedy, I guess. But we don’t get her point of view here. And I also think it wouldn’t be surprising if in a later book or interview or something, Hearne would say, “Oh yeah, Granuaile totally knew that Atticus wanted to bone her in this scene.” And given that we get the sequence from Atticus’s point of view, we could easily imagine that Granny notices without commenting on it to his face.

Atticus goes a floor up, adding some extra protection to himself to make sure no one takes his skin or hair. He explains that several floors up from the ground, he can’t draw on the Earth’s power, but he has his amulet with power stored up and a magic god sword so it’s moot. He draws his sword and knocks on Malina’s door. He keeps his sword out of sight of the peephole because he insists that she could come out and attack him. For Reasons.

She doesn’t, of course. Malina opens to the door, looking very tired, and tells him that “Waclawa’s dead.” Waclawa is one of the other witches in her coven, which we can tell by context, but Atticus has to stop and think about. She died by spontaneous combustion, which means a hex.

Also Hearne gives a detailed explanation of how she looks and what she’s wearing. Because that’s the kind of thing he cares about.

She invites him in, but first Atticus raises the sword and asks her to answer two questions. See, Fragarach is the Sword of Truth—when used a certain way, you can only say the truth when it’s used on you. They haggle a bit about getting asking questions in return and getting honest answers, or something. I don’t care it’s dumb.

The first question Atticus asks is if Malina knows who tried to kill him or was involved in any way or knows who is. Malina says that she didn’t do it, she has nothing to do with it, though she knows who is responsible. He’s tempted to ask who it is, but for his second question Atticus asks if there was any spell cast on him while in the building. She explains she didn’t, but there’s an automatic enchantment in the building that identifies nonresidents when they enter. She’s about to go on, but doesn’t feel like telling Atticus that, and tries to use magic, and then close the door on him. But the Sword of truth won’t let ther because it doesn’t let you move too far when you’re using it in truth-telling mode or something. Eventually she succumbs and tells Atticus that there’s an enchantment in the hallway that takes some hair from your head if you’re not a resident there, that her kitchen knife is magicked to cut strangers who try using it, and the bathroom will recycle the waste material to be used in magic.

“Eww, gross,” I said. First impression of a valley girl, ever. I swear.

A.) I didn’t read that in a stereotypical valley girl voice. I don’t know who would. It seems a normal reaction to someone saying that their toilet is magicked to recycle strangers’ poop.

B.) I also don’t believe that is Atticus’s first impression of a valley girl. If you convinced him that’s how everyone talked, he’d stick to that impression and pretend it’s the cleverest thing imaginable.

Malina demands to be released from the spell because she gave all the information to answer the questions. Atticus claims that her reticence in answering proves he was right to be careful, which for once, is kind of true? He also points out that collecting samples from him is against their treaty (which, as is pointed out at the beginning of the book, isn’t signed yet.)

So Malina is released, and Atticus wants to know who tried to kill him and killed one of their own coven. Malina finds that reasonable and offers to return any hair samples taken and dispel the protective enchantments Atticus finds so offensive. But she gives the condition that Atticus never use the sword on any coven members, which Atticus tells us he doesn’t actually agree to but tells her to go on.

I don’t much feel like describing every single detail of everything in this book, but in the apartment there’s this:

The wall above the obligatory big-screen TV boasted a large painting of a triple goddess figure, presumably the Zoryas.

Did Not Do Homework: 4

I know I talked about this last book, so maybe it’s unfair to add to the count here. But I don’t care! It’s still stupid. In case you’re new, it’s this: the Zoryas are not a triple goddess. They are not a trio of goddesses. They are two Slavic goddesses, representing the morning and evening stars. There’s some debate, but consensus is that there isn’t a third Zorya, a midnight star, as Hearne claims in this book. See, while it’s very popular, especially in New Age and neopagan circles, to suggest that all Western cultures had the notion of a triple goddess, or something like the Greek Fates, that’s not quite true.

In his novel American Gods Neil Gaiman paints the Zoryas as a triple goddess like the Fates. Thing is, Neil Gaiman has more or less admitted that he made up a lot on his depiction of the Slavic deities because he didn’t have many sources available to him while writing. And that’s fine. But Hearne is regurgitating this view of the Zoryas on Gaiman’s novel, even using the same name of the third sister. So Hearne just…copied an idea from one of his favorite authors and passed it off as a mythological concept.

To be fair, thus far the Zoryas have not actually appeared as characters, so at least he didn’t copy and paste the characters from someone else’s work. But he did read someone’s novel and decided it was the real thing, without doing any research of his own on the subject.

Looking around Malina’s apartment, Atticus is surprised (and surprised at his own surprise) that she has normal magazines and newspapers around instead of manuals on animal sacrifice or anything like that. Which is weird, because last book he makes a point to tell us that witches generally don’t look like hags or the Wicked Witch of the West. So even though he chastises the reader about having stereotypical ideas about witches, he himself holds them. Good to know.

Also Malina offers for him to sit, but he thinks she easily could have bespelled the furniture to hurt him so he passes. He also doesn’t take a drink when she offers.

So Malina explains that Waclawa, her deceased coven sister, has been incinerated. It’s not a spell anyone in their coven can do, as it requires deals with demons and that sort of thing. She says it takes at least three witches to cast one of those, and with each of the coven members targeted, plus Atticus, he runs the numbers and says that they’re dealing with “two dozen witches plus eight demons.” Uh, okay. I’d like Atticus to explain the math, but whatever, let’s go with it.

Malina says the demons might not be around, but that they impregnated the witches (what ew) and that in nine months there will be demon babies going around? What? Why is this a thing? Why is this here, Hearne?

Also Malina tells us what this coven is called: “die Tochter des dritten Hauses,” or “The Daughters of the Third House.” Malina notes that Atticus speaks German when he translates it, and Atticus says he speaks several versions of it. But not Polish?

The reason most of the witches didn’t die when they were attacked by the curses of the German witches was because they were at home; their apartment complex is warded against attack. Waclawa was running errands or something, so she just went up in smoke. When Atticus asks why they were all targeted, Malina guesses that aside from trying to “settle an old score” it’s because they’re the best magical protection in the East Valley territory, and without them in the way they can move in quickly.

Atticus, rather astutely, asks why the werewolves or Leif weren’t targeted, and Malina points out that they don’t really care about protecting the place, and so the witches decided they weren’t worth the effort. Atticus protests that he isn’t interested in being the East Valley’s guardian, which, uh, I thought he was because he’s a Druid? I thought the point was being a defender of the Earth. Now he’s trying to be like, “Not my problem.” Once again, Atticus is only part of the action of the Plot because he’s dragged into it. He doesn’t care!

And Malina also says that the reason the East Valley is more prosperous and less crime-ridden is because the witches there? She says they’re “Not solely responsible, just largely responsible” because the Zoryas are protective goddesses (no they’re not) or something like that.

Then after asking, Atticus says he doesn’t care and wants to know how to kill these evil witches. Malina tells him to do whatever it was he did last time he fought witches, and Atticus keeps to himself that last time werewolves did most of the work. She promises to have the coven get together to try to learn the evil coven’s location by magic. The invaders have more numbers and are more powerful, “So it is up to you, Mr. Sullivan, to go out and thwart them if you can.”

“I think you’re confusing me with a superhero. Heroes go around thwarting dastardly villains. They give evidence to the police, and the bad guys always say that they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids.”

Malina looks very confused at this, and Atticus tells us it’s because she’s “Not a big fan of Saturday morning cartoons, I guess.” Though I suspect it’s because once again, Atticus mixed his references. The “meddling kids” thing is from Scooby-Doo, and while Batman has guest-starred on different incarnations of the show, it’s not a superhero show! Everyone knows that!

Did Not Do Homework: 5

So no, he’s not a superhero, he’s a Druid, who “on the other hand, take revenge on people who try to cook them.” And, uh, I don’t think Malina was ever suggesting that you have the witches arrested. Especially when Atticus’s relationship with the police is garbage.

And you know what else? This line is still stupid because that’s not really what Atticus does. We’ve seen what happens to Atticus’s lifelong enemies. Remember Aenghus Og? At the end of the last book, it’s revealed that if he’d gone and fought Aenghus at any time in the last few hundred years he would have killed him without expending much effort, because he’s a much better swordsman and can think of a plan that doesn’t involve rendering himself impotent what the Karzanhi was that even about

This man absolutely will not do anything, even if his life depends on it. I’d say he’s a coward for not facing his enemies, but he doesn’t even run (though he claims he does). He doesn’t care!

Atticus asks why the East Valley is so important anyway, and Malina says it’s an industrialized area of people who aren’t particularly superstitious enough to believe in magic. So magical groups flock towards urban centers to be able to blend in, but again, why the East Valley? The world, heck, the Americas, are full of urban centers where a magical being could blend in.

Atticus asks why they can’t share, and Malina says they can—after all, the Tempe coven shares the area with Atticus and the werewolves. But too many magic users means risk of exposure increases, and also “the risk of overtaxing the economics”. Wait, what?

[Also shouldn’t that be “economy” instead of “economics”?]

Atticus asks what the fudge she’s talking about, and Malina tells us that the coven makes their money through their magic. Basically they use their glamours to enchant people into giving them money.

“we are on the payrolls of two dozen different companies as consultants, but we do absolutely nothing for our paychecks, just like normal consultants.”

Dang, Hearne, did a consultant steal your college girlfriend or something?

[I’ll admit, I found this one jab a little bit amusing. I chuckled.]

It’s kind of boring that they make their money by not doing anything, but I can totally see magic users doing this so I don’t have much comment. Malina also says, like she did in the last book, that they keep the area free of other magical threats. Also some Bacchants are on their way from Vegas.

I struggled to appear nonchalant, but I was dangerously close to needing a new pair of underwear. Back when I was an initiate—this was decades before Jesus—Bacchants were the scariest thing in the world, according to the archdruid. Anything that could scare the archdruid damn well gave me nightmares; I nearly shat kine whenever Bacchus was mentioned even obliquely for my first few centuries.

Um, okay, but you’ve fought literal gods and demons? And you’ve mastered magic and outlasted all the other Druids? Why the fudge would Bacchants bother Atticus this much, after all this time? The answer: they don’t, but once again Hearne is telling us he’s worried, only for Atticus to go along as if nothing’s wrong and no one can hurt him. Because they can’t, because he’s a stupid Mary Sue and I hate him. He did this with Aenghus Og, he did this with Bres, he did this with the witches, he did this with the Fir Bolgs. He tells us he’s worried, has a reaction, and then goes about his business like nothing’s wrong.

This is his actual approach to any antagonist being announced in the Plot:

It would be entertaining if we weren’t supposed to be taking this Plot semi-seriously.

Kids today don’t know much about Bacchants, except perhaps for the story about Orpheus told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I had an ASU student looking for it in my shop last week, and he defined the Bacchants for me as “those drunk chicks who killed that one dude because he wouldn’t have sex with them.”* His professors must be so proud. I asked him if he knew what maenads were, and instead of correctly answering that it was just another name for Bacchants, he bizarrely thought I was referring to my own testicles—as in, “‘Ere now, mate, don’t swing that bat around me nads.” The conversation deteriorated quickly after that.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 3

Thing is, the way that college kid talks isn’t too different from how Atticus himself talks. I don’t get why he’s mocking the kid. Heck, the first chapter Atticus is getting on Leif’s case for not talking like a stupid college kid. What does he want?

So because this chapter is a dung load of exposition, it is explained to us that Bacchants have magic staves that can summon wine, and when they go into frenzy from dancing and drinking they’re strong enough to rip people apart. Their magic drives people crazy, and because Atticus suspect it’s based on pheromones, he’s worried his amulet won’t protect him from it. They can’t be burned or hurt by iron. Apparently the latter applies even to Atticus’s cut-anything sword, which seems a bit silly to me.

Instead of analyzing this information and formulating a plan, Atticus accuses Malina of making him solve all of her problems while she and her sister witches just sit back and watch movies. He does this while making a stupid accent.

“Was that supposed to be an imitation of my accent? It sounded like a Russian trying to imitate Bela Lugosi and failing miserably.

Atticus asks what she plans to do to fight the German witches. Malina does this thing where she shakes her hair, which as in the last book, can enchant men to do what she wants. Atticus is resistant, but because she’s hawt he sits there checking her out anyway and has to focus by reminding himself to think of baseball. Again.

She tells him they’re going to locate the witches by magic, and until then they can’t do much. So she agrees to give Atticus the hair samples she magically took, but it turns out that because of Atticus’s protective enchantments she didn’t get any so this whole thing was pointless! There’s also a trip through her pantry, and he offers her some supply that she’s been missing. But yeah the chapter ends with Malina being surprised that her hair-collecting enchantment didn’t work.

Ha-ha. My personal binding was stronger than her enchantment. Neener neener, Malina. You can’t catch me.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 4

I hate this man. He’s such a turd.

I was thinking about this book, and the previous one, and how there are just… info dumps. Textbook examples of infodumps. And comparing it to Dresden Files because that’s the other big name urban fantasy series. Harry Dresden gets told new information a lot, but generally they are smaller bits of information that he puts together over the course of the story to figure out, as the reader does, what’s going on and who is doing what. As opposed to Atticus, who shows up somewhere and a character tells him who the villains are and what they want, and his internal narration smugly lectures us some more.

I’ll admit that this is maybe not a fair comparison because Dresden Files is deliberately also trying to be reminiscent of mystery stories, and Iron Druid isn’t. I’m also not sure what the fudge Iron Druid even is trying to be. Someone in the comments for the first book’s sporking mentioned that it looked like someone attempting to do an adult version of Percy Jackson and that’s honestly the closest thing I can think of. It’s attempting to be an action comedy “for adults” but not understanding how to be mature, how to be funny, or even how to be action.

[points at this chapter]

It sure as fudge isn’t like_this_ piece of junk chapter. I know not every chapter is going to be nonstop action, but this halts the Plot so Malina can explain what’s going on, while Atticus condescendingly snarks at her. And this is right on the heels of a chapter in which Coyote shows up at Atticus’s house to give him MOAR exposition about future Plot developments. Surely there was a better way to deliver this information?

Apparently Hearne couldn’t think of one.

Better Than You: 3
Did Not Do Homework: 5
The Kids These Days: 4
You Keep Using That Word: 7
Make It Easy!: 3
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 4

Comment [11]

Hello. Todaybor day is Labor Day, and I’m talking about Assassin’s Creed in an essay I’ve been thinking of for a while. Hopefully next weekend I’ll get started and write a good chunk of the next sporking chapter.

Anyway.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla has a massive problem with its story, and what’s worse it kind of refuses to address it. I really like the mythology parts of the story, and the additions to the ongoing lore of the history of Assassins and Templars. But the historical story that makes up the main part of the game’s narrative is… I mean it’s about colonialism. And it doesn’t seem to know it?

Alright full disclosure talking about this game and its take on colonialism is a large part of Brett Deveraux’s blog post on the game so you should probably check that out first. It’s honestly better than anything I could put together. But I wouldn’t call my article a copy of his; Deveraux’s point is more that the game whitewashes the Viking invasion of England by removing the more unsavory aspects of their culture (slavery, killing innocents, and human sacrifice) and glorifying the concept of colonialism, whereas my point is more that the game, even in its attempts to whitewash pre-Christian Norse culture, still comes off pretty bad, and the game is pretty bad at acknowledging the colonialist overtones of the situation. In that it doesn’t. You’re playing as a straight-up villain and the game doesn’t do anything to confront that.

The story (at least the bits relevant to our discussion) goes like this: Eivor Wolfsmal is a Viking warrior whose parents were killed by a rival clan, and so he/she¹ was adopted into the household of Styrbjorn, the jarl of the Raven Clan that they were loyal to, and Eivor is raised as the brother/sister of the actual heir to the throne, Sigurd. When Harald Fairhair unites Norway into one nation, Jarl Styrbjorn pledges his allegiance, and Sigurd gets upset that the little kingdom that he would have inherited was signed off by his dad without consulting him. So Sigurd decides to take his adopted sibling, Eivor, and the rest of the Raven Clan to England to carve out a new kingdom for themselves where they don’t have to answer to Harald Fairhair or anyone else. When they get there one of the first things they do is become allies with the Ragnarsons, the leaders of the Great Heathen Army, and help them install a puppet king onto the throne of Mercia, one of the four kingdoms of England.

When the game was being promoted, the developers made a point to say that they wanted to portray a different side of Viking culture. People stereotyped the Norse as warriors and brutes, but they were also settlers and explorers. Most of the sources we have about them were written by their enemies, so telling the story from their point of view allowed them to be more sympathetic, they claimed. And I see this defense brought up against this criticism by the fandom a lot, “Well this is from their point of view, so of course their way of life is depicted in a much more positive manner!”

Except it isn’t. Because you’re still going around destroying lives, stealing people’s stuff, and desecrating their holy sites. And at no point does anyone, Nordic or Saxon, really question this.

Now to be clear, the purpose of our protagonist and his/her friends in settling in England is explicitly conquest. They want to carve out a kingdom for themselves. They don’t seem to have anything explicitly against the Saxons, or Christians, but they are there to take the land for themselves. And in fact, upon finding an abandoned settlement that they decide to make into their new home, and realizing that they need supplies, the first thing that is suggested is raiding a nearby monastery. In fact, aside from building some of the alliances, the only way to gain the supplies you need to build up your village is by raiding monasteries. The game will not let you harm civilians like monks or pilgrims without penalizing you (although there is no story reason for this, and there’s no reason given Eivor would have trouble killing civilians being a Viking and all), and instead puts a bunch of soldiers in monasteries for you to fight instead. But you’re still robbing from monasteries.

The game desperately acts like we’re meant to treat the Raven Clan as immigrants; the word ‘immigrant’ is never used, but much of the conversations around the presence of Norsemen and Danes in England is written with the rhetoric surrounding immigration. The Saxons tend to assume all Scandinavians are Danes, when Eivor and his/her clan are Norse. This is a thing immigrants face in the Western world sometimes—like I’m Puerto Rican, but a lot of people who aren’t Hispanic tend to assume that my family’s Mexican because that’s the Hispanic nationality most Americans are familiar with.

[One time in middle school, bafflingly, there was a kid who asked if my brother and I were Indian. Like, India Indian, not Native American.]

The sympathetic Saxons often say things like, “Don’t worry, I think Danes are fine enough folk, unlike some Saxons.” That you’re systematically going around burning houses and churches is never brought up by these folk. If you look into the stable house in your character’s main settlement, there’s a note in which the Saxon horse master says “I didn’t know about Danes, but these guys give me a good feeling and I think I can trust them.” The stables and his house are, by the way, built out of materials looted from monasteries.

“Well the Saxons also conquered and colonized the land from the Britons!”

Alright, but that’s a couple hundred years in the past at the point. Well, sort of—there are still wars with the Welsh going on I suppose. But in any case, that doesn’t make the Vikings any better, because it’s not like they’re conquering to give the land back to the Britons. In fact you fight the Welsh too, and they’re presented as just another faction to fight and kill.

“But Juracan, how can you complain about the morality of showing bad people as good guys? This is Assassin’s Creed! All the heroes are assassins! None of them are good people!”

Well… okay, but throughout the stories we see protagonists get very uncomfortable with the idea of murdering people as a job, you know? Altair has more than one conversation in which he expresses discomfort with killing Templars, especially since despite their axe-crazy attempts to take over the world, they are trying to fix society, and he’s told that it’s okay, and that being someone who wants to go around stabbing people for funzies would be a bad thing. There’s a conversation in Assassin’s Creed II where Ezio’s uncle specifically tells him not to be bloodthirsty, and another in the modern day segment in which Shaun points out that labelling themselves as “the Good Guys” is silly because, well, they stab people, and even if it’s justified in-story that’s still not a good thing. In Assassin’s Creed III Connor deliberately tries to avoid killing several of his major targets, starting instead with attempting to remove the resources and make them harmless or put them in jail—he only insists on killing them when those methods fail. Arno in Assassin’s Creed: Unity is explicitly on a revenge quest and even then most of his killing doesn’t stop the villains, which he’s called out on quite a lot. And in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate Jacob killing Templars left and right actually breaks London society.

In short, yeah, gameplay-wise it’s pretty straightforwardly a series about having fun while stabbing people left and right. But story-wise, while sometimes it’s very clumsily done, we have a number of examples of being told that indiscriminately killing people, or murdering for your own self-interest, is a Bad Thing. And I understand that the message is undercut by how fun it is to go around stabbing people, that’s not the direction the story takes, unlike this one in which pillaging is something everyone’s just fine with.

“In Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag you play as a pirate! How is that okay and this isn’t?”

Alright fair point, but you do realize that despite it being fun as all getout, the actual story of Black Flag makes it obvious that being a pirate is, again, not a good thing? The protagonist’s friends and acquaintances all repeatedly tell him how much of a douchebag he is for looking after himself and chasing treasure above all else. The “pirate republic” in Nassau is plainly shown to be unsustainable because the infrastructure of a colony of people whose entire schtick is stealing from massive empires that could absolutely crush them once they get their stuff together was never going to be anything more than a pipe dream. Yes, pirates individually are portrayed sympathetically, as navy veterans abandoned by their government on the other side of the world making ends meet the only way they know how, by force; but the act of piracy itself and the attempts to make it into a way of life are depicted as, at best, futile and naive and at worst a system that enables violent sociopaths to do what they want.

Again, undercut by the gameplay and how much fun it is to get into naval battles and sword fights, but the story does make the point that you shouldn’t be a pirate.

And to be fair, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla does sometimes point out that the Nordic obsession with glory and dying a violent death is going to lead to problems for individuals in the long run. But it doesn’t seem to question that idea much more. If anything, it calls out the selfishness that happens in pursuit personal glory, but that’s basically where any criticism stops. Most of the Vikings are depicted as noble people, not just to their own but to the sympathetic characters outside of their culture as well. No one calls out our heroes for raiding, really; not even the villains. The Saxon villains are framed as hating Norse and Danes because they hate foreigners and pagans rather than a perfectly reasonable rage at seeing their people killed and their holy sites defiled. The heroes never stop and say, “Wait a minute, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this to people who haven’t done anything wrong to us personally.” At one point you’re required to go through a village burning the houses to punish the people there for sheltering your enemy; this is never framed as wrong. Eivor is unambiguously meant to be a hero—the Saxons and other Christians who don’t like him/her are framed as unreasonable jerks. No one in the modern day segments feels any need to comment on Layla living through the memories of someone that gets his/her kicks off of pillaging.²

There are these very odd moments, a couple of times in the story, where Eivor says something like, “This Jesus chap seems alright, but most of these Christians are fairly rude.” Yes, this is a thing that happens: a Viking raider paraphrasing Gandi of all people, who famously said that he liked Christ but not Christians. Except the difference is that Gandhi was in a country colonized and exploited by a predominantly Christian empire (the British). Eivor, on the other hand, is part of a force brutally colonizing and exploiting a Christian country.

Just imagine, if you would, showing up somewhere with your people to conquer, killing a bunch of people, burning their houses and temples, and being like, “You know these people are jerks because they don’t like me, my soldiers, and their families which we’re putting on the land we forcibly displaced them. How hypocritical of them!” You don’t get to complain that a group doesn’t like you when you’re actively persecuting them!

I know I keep emphasizing this, but the game has no idea what it’s doing! There are times in which our Nordic heroes try to convince Saxons to help them by arguing that under their benevolent rule, there would finally be peace between Danes and Saxons, as if the reason this conflict started was because of prejudice and racism and not, you know, an invasion that they started. It’s only barely commented on that the Saxon rulers you help put on thrones are nothing more than puppet kings being controlled by the Ragnarsons, and even when it is brought up it’s presented as a good thing! Your character promises peace for the people of the English kingdoms, suggesting that it’s only by letting the Great Heathen Army have their run of the place will Saxons and Danes be able to live in peace.

This is a befuddling blunder of a Hot Take for the series to make at this point. The game set in the American Revolution is from the point of view of a Native American protagonist, lamenting how Europeans are driving his people out of their own lands for their settlements and wars. The game set in the Golden Age of Piracy displays the exploitation of slave labor and the elimination of indigenous peoples by European powers. It has an expansion about enslaved men and women becoming free and resisting the authorities in colonial Haiti. The game set in ancient Egypt (which HAD THE SAME CREATIVE DIRECTOR AS VALHALLA)³ is about an Egyptian man having to come to terms with his people never going to be able to relive their glory days as an independent empire after being conquered by the Greeks and then the Romans.

With the direction Valhalla takes, one would think that in the Egyptian game we’d be taking the side of the Romans.

The whole point of the Assassins, we’re told over and over again, is to stand up for the marginalized in society, to fight for the little guy to take down the ruthless and powerful. And yeah, there are some questions about how moral their methods are, but this one point remains. Except in this game, in which the Assassins (or the Hidden Ones, what they called themselves in this era) are perfectly happy to team up with and recruit from the Vikings as they conquer England because it gets them what they want.

And this would be a fascinating idea to play with, that the Assassins lose their ideals to reach their immediate goals and get one up on their enemies. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue does this exact same thing. It’s the entire point of that game, and it convinces the protagonist to leave the Assassins and join their enemies. Except Valhalla doesn’t do that at all, other than a brief conversation in which Eivor compares the Raven Clan’s goals to the Order of the Ancients’—to dominate and rule—only for Hytham, the Assassin/Hidden One in the Raven Clan’s village, to deny it’s anything similar and leave it at that without explaining at all.

The game desperately wants you to view the Norse and Danes, the ones conquering England, as some sort of oppressed minority immigrant or refugee community. And that’s not what’s happening! You’re invading! Violently! I know that there are a lot of reactionary douchebags out there who accuse immigrants of doing the same thing, wringing their hands about how “Our country’s being overrun by those people!” because people from a different culture are showing up. And that’s dumb. But that’s not what’s happening here! Eivor and the Vikings aren’t refugees. They’re not immigrants. They’re colonizers.

And I wouldn’t be fine, exactly, if the game owned up to it, but I’d be closer to okay with it. Villain protagonists are a thing, and it’s entirely possible to tell an intriguing video game story in which you’re playing as a villain and the writing acknowledges it. That’s all I’m asking for here: that the game admits what it’s doing and that you’re playing as a bad person. Imagine, if you would, a story set in Irish history from the point of view of one of Cromwell’s officers, and he’s portrayed as a straightforward hero, and I suspect you have an idea of how messed up this situation is. If you’re writing a villain protagonist, own up to it, especially when it’s set in a historical context like this.

¹ Whether Eivor is male or female is decided by the player, and the story’s the same either way.

² Another reason this comes across as especially bizarre is that in the modern day segment of 2014’s Assassin’s Creed: Rogue, one of the villains (of the Noble Demon variety) talks about living through the memories of his Viking ancestor during the raid at Lindisfarne, and being horrified at what a monster his ancestor was. Whoever wrote that bit of dialogue is probably confused as to the direction the story’s taken.

³ Well, kind of. Ashraf Ismail was creative director for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla for most of its development, but months before release it came out that, along with a bunch of other douchebaggery at Ubisoft, Ismail was having extramarital affairs and acting inappropriately with other employees, and he resigned from the project. Ubisoft later fired him. But he was in charge during most of the game’s development.

Comment [3]

Happy October! Chapters 6 and 7 have been condensed into one sporking entry because Chapter 6 is ridiculously short and almost nothing happens in it. I didn’t see the point in giving it its own entry.

I considered just skipping over Chapter 6 entirely. Why? Because, well…

Washing a filthy Irish wolfhound is entirely unlike washing a Chihuahua.

That’s the first sentence.

The only thing that happens in Chapter 6 is that Atticus gives Oberon a bath. That’s it. Bath time is apparently also story time, so this is when Atticus tells Oberon about historical figures, and that’s how the dog got obsessed with Genghis Khan in the first book. This time, explaining an earlier reference to the Merry Pranksters, Atticus decides to explain who the fudge they were.

In short: they were a bunch of jackholes who went around in a bus in the 60’s handing out acid, and Atticus has to explain that that’s the street name for LSD.

I thought the street name for that was Mormon.

“No, that’s LDS.”

I hate these characters.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 5

Atticus characterizes the Merry Pranksters as being great trickster figures who “Stuck it to the Man!” and that to be like them, they need to screw with Mr. Semerdjian because he’s “the Man” even though Atticus could easily snap his fingers and destroy his house with magic? Look, I don’t know much about the Merry Pranksters, or the 60’s, but you’re not the underdog in any scenario if you have all the power. Atticus and Oberon aren’t sticking it to The Man; they’re harassing an elderly neighbor who has every right and reason to be suspicious and contemptuous of him.

Oberon becomes obsessed with the 60’s now, I guess (he gets a tie-dye scarf), and as he goes on about it

my subconscious chose that moment to allow a bubble of memory to boil up to the surface: Did Mr. Semerdjian really say he had a rocket-propelled grenade in his garage?

Yes, Atticus is finally thinking about the delightful moment in Chapter 3 where his neighbor admits that he has explosives in his garage and offers to use them to help him fight the demon bug.¹ Atticus finds memory this weird, because he doesn’t know where his neighbor would have gotten it. And what does Atticus do with this information? Why, the same thing that he does with any concerning information: absolutely nothing. He goes to sleep.

That’s the end of Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 begins thusly:

I made sure to make a proper breakfast in the morning, since I would be off fighting demons: a fluffy omelet stuffed with feta cheese, diced tomatoes, and spinach (sprinkled with Tabasco), complemented by toast spread with orange marmalade, and a hot mug of shade-grown Fair Trade organic coffee.

…nobody cares.

I’m sorry, but the Plot and action just stopped for a (admittedly short) chapter about Atticus giving his dog a bath, and then we’re getting all too many details about his breakfast. We should be revving up to his fight with a demon, and instead we have… this.

Also this isn’t that fancy, as far as breakfasts go, but it’s kinda fancy? It sounds good, I suppose, but for a guy who, by his own words, “lives simply” this is not that simple. He’s not just eating eggs, he’s making a vegetable omelet. He’s not just putting in cheese, he’s putting in feta cheese. He’s not just eating toast, he’s spreading orange marmalade on top. He’s not just drinking coffee, it’s “shade-grown Fair Trade organic coffee.” Look, when I live by myself, my basic breakfast is: a fried egg, fried ham, and a cup of apple juice. Sometimes I spoiled myself with something special, but the way he describes his breakfast here sounds like a menu at a brunch place. And nothing in his wording makes it sound like this is out of the ordinary for him.

If nothing else, “Fair Trade” and “organic” to describe your coffee screams “more expensive than the usual brands,” and once again, along with living in a comfortable suburb near a big university and owning his own store, Atticus throws around more money than someone who “lives simply” might. And look, I’m not saying he’s a bad person because of all of this. If you have breakfasts like this and have a house in a nice suburb: cool, whatevs. Live your life. But Atticus explicitly tells us that he’s someone who is trying to stay under the radar and not bring attention to himself, all the while pretending to be a twenty-one-year-old (college-aged) man in modern America, living an upper middle-class life by himself, with no apparent family support or reason to be this independently successful in life. Almost everything he does, from the way he acts, to the way he spends time, to his groceries, apparently, draws attention in one way or another.

This is another one of those moments where it’s quite easy to suspect that Atticus is not so much a character living a life that makes sense for the story as much as living the life that the author wishes he was living.

So having slept well and had a good breakfast, and he’s about to go to battle with a demon, what does he think of the Plot so far? The very next sentence after that last quoted bit tells us:

Having slept on it, I decided that the only thing to do about the Bacchants was to make somebody else get rid of them.

Make It Easy!: 4

I’m sure that at this point, you’re not surprised, but I still find it mildly unsettling that he’s straightforwardly telling us, the audience, that he doesn’t care enough to handle the problem himself. His excuse is that even though it would “cost me—perhaps dearly—but I’d live through it and so would Granuaile” he would “still have twelve or so insanely strong women to defeat and no defense against catching their madness.” And instead of thinking how to overcome their advantages or his own limitations, Atticus would rather put this all in a box labeled ‘Not My Problem.’

I also think this is weird? Iron doesn’t hurt Bacchants, but he also has control of earth, plants, and winds? And alchemy/potion-making? He could very easily make the ground swallow them or have them strangled with roots/vines, or use his control of wind to suck the air from their lungs, or make a potion to poison them, or make a corrosive chemical to kill them. But because he doesn’t really think about any of these options, or anything really, none of these options are so much as mentioned.

His first phone call is to Gunnar Magnusson, the leader of the local werewolf pack, because “Werewolves wouldn’t be affected by the Bacchants’ magic.” Wait, what? Why not? Atticus suspects that their madness-inducing magic works by pheromones, so why would werewolves, who have stronger senses than humans, be immune to it? I suppose the pheromones thing is a suspicion, not an established fact, but one might think they’d be more affected by it? Wouldn’t a madness-inducing spell that makes people give in to their baser urges be stronger on werewolves, who apparently in this universe regularly struggle against those urges? This doesn’t make any sense.

We don’t get much more on the subject though, because Magnusson shuts him down.

“My pack will not be getting involved in your territorial pissing match,” he said. “If you have legal matters to attend to, then by all means call upon Hal or Leif. But do not think of my pack as your personal squad of supernatural mercenaries to call on every time you get into trouble.”

I am loving this trend of there actually being consequences, however small, for Atticus’s actions. Basically, after the climax of the last book, in which Atticus roped the werewolves into the Plot and had two of them die and one of them take a bunch of silver needles for him, they decide that they don’t want to be dragged into another Plot. And that’s fair. Atticus quietly apologizes and hangs up. He seems to think that this is a mood, but Atticus, dude: you called on these guys and asked them to go into battle for your personal crap, without any sort of reward or payment or basic friendly decency. Realistically they would shut him out entirely.

Atticus decides he can’t call Leif, because it’s day time and also because Leif would just beg him to go kill Thor again. So he calls Laksha, the Indian witch who used to possess Granny—remember her? Atticus acts like working with her is making a deal with a shady character despite his own unsavory dealings and repulsive personality. Laksha is currently possessing a Pakistani woman in North Carolina named Selai Chamkanni, a former coma patient that wasn’t using the body so she took over. When asked how she was adjusting, Laksha said,

“He is disturbed that I emerged from a coma with a strange accent and a new sense of independence but so thrilled that I seem to have lost all sexual inhibitions that he’s willing to overlook my disrespect.”

Right. Of course. Because everyone in this book is a perv, I forgot (no I didn’t but I wish I did). I should think that no matter how great the sex he’s having, a functional human being would be very disturbed that his wife woke up from a coma as a completely different person. As would that woman’s family.

“Men are so predictable, are they not?” I grinned into the phone.

“For the most part. You have managed to surprise me so far,” she replied.

Atticus isn’t surprising at all. Hence Brighid playing him easily in the last book. Just think of the laziest and/or skeeviest way to approach any situation and that’s what Atticus does. If it’s witches, expect him to throw insults right and left because he hates them. If it’s a beautiful woman expect him to drool and barely stop himself from groping. The only way to get him to do something active is to kidnap his dog.

Our “hero” invites Laksha back to Arizona to deal with the Bacchants, offering to pay for the flight. Laksha negotiates that along with the plane ticket, Atticus will owe her. He tries to make it a large sum of money because he can do that I guess, but she tells him it’ll be something other than money—a favor, because this task will apparently give her some bad karma so she thinks it’ll be costly.

He then calls Granny to give her instructions. She asks if he’s alright because he was clearly off when he last saw her, and he’s embarrassed but tells her that it was just that he was shaken by the demon attack. He tells her to deliver the requested ingredients to Malina, though is sure to specify that to have them delivered by courier because he doesn’t want Granny caught in the enchantment that collects DNA samples. Atticus also asks her to work with Perry at the store to go through applications and interview potential staff members. Granny points out that the store’s hardly busy, but because Atticus is going to be gone more often someone needs to be running the store.

That dead patch of land out by Tony Cabin needs my attention. It won’t come back for centuries without my help.” Aenghus Og had killed many square miles of the earth by opening his portal to hell, and while he would be paying for it by spending eternity burning there, the land was still barren and cried out for aid.

Um.

Hm.

When he faces Aenghus Og at the end of the last book, Atticus acts as if this ‘opening a portal to Hell’ business and killing the Earth around it² was a horrible sacrilege and crossing a line that made Aenghus irredeemable. That a Druid’s sacred duty is to protect the Earth, and he would be oath-bound to heal it after this profane act.

Except he didn’t. Heal it. It’s still sitting there. It hasn’t been that long since the last book, but it’s been some time, and that thing that Atticus regards as his divine calling as a Druid, his actual job, the thing he values most in the world³… he’s not doing it. He hasn’t been doing it. He’s been farting around like he always does.

I’m sure you’re surprised.

After that call, Atticus goes into his garage, which includes (instead of a car) “a shuriken, sai, a couple of shields, fishing tackle, and plenty of gardening tools” but what he’s really looking for is his compound bow. Remember how I said in the last book things would have been easier if he had a bow? Well he does have one, he just didn’t use it because Reasons. He grabs some arrows and sets them out, and before he cares about Plot he [sigh] goes and talks to his neighbor, the Leprechaun (my name for the Irish stereotype that is the elderly widowed Mrs. MacDonagh, who speaks worse than the Lucky Charms mascot).

[rubs forehead and pours a large glass of apple juice] Alright, let’s get this over with.

“Ah me dear lad Atticus!” she cried, setting down her novel but not her glass. “Yer a fine bloom o’spring on a cloudy fall day, an’ that’s no lie.”

Okay, I can’t… what was that thing TMary advised I do? Oh yeah:

“Ah me dear Irish lad Atticus!” she cried, setting down her Irish novel but not her Irish glass. “Yer a fine Irish bloom o’ Irish spring on a cloudy Irish fall day, an’ that’s no Irish lie. I’m Irish!”

You know it does make me feel a little better.

The narration reminds us a bit of who the Leprechaun is, and how she knows about the supernatural right now because Atticus talked to her about it. And she was… weirdly cool about it? As I mentioned in the last sporking, the worldbuilding, as Atticus explains it to her, should make her question everything. Instead she’s just like, “Oh okay, everything’s real? That’s great.” Because character consistency and complex thought are two things Hearne threw out the window when approaching these stories.

When Atticus explains that he’s off to fight some demons, the Leprechaun tells him that her priest would be happy to hear that. Atticus is worried that she’s been blabbing, but she assures him that she hasn’t said anything to him, and that he wouldn’t believe her if she did. After all, he’s a priest for a college parish, and she comes to Mass every Sunday a little drunk anyway.

We’re supposed to think of the Leprechaun as a faithful Catholic, by the way. In fact it’s a Plot Point right now. So it’s kind of weird that we get this exchange:

“Ye said all the gods are alive. All the monsters too.”

[some stupid “witty” dialogue]

“And the impression I got was they’re alive because we believe in them, right?

“Um. With lots of fine print, right.”

“So in a sense it’s we with faith who create the gods, not the gods who create us. And, if that’s the case, then it’s we who created the universe.”

“I think that might be taking a big step into the windowless room of solipsism. But I see your point, Mrs. MacDonagh. A person like you with such powerful faith should not be ignored.

Again, as I said in the sporking of Chapters 20 and 21 of the last book: this should be earthshaking for the Leprechaun’s faith. And it evidently is but we’re acting like she’s still a faithful, orthodox Catholic. Look, if you’re Catholic and regularly attending Mass, you’ll notice that we recite the Nicene Creed, a summation of beliefs, which includes

I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

And

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made,

This is basic stuff in the Catholic faith. And I get it, this is a fantasy novel and Hearne’s allowed to do whatever he wants with the cosmology of it, even though as I explained there’s still a lot hinky with lifting this ‘belief-makes-things-real’ system from Gaiman and Pratchett without bothering to make it work within the setting. But here he’s acting like a woman declaring that humanity made all the gods can still be someone that’s a faithful Catholic Christian, and that’s nowhere near the case. She’s essentially denying the divinity of the Christian deity, and fairly explicitly implying that God is invented. That’s not remotely what Christians believe.

Also, faith shouldn’t count for jack if you know that these things only exist because they’re made up. That’s not really faith at all then, is it?

Anyhow, the real reason that Atticus is here is because he wants to summon the Virgin Mary, and he wants the Leprechaun’s faith to make her appear. No really. Basically, he asks her to pray very hard that Mary appears, and hopefully she’ll show up somewhere in town. Atticus explains that people having visions of the Virgin Mary are caused by faith, and—eh?

Okay I don’t… I’m not an expert on the subject. I know if you asked for every story about an apparition of Mary you’d probably get thousands of stories, many from everyday people, and I couldn’t tell you how they go. But the really famous ones? The big ones? Like Our Lady of Guadalupe or Our Lady of Lourdes? They don’t go like this at all. They aren’t stories about a very faithful person who prays and then sees the fulfillment of their prayers in an apparition. Generally they’re normal people who just happen to come across Mary and are just as surprised about it as anyone else would be. I suppose someone could be praying that Mary appears in front of these people, which is kind of what happens here—the Leprechaun gets Mary to appear ministering to homeless people in town. But that’s not mentioned in any of the stories, so it’s weird for Atticus to claim that’s how it goes.

For instance Juan Diego, the fellow from the Our Lady of Guadalupe story, is told by Mary to go ask the bishop to do a thing, and the bishop explicitly doesn’t believe his story because Juan Diego is a indigenous peasant. And Mary also specifically talks to Juan Diego in his own language, Nahuatl, which is another thing that doesn’t quite match up with the idea that she acts according to pre-established beliefs. I imagine the most faithful Catholics in Mexico at the time would have been Spanish, and expected Mary to talk in either Spanish or Latin.

I’m not asking you, dear sporking reader, to believe in Marian apparitions, but I am asking you to look at the explanation that Atticus gives for how they work in-universe, and realize that in the details they don’t match up to real-life examples he’s referring to. And I suppose that in the Iron Druid universe there’s no reason to assume that Marian apparitions happen the same way they do in our world, but you’re clearly meant to think that they are, given he’s invoking real world religions and mythologies, and these books mention details from history (like the Merry Pranksters), albeit in a way that suggests that the narrator has a high school understanding of history.⁴

In short, Hearne didn’t do his homework again, but is talking out of his armpit and acting like he did research.

Did Not Do Homework: 6

Figures.

This conversation goes on for a bit, and I’m going to summarize this because I don’t want to sit here and type out half the chapter from my Kindle, and I don’t want to expose you to too much of this accent. I’m not that sadistic.

Atticus is asking the Leprechaun to visualize Mary and they go into a lot of unnecessary detail about what she’s wearing. Not in the usual pervy way that he does for most female characters (thank goodness), mind you, but still goes on for too long. Also when Atticus asks if she’d be wearing “one of those habits, the elaborate headgear you always see in churches”, and, um…

Hearne, what are you talking about?

There are plenty of statues of Mary with crowns, of course, and maybe he’s referring to that, or the halo? But he mentions the habit specifically, and a lot of times in religious art, in terms of actual clothing, Mary’s wearing fairly simple headcovering:

That’s not “elaborate headgear.” That’s not even a habit (which is also not usually a piece of “elaborate headgear”). That’s a cloth veil. Some artwork embellished it with patterns or icons, but that’s still not that elaborate. I don’t know why Atticus looks at a habit, or a veil, and thinks of that as particularly ornate. When it comes to headwear, it’s pretty modest and it’s meant to—from what I understand it was meant to reflect common garments for a woman of her station, albeit prettied up in the religious art. This is like looking at a man wearing a baseball cap and assuming it’s some kind of expensive fashion statement.

Did Not Do Homework: 7

Also the Leprechaun insists she wouldn’t wear it because “it’s hardly the fashion anymore.”

[sigh]

The Kids These Days: 5

The Leprechaun tells Atticus that she’d be “ministering to the homeless and the whores” on Apache Boulevard, which because Hearne thinks references is what the Cool Kids do, Oberon compares to Mos Eisley because “wretched hive” and all that and I don’t care. Even if Atticus tells us that it took “all of [my] will not to dive into a Star Wars nerdfest”. Apparently he’s a fan, which is odd given his depiction of nerd culture thus far.

So Atticus asks the Leprechaun to pray that Mary will appear on Apache Boulevard. Now just because someone with faith prays for this, doesn’t mean it will happen—Atticus explains that she’s got free will, and can decide whether or not to actually manifest in the way a believer expects. Which is an interesting touch, but ultimately goes nowhere.

Also Atticus says this, which 171 people have highlighted:

Science cannot close the fist of reason around the miracle of consciousness any more than I can turn my sword into a lightsaber.”

…I know this is one of those things that’s supposed to sound deep and meaningful, but Atticus is saying this to convince his neighbor to do something for him that’ll make a shortcut. See, he’s hoping that Mary will bless some arrows for him that he can use against the demon Coyote’s making him fight. And Atticus tells us that if this doesn’t work, he’ll just go to the local parish and ask a priest to bless his arrows. Which wouldn’t be as strong, but wouldn’t be nothing either.

I’d like to see how that conversation goes. I’m not saying a Catholic priest wouldn’t do it, because I know some that would, but he’d have a lot of questions even if he did agree.

In any case, it’s a bit frustrating that the Plot takes this detour, only for Atticus to be like, “If this thing doesn’t happen then I’ll just do it in a much more mundane and boring manner.” Him having a backup plan, for once in his life, undermines the importance of this conversation.

Also—_Atticus_ doesn’t believe in the power of the Christian God. So why should the blessing work for him? I call out Hearne for shamelessly ripping off urban fantasy tropes, but one that comes up a lot is that for holy objects and stuff to work, the user needs faith that they will. Hence why Wolverine using a cross against Dracula doesn’t work, but Nightcrawler (a practicing Catholic) doing the same thing does.

Atticus explicitly says he doesn’t have the faith necessary because he doesn’t believe in Christianity, so…he’s just hijacking someone else’s faith? But the Leprechaun isn’t told about the details of this plan, so it’s not like she’s believing in the blessed arrows for him.

This entire thing’s a mess! I think Hearne just wanted to exposit more about how the ‘faith makes things real’ part of the worldbuilding works, and instead he just mucked it up even further!

So after mowing the lawn, the Leprechaun gets all teary-eyed from praying and thinking about her deceased husband, and when he leaves she asks Atticus to tell Mary she loves her, and also advises he maybe wear a helmet this time, because last time he fought demons he got part of his ear bitten off.

And that’s the end of the chapter! Join us next time as he meets with Coyote to kill this demon.

¹ Honestly Mr. Semerdjian is a much better neighbor than Atticus is. Were their positions reversed, I can easily see Atticus letting his neighbor get eaten.

² Considering he’s referring to actual Hell, that word should be capitalized, as should ‘Earth’ because he views the planet as a living entity that he occasionally talks to.

³ Allegedly. I imagine the thing he actually values most in the world is his own life.

⁴ Which normally wouldn’t be that bad of a flaw, but considering our protagonist is an immortal character, it sticks out pretty badly.

Comment [4]

Welcome back! I hate Atticus.

Coyote comes to pick up Atticus in a car he stole and… [sigh]

“This here is one hot ride, Mr. Druid, yessiree!” He slapped the hood a couple of times to punctuate his enthusiasm.

I don’t just hate the accent, I hate that Hearne decided to use the accent and then tell us that it’s totally the right thing to do.

Atticus makes a comment that it doesn’t look like that nice of a car, and Coyote has to clarify that by ‘hot’ he means he just stole it, which is a ‘duh’ but Atticus is an idiot. He’s got his bow and arrows and has set up a movie for Oberon to watch in the house (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest if you’re curious). Coyote tells us he’s also got a squirt gun full of holy water, which is one of those things you’d think you’d see more in urban fantasy.

They drive up to Apache Boulevard, which is supposed to be the bad part of town (I don’t know, I’ve never been to Tempe), and they find Mary there, in modern dress just like the Leprechaun imagined her in. She’s ministering to the homeless and addicts. To make sure that it’s her, Atticus turns on what he calls “faeries specs” and—

…again, I’m reminded that he doesn’t talk like a two-thousand-year-old Druid. I know that it’s meant to be that he’s adapted and because he’s talking to us, the audience, he sounds like a 21st century douchebag, but apparently the things he just talks to himself like this? He refers to his anti-glamour vision as “faeries specs”? Really? Can you imagine someone who has been walking around the planet longer than Christianity has existed would use a term like that?

Anyhow, the light of Mary almost blinds him (I chuckle at this) because her radiance is so bright. So they get out of the car to ask her for help and to bless the arrows, and she tells them that she “came here with no other purpose in mind.”

[annoyed groaning noises] I get that most characters in the novel exist to make Atticus’s life easier, but it’s still annoying when even they point it out in-text.

Make It Easy!: 5

Atticus relays the message from the Leprechaun that she loves Mary, who knows her, explains that she’s been praying for Atticus to stay safe, and says she “has a beautiful soul.” And I get what we’re going for here, and I want to say that all human beings have inherent value, but let’s also not forget that the Leprechaun expressed in the last book that she wants all English people to die. That’s far from a “beautiful soul.” I know we’re all supposed to react to the Leprechaun as “Te-he, crazy but sweet old lady!” but that’s… the woman clearly needs help.

When Atticus takes out the arrows Mary blesses them, with what we’re told is “a few lines from the Benediction in the Latin Mass.”

O salutaris Hostia quae coeli pandis ostium. Bella premunt hostilia; da robur, fer auxilium.

Alright I don’t go to Latin Mass a lot, so I can only compare this to what I can Google unless I want to go ask someone, and I don’t like talking to people–so Google it is! From what I can tell this is mostly accurate? Wikipedia says ‘caeli’ instead of ‘coeli’ and punctuates it differently; someone who is good at Latin can probably tell you whether or not this is a good sentence. Here’s the thing though: the book describes this as used for Benediction—that is, the part of the Mass when the Eucharist is prepared, and Catholics believe it’s turned into the Body and Blood of Christ. My research (which I’ll admit is far from deep) says it’s not—it’s a Eucharistic hymn written by the medieval theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas. And the words seem somewhat appropriate, which Atticus himself points out—it’s about gaining protection from enemies from all sides. But it’s still more than a bit weird that the prayer given for Atticus’s protection in a fight with a demon is from a Eucharistic prayer instead of something like an exorcism or a Bible quote about facing enemies.

Furthermore, Atticus doesn’t believe in this stuff. He’s not Christian, and Mary knows this. That’s not to say Christians can’t pray for people who aren’t of the faith, but given the way theology/gods work in-universe, as explained by Atticus—that they exist because people believe in them—having Mary ask a deity from a religion Atticus doesn’t follow and doesn’t hold in that high esteem seems off. It’s not like this is an ancient Jewish or early Church prayer—this is specifically a medieval Latin prayer, and let’s not forget that he mentioned in Chapter 4 that in-universe the Church destroyed the last of the Druids (which is BS as I pointed out there, but that’s what Hearne wrote). You would think he’d be at least a little uncomfortable with Christianity in that case, and certainly with Latin prayers composed by a medieval Dominican friar.

I hate always comparing every urban fantasy to Dresden Files but… [sigh] okay so in the third book, Grave Peril there’s a scene in which Harry’s devoutly Catholic friend Michael Carpenter prays before a mission. Harry’s specifically not very religious (although in later books he seems to acknowledge that there is a God that seems to lean towards a Christian theology, he doesn’t put much effort in being religious). But although he doesn’t know that the prayer accomplishes anything, he still feels something good about it, because he feels his friend’s faith, and it gives him a shred of hope about the outcome of the next battle.

[points at this book] Here it’s just… I don’t know. Mary is happy to pull out a traditional Latin prayer from an unrelated context to ask for his protection, and Atticus is cool with it, I guess. Not much reflection or reason other than to try to say that all the cool religious figures are on Atticus’s side.

I’ll give it a couple of counts.

Did Not Do Homework: 8

For removing the prayer from context and acting like it fits here. And this:

Make It Easy!: 6

Because ultimately, this should be a complex thing for Atticus, who should be grappling with the fact that the Church wiped out his kind, and instead he’s just happy to take their blessings when it suits him. It’s all just to make it easier for him.

This book sux.

The arrows get blessed, Atticus tells us that if he was using his “faeries specs” he would “have seen some really interesting magic” (before the brightness blinded him) and I want to say that’s not how that should work, but in-universe I guess it might be, and I’d be splitting hairs so let’s move on.

“The Last of the Druids and one of the First People of Native America are off to fight a fallen angel from the Fifth Circle.”

[rubs forehead]

A couple of things?

ONE: “Native America”? Yes, Coyote is Native American but the land he’s from is not “Native America.” That’s just America. Why would the continent itself be native? Native to what, exactly? To the planet Earth?

Did Not Do Homework: 9

TWO: Alright this leads to a discussion about fallen angels and such so let’s take this as it comes to us.

I’d been smiling back at Mary until I processed the end of her sentence. At that point I didn’t know if I’d ever smile again. “A fallen angel? One of the original host?”

Atticus does this thing that I hate after he’s told about a specific threat, in which he freaks out for the rest of the conversation as if it’s a big deal, and then the rest of the book and leading up to that threat he barely acts as if he’s worried at all. He’s doing it again here.

Basically it goes like this: in Christian mythology, demons are all fallen angels. Not so in Iron Druid Chronicles, apparently (which is inconsistent with the notion that mythological beings exist according to what people believe, but there ya go). Atticus explains that most demons, like the ones he fought so far, are just… generic monsters that spawn in Hell, I guess? There are pieces of fiction where this is how it goes (the videogame series Darksiders comes to mind) but given we’re told how figures from mythology and religion work in this world, and this isn’t it.

“Hoo-ee, Mr. Druid. Sounds like powerful medicine to me,” Coyote said. He wasn’t kidding. Fallen angels weren’t ordinary demons. I wasn’t sure Cold Fire would even work against such a being, since they were condemned to spend eternity in hell rather than spawned there.

“Hell” should be capitalized, since you’re referring to the location, which is a real, actual place in-universe.

Also: huh? You don’t need to give all the details on where demons come from, if they’re not fallen angels, but since you brought it up—where do they come from, other than “spawned in Hell”? You’ve told us that faeries are descendants or children of the Irish gods, is it a similar deal with demons and fallen angels?

And if fallen angels are bound to Hell for all eternity, uh… why is this one not there? Did Aenghus Og just accidentally break one of God’s eternal judgments? Does he have that kind of juice?

“And the Fifth Circle,” I said, “if I remember my Dante, is where the wrathful and the sullen are punished.”

“That’s correct, my child,” Mary affirmed.

Here’s the thing though— The Divine Comedy isn’t canon. It’s a good piece of fiction, but this isn’t the theology of any Christian denomination. And even if it was, because I’m sure there are people out there who think that it is canon, I don’t know that many of those people are familiar enough with it that they’d recognize which circle is which. Very rarely is it brought up in pop culture, and then it’s usually done wrong. Christopher Hitchens has a quote in Letters to a Young Contrarian that says something like (and I’ve seen a bunch of people try to quote that), “According to Dante, the people in the deepest circle of Hell are those who didn’t choose sides in times of moral conflict.” Except Dante Alighieri never said that—Martin Luther King, Jr. did, I think? If you read Inferno then you’ll see that the deepest circle in Hell is for those who commit the sin of Treachery.¹ That is, after all, where both Lucifer and Judas are tormented.

[And Brutus, because Dante Alighieri was a Roman fanboy and apparently equated the betrayal of Caesar with the betrayal of Jesus. He was weird like that.]

The ones who didn’t pick sides aren’t even in Hell–they’re outside the gates being chased by hornets.

In short, I don’t think that Dante Alighieri’s conception of Hell should be A Thing in this universe. There are ways in which it could work—in Salvation War Hell’s geography matches Inferno and characters hypothesize that he was telepathically shown what it was like. But in a world where things like this are shaped by belief? I don’t think enough people believe in the poem for it to shake out that way. I could be wrong though, so I’m not taking points. This time.

Atticus, swearing by “Gods Below,” asks how Aenghus Og could have summoned something that powerful. Mary suggests that he didn’t summon it as much as just left the door open long enough for it to escape, though it still has the same binding on it that it can’t leave until it kills Atticus. Which doesn’t make sense? Aenghus Og didn’t have enough power to summon it, but he had enough power to bind it? How the wiggly chickens does that make sense?

Also Mary “beamed” at him after the question, “ignoring [his] invocation of a different pantheon.” Which I do not think Mary would do? Even if she’s okay with him being pagan, I don’t think she would completely ignore this.

I’m reminded of Rick Riordan’s Norse mythology books, in which one of the characters, Samirah, is a valkyrie while also being devoutly Muslim. Her reasoning is that while the Aesir and Vanir actually exist, they’re not actually “gods” as such and she doesn’t worship them so it’s okay. Which, if you ask me, is… shaky ground theologically-speaking, considering Odin signs her paychecks and she constantly works with the souls of the slain in Valhalla. And everyone is surprisingly cool with it? And I don’t think that any heroic characters should be prejudiced or anything, and I understand that this is a book for children and teenagers, but it felt as if the characters were bending over backwards in their worldview to accommodate someone who really should have a problem with what’s going on? To the point that Heimdall even affirms this viewpoint with a comment like, “Yeah, the Aesir kind of suck sometimes, you’re probably right that we’re not really gods.” It all feels very unnatural, is what I’m saying.

All this to say: Mary shouldn’t necessarily be yelling at Atticus, but him invoking different deities, something against both Christianity and the Judaism she would have been raised with, should at least merit an uncomfortable look.

Anyhow Coyote takes the arrows back to the car because “This white lady’s a bit too shiny for me.”

“You have an interesting assortment of friends,” Mary observed as Coyote’s boots crunched away on the gravel. “A Native American deity, a pack of lycanthropes, a vampire, and a coven of Zorya worshippers.”

“I wouldn’t call them all my friends,” I said. “More like acquaintances. Mrs. MacDonagh and my dog, Oberon, are my friends.”

“Then you have chosen your friends wisely,” Mary said kindly.

…was he not friends with the werewolves and vampire? Is that not the impression we’re meant to get? Not so much with Coyote and the witches—obviously not the witches—but he’s always referred to the others in a way that seems to indicate that he thinks of them as friends? Or rather, that we’re supposed to think that he thinks of them as friends. They hang out, they have inside jokes, that kind of thing? He is happy to sacrifice his werewolf buddies at the drop of a hat to get what he wants though so I wouldn’t call that friendship, but I just assumed he was a jackhole who thought that’s what friends were for, and that Hearne was a hack who didn’t understand that it made Atticus a jackhole.

But moving on, if we call the Leprechaun his real friend, that’s not wise at all. She is the one who wants to kill all the English, remember? She helps Atticus bury a body the second that he says Bres was British. Picking her as a friend is not a feat of wisdom.

Mary tells Atticus that the fallen angel’s name is Basasael, and that he was a powerful angel before he sided with Lucifer and got kicked out of Heaven, and Atticus acts like this is a big deal, but we have no frame of reference here. Like yeah, it sounds like a big deal but we don’t have much talk about angels in these books so this doesn’t mean much to me. Atticus is talking like it’s a problem, but he usually does whenever something comes up and then dismisses it five minutes later. Are angels any tougher than Irish gods? [shrugs] I dunno.

“Christ,” I whispered without thinking.

“My son is confident of your victory,” Mary said.

“Son” should probably be capitalized, given context. And using the Lord’s Name in vain is also a big no-no in Christianity, so again, I don’t think Mary should pass over this one so lightly! As I said above, I don’t think Hearne should necessarily have Mary give him a telling off, but there should, at least, be some level of discomfort with this, whether that be with a look or some other gesture.

Then again, these two have interacted before in canon, so maybe she’s just tired of always correcting him.

Atticus asks Mary to tell Jesus hi, and that they’ll get a beer next time he’s around. She promises to pass on the message and tells him to go with her blessing.

“Peace be with you,” I said, and as I turned to resume my journey with Coyote, I added under my breath, “and asskicking be with me.”

Te-he, isn’t he clever and witty!

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 6

It’s not quite as bad as the ending of Chapter 17 but it’s not great either.

So I apologize, because this chapter is a little shorter than some of the others. I considered combining this with the next chapter, but that one (which contains the boss fight with Basasael) is pretty long; I don’t think I can put the two together without making this an absurdly bloated sporking entry. I imagine you’d rather go ahead and read an entry rather than an uber-long one.

¹ An illusion that Pirates of the Caribbean of all things got right.

Better Than You: 3
Did Not Do Homework: 9
The Kids These Days: 5
You Keep Using That Word: 7
Make It Easy!: 6
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 6

Comment [4]

Hallo! I’m back. I’m sorry it’s been so long. I was really hoping to do one sporking per month, but it didn’t quite shake out that way. I apologize.

Also I turn 30 in like a week and let me tell you THAT is a weird feeling.

Now normally I do a quirky opening and then look at the first line of the chapter and complain, but I don’t know this chapter doesn’t have a very cringe-worthy first sentence. It’s a bit of dialogue in which Coyote asks how Atticus knew that Mary would be around. When Atticus replies that he had faith, Coyote questions him, as after all, Atticus isn’t Christian, and our “hero” responds that he had a friend pray for him.

“Well then, why didn’ she just pray for Jesus to come down and smite the demon or somethin’? We coulda slept in.”

That’s… actually a really good question. Instead of asking that a saint bless their stuff, why not just have Jesus or a saint show up and start blasting the demon? Wouldn’t that work just as well? The answer Atticus gives us is this:

“‘Cause Jesus don’ like to come down very much. People keep thinkin’ of him bein’ nailed to a cross or wearin’ a crown of thorns, or else he’s got huge bloody holes in his hands an’ feet, an’ that’s just gotta be damn uncomfortable. Plus they think he was a white guy with straight brown hair, but he was dark-skinned.

Did Not Do Homework: 10

[rubs forehead] I don’t… okay, let’s break this down.

ONE: I can’t imagine that most modern Christians, Catholics or otherwise, when you ask them to picture Jesus necessarily think of him as crucified. If you ask people to imagine Jesus showing up today, they would generally think of him as appearing as a normal man, albeit more compassionate than ordinary men tend to appear. I suppose a traditionalist Catholic might picture him crucified, or with the Five Wounds, as we have a lot of that imagery in our churches. But the Leprechaun isn’t like that–she goes to Mass inebriated, after all. And when asked to describe Mary, she specifically depicts her in modern, not-overtly-religious dress. If Atticus asked her to describe Jesus I imagine she’d do the same.

If this was something like the American Gods television series, in which different denominations and nationalities all have different incarnations of Jesus walking around, and the Catholic Jesus is this way, then yeah. Maybe this would work. Given that we’ve already been told that every incarnation of Thor exists, this would provide an easy out for Hearne. But he doesn’t.

So basically, a character asks why they don’t use what seems to be a perfect solution to their problem, and Hearne handwaves it away with something that doesn’t really make sense. Chances are he just didn’t feel like writing Jesus into this story, though I’m told that Jesus does appear in later books in the series.

TWO: …why is the complaint about white Jesus here? I mean, I do get it, but basically no Christian ever (outside of very select groups) is going to be surprised if you told them Jesus wasn’t a white man. People around the world tend to view Jesus as their own nationality. And I’m not going to pretend that there isn’t a lot of European colonialism BS rolled into this being the dominant image of Jesus, but Christians who aren’t in a Eurocentric culture tend to imagine him as looking like themselves.

Like, lookey here:

Chinese Jesus:

Haitian Jesus:

Nigerian Jesus:

Here’s a priest/artist who made images of Christ depicted as American indigenous.

The little jab about “everyone pictures Jesus as white” doesn’t seem like an authentic thing from a Druid who’d been alive for thousands of years traveling the world. It reads more like a modern guy was reading a grumpy post on the Internet somewhere, assumed it was advanced knowledge, and decided to mention it in his book.

Atticus compares manifesting as crucified and white as Coyote manifesting as a sandpainting, and Coyote admits that did that once and it was disorienting.

My body was so stretched out I completely lost track o’ where my ass was.”

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 7

…I will admit though, I did find this follow exchange kind of amusing:

“So how many fallen angels you killed afore this, Mr. Druid?”

“This’ll be my first, I reckon.”

“Shee-it.” Coyote shook his head with a rueful grin. “We’re gonna die.”

If it weren’t for the stupid accent being seared into my brain I’d say this was a little bit funny. Atticus takes this line seriously and asks Coyote if he actually plans to survive this fight, because if this is meant to be a suicide mission, he’s out. Coyote reassures him that he’s only pointing out that fallen angels are tough customers and this one won’t go down easily.

They arrive at the school and camouflage themselves (but NOT turn themselves completely invisible). There’s some good prose of them snooping around that I’m skipping because it’s fine, before they see the fallen angel on a rooftop, munching on what’s left of some kid. Which should be played with some horror, but the text is more like, “Yeah, that’s gross, I guess.” I won’t take off points or anything because we could chalk this up to Atticus being desensitized to this kind of thing after being alive eons, and he does refer to him as “poor kid”, and Coyote points out that they really can’t do anything for the person.

There’s also this bit of dialogue which isn’t bad:

“I’ll put my first arrow through his head; you go for the heart,” I whispered back. “Then just keep shootin’ until he fuckin’ dies.”

“Wow, you learn all that strategy from the U.S. Army men?”

Unfortunately, this is immediately ruined with this following bit of stupid dialogue.

I grunted in amusement. “No, I learned it from Attila the Hun, who lived an’ died without ever knowin’ you were here.”

What? Why does it matter that Attila the Hun didn’t know about North America? Who cares?

So the two make their move, splitting up in different positions, and Atticus touches the ground somewhere so he can draw upon the Earth’s power. He counts down with Coyote, and they both shoot at the same time. Atticus’s arrow hits the demon’s eye, and Coyote’s hits him in the chest. Being a massively powerful supernatural creature, Basasael is hurt, but not killed, and he pulls out the arrows and roars at them. It also turns out that Basasael can see straight through Atticus’s magic camouflage.

“How many arrows we gotta use to kill this thing?” Coyote yelled.

“All Mary said was we’d have to pierce it more’n once.”

“Yeah? Well maybe you shoulda pinned her down to a specific number there afore we left, dumass!”

If I liked these characters, and didn’t hate the accent, then I would like a lot of the dialogue in this chapter? I am happy to see someone calling Atticus an idiot often though.

They shoot him again, and it knocks aside one arrow and takes another in the gut before leaping up and diving at Atticus.

The eternal whine of self-pity–why me?—flashed through my brain

I don’t have much to add other than Atticus sux and it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that he’s got an “eternal whine of self-pity” in his head.

After loosing another shot, which misses, he draws his sword and another arrow and hides behind a steel post on the roof, thinking that the demon will have to go one way or another to get around the post. Not so! The demon’s strong enough to rip it out of his path without much effort. It breathes some hellfire at him, and he dodges and the heat of it doesn’t hurt him because screw you, he has a magic amulet that fixes everything.

Also he yells this:

“Hey!” I shouted…“You’re the bastard who made a deal with Aenghus Og! You’re the one who’s been behind it all!”

…what?

How is he behind it all? What is he behind? Is he supposed to be behind Aenghus Og’s evil plan in the last book? That doesn’t make sense because Aenghus was after Atticus long before he started making deals with Hell. This guy isn’t behind anything at all, as far as I can tell. He’s just some mook on the loose.

The school office doors open as someone comes out to investigate, and Basasael sees that it’s a distraction for Atticus and tries to stab him with his claws. Atticus tries to dodge, but the claws graze him. Atticus gets him back though by stabbing the demon’s hand with one of the blessed arrows.

The person that came out of the office is a school administrator, and she is very confused because she can see the damage and hear the growling demon, but she can’t see the demon, because she can’t see through cloaking magic like Atticus can. Atticus yells at her to get back inside while preparing to continue fighting.

It’s at this point that Hearne Atticus thinks, “Wait a minute, isn’t Coyote also supposed to be in this scene?” And he realizes it’s entirely possible that Coyote ditched him and left him to die. Which would serve him right, but then we wouldn’t have a book series. Also, he’s immune to death. Atticus wonders if the Morrigan’s death immunity would still work if a fallen angel ate him, and also if angels poop (because if he was eaten would the Morrigan resurrect him from the poop?) or even have buttholes.

And then Coyote proves he hasn’t ditched Atticus by hitting Basasael in the butthole.

No really.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 8

When an understandably upset Basasael chases him, Coyote turns into, well, a coyote and runs to keep the fallen angel distracted. Atticus uses this as a chance–despite being magically cloaked–to grab the school administrator that wandered out there and demand that she put the school on lockdown (explaining that American schools tend to have emergency procedures) because someone’s already been killed (the kid the angel was munching on earlier). The school administrator is very confused and wonders who has been killed.

“Take attendance and you’ll find out. It’s what you’re best at, because the gods know it’s not teaching them English. Damn kids don’t know the difference between an adjective and an adverb!”

This is a really random and stupid thing to yell? And Atticus does admit that it’s dumb, but in the worst way possible.

Stress was making me take my frustrations out on this poor frumpy lady who probably never got laid.

For both of those, giving it a:

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 9

I get that Hearne was a high school English teacher, so he cares about these things¹, but there’s no reason for Atticus to do so? Yeah, the American education system has a lot of problems, sure, but out of everything to randomly complain about under stress, this is by far one of the strangest to pick out for someone who isn’t an English teacher. Heck, if you were an English teacher, I’d think issues about how to compose an essay, how to understand themes, the difference between subject and predicate would all be more pressing?

And of course, because Hearne Atticus is a perv, he runs on the assumption that a woman who is understandably confused and terrified about her workplace being attacked by a monster she can’t see and being addressed by a douchebag she also can’t see, it’s because she needs to get laid.

She asks why she can’t see Atticus, who just yells at her, and slams the doors. He runs back to where Coyote is dodging fireballs and picks up his bow, healing himself as well. He has two arrows left, and he shoots one of them through Basasael’s wing. This causes him to collapse to the ground. Really? One arrow in the wing is all it takes? Well whatevs.

Because Basasael’s on the ground, Atticus can now use the Cold Fire spell, which is SUPER EFFECTIVE

Wait, hang on: okay I didn’t put this in the sporking, but it’s established earlier in Chapter 4 that Cold Fire, the anti-demon spell Atticus learned in the last book, wouldn’t work because it requires the enemy to be in touch with the ground, and this demon flies. With that in mind, you would think that taking out the demon’s wings would be Priority Number One. Especially since Mary told them that it would take multiple arrows to kill this thing. After the shot to the head didn’t work, they should have worked on grounding Basasael as soon as they could, and THEN Atticus could whammy him. In a bit we see it’s unclear how effective the spell is on the fallen angel, but this is never brought up before and it’s clear that Atticus thought it would work, so why not try it as soon as possible? It’s not really discussed.

Basasael is in pain but not down yet, the school announces lockdown over the intercom system, Atticus makes a joke about how badly high schools teach English, and Atticus is tired because casting Cold Fire takes a lot out of him. Atticus tells Coyote to shoot him again while the fallen angel’s down, because he doesn’t know how well his spell hit. So while Basasael is pulling arrows out of himself, Coyote shoots him in the throat.

I was thinking, It’s too bad we’ll never get a chance to talk over a cup of tea. Besides the Morrigan, I rarely had conversations with beings older than I was, and I treasured them whenever they happened along.

“I mean, he’s a demon from Hell that eats children, but it’s kind of a bummer we didn’t have a chance to talk.” What the fudge!

Also, we established in the opening chapter of this book that all the gods know where you live. Plenty of them are ages older than you are. So you should have had plenty of opportunities to talk to beings older than yourself. Come on Hearne. We’re not even halfway through the book, and you’re not keeping the continuity from the first chapter straight.

Basasael explodes into goo, leaving slime and remains of his last meal everywhere. It’s raining now, which apparently is enough to wash away the spiritual taint the demon leaves behind, so Atticus doesn’t have to do his job as a Druid and cleanse the Earth here, I guess?

Make It Easy!: 7

But it does leave a physical mess, and Atticus wonders how to clean it up. Atticus points out that they can’t call a bunch of ghouls to eat it, and decides the mortals will have to figure out a way to rationalize this on their own. And he makes Ghostbusters and X-Files references because pop culture references, that’s what cool people do, I guess? Coyote doesn’t get it, and so Atticus moves on and decides that they’ll assume it was aliens, and that he and Coyote should pick up arrows.

Once they collect all their blessed arrows, and Atticus removes any of his blood stains, they evade the arriving police cars and head back to their car, which is also surrounded by cops, so they walk home. Coyote suggests they go to another high school not too far off and steal another car, whereas Atticus plans to just call a taxi at the nearby convenience store.

Atticus then interrogates Coyote about how this whole thing shook out. Coyote pulled him into this mess because he claimed Basasael ate a girl from his tribe. Atticus asks if that was true at all, and Coyote admits it’s only been snacking on white people and that he lied to Atticus. He only approached this the way that he did because he knew if this demon kept running around, it was only a matter of time before he started eating Navajo students at the school.

For whatever reason, Atticus treats this as being played, I guess? He feels he was put at “tremendous risk” and that he would have rather confronted Basasael on his own terms. Coyote points out that he should be glad that he helped Atticus at all, and he might not have survived if he hadn’t. And also, I don’t think Coyote knows this, but Atticus is basically IMMUNE TO DEATH. This shouldn’t be that scary of a risk for him!

“Yeah, what about that? You took your sweet time getting ‘round to helpin’ when he came after me”

“Well, y’know, I just couldn’t resist doin’ it the way I did it. You know how people are always threatenin’ to shove this or that up someone’s ass, but they never really do it? Well, no there’s a new story gonna be told ‘round the fire: ‘How Coyote Shoved an Arrow Up a Fallen Angel’s Ass.’ Can’t wait to hear myself tell it! An’ don’t you worry, Mr. Druid, I’ll make sure to include how I got the best o’ you!”

I don’t get it.

I really don’t get this at all.

See, we’re supposed to be seeing this as, “Coyote managed to trick Atticus into risking his life to do something for him.” But here’s the thing: as is pointed out by Coyote when he first appears, this is Atticus’s problem. Basasael is here because of Atticus. Essentially, Coyote shows up and forces Atticus to clean up his own mess, and (quite justifiably) threatens him when tries to back out of it. That he lied about who was getting victimized by the demon is almost irrelevant? Fact is Basasael was still munching on high school kids. And Atticus was doing nothing about it.

I repeat: our “hero” has to be strong-armed into stopping a monster from eating the local children. I know that they’re high schoolers, and I get it, teenagers scare the living s*** out of me, but it’s still kids being eaten and Atticus doesn’t care. At all.

So Coyote ‘got the best of Atticus’? I mean, not really? This isn’t manipulation, really. It’s getting Atticus to do his job. This isn’t particularly clever, it’s not particularly underhanded, and it’s not even as good of a story that Coyote makes it out to be.

It reminds me of the end of the last book, in which it’s revealed that Brighid “manipulated” Atticus into fighting Aenghus Og. Except those manipulations amounted to… first telling him to do it, and then when he ignored that and went about his day like a normal person, she arranged for his dog and lawyer to get kidnapped by the villains so he would feel compelled to do something about it. Once again, Atticus is pushed into something he should be doing anyway by basic, straightforward actions, and he acts like he’s been subtly played by a twelfth-level intellect. I imagine if an elementary school teacher told Atticus, “You have to do your homework, or you’ll fail and I’ll put you in detention” as a cunning and insidious ploy.

The chapter ends with Coyote turning into animal form and running off, laughing at Atticus.

And so that was it! A random side quest boss battle with a fallen angel that has nothing to do with the Plot of the book! Hooray? Join us next time as we read the thrilling next chapter, in which [checks notes] Atticus talks to people!

Better Than You: 3
Did Not Do Homework: 10
The Kids These Days: 5
You Keep Using That Word: 7
Make It Easy!: 7
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 9

¹ About adjectives/adverbs. Not whether the administrator’s getting laid.

Comment [4]

I’m trying to be more on top of things but I don’t know how well that will go. I was able to get through this chapter fairly quickly because it’s actually a pretty boring chapter? There’s very little that happens here. It really is just Atticus talking to people. And I understand that not every chapter of every book is going to be a thrilling battle, but with an author this unconcerned with actual Plot it’s not encouraging.

Anyhow!

I spent most of the cab ride home muttering about thrice-cursed trickster gods, but by the end of it I was smiling in spite of myself. I wasn’t the first guy who’d been tricked by Coyote, and I wouldn’t be the last. I’d actually gotten off pretty lightly, walking away with nothing more than a flesh wound.

As stated at the end of the last sporked chapter: what is he talking about? Coyote getting the best of Atticus amounted to… lying about his motivation. And it was a pretty small lie, as far as fibs go. He didn’t really pull one over on him, he just gave him a different reason as to why he made him clean up his own mess. And yeah, maybe he didn’t save Atticus as quickly as he could have, but the fact that he saved him at all makes him a better guy than I would have been in the same situation.

The “flesh wound” comment also reminds me that any time Atticus complains about the threat of injury feels hollow, because he can heal himself! And! HE’S BASICALLY IMMUNE TO DEATH ANYWAY! It just feels very stupid for him to complain about how he was basically inconvenienced. He’s virtually unkillable, super powerful, super strong, and successful! And if that weren’t enough, he rubs it in our faces all the time! I’m having trouble sympathizing with him at all!

So he gets home, he talks to Oberon about the movie he watched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and I don’t care but in this scene Atticus tells us that Oberon is actually kind of immortal too? Sort of. There’s an anti-aging potion that Atticus drinks, and he gives some to Oberon too, so he’s actually older than Irish wolfhounds tend to be, and Oberon has no idea that he’s living longer than his allotted lifespan. And it’s a nice little thing, but it makes me wonder why Atticus apparently never shared this potion with anyone else in his life?

Anyhow the phone rings the song “Witchy Woman” because Malina’s calling and Atticus specifically got that ringtone for her. She’s been able to confirm that the evil German witches mentioned earlier are in the area, but were unable to locate exactly where. She hypothesizes why they can’t get a precise location by magic (not the same number of witches in the coven since the evil witches started killing them, and the evil witches are cloaking themselves magically). She also urges Atticus to deal with the Bacchant situation as quickly as possible.

Atticus, being Atticus, doesn’t want to do anything remotely responsible, and tries to ask if he could do it later instead of tonight. Malina explains exactly the sort of chaos that will ensue if the Bacchants use their magic to make their Bacchanalia.

Bacchanalia will spread disease. It will ruin marriages and other relationships, causing untold emotional distress and greater economic damage through divorce. It encourages a lifestyle of reckless behavior and moral turpitude, and participants often become criminals in short order.”

“That sounds like a weekend at the Phoenix Open.”

Hearne really thinks he’s funny, I guess.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 10

Malina insists that she’s not joking, that people could die, and that if Bacchants go left unchecked they could multiply. Atticus then remembers that the Bacchants were apparently already living in Vegas before trying to move to Tempe, and asks why then Vegas isn’t as Malina described, only to remember that it totally fits Malina’s description of the Bacchants’ effects to a T and retracts the question.

This meant to be a joke? It would be if it weren’t coming from such an unfunny book and an unfunny protagonist.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 11

Malina tells Atticus that the bacchants rolling into town will be at a nightclub called Satyrn. Get it? Because satyrs? I’m surprised Hearne did, considering he didn’t know much about them in Chapter 24 of the last book.

She also tells him to clean up because a nightclub is a nice establishment and he needs to look “a little less scruffy.” Atticus asks her to repeat the word ‘scruffy,’ which she does, and asks why. Atticus tells her it’s because he’s trying to learn her accent. She is understandably annoyed by this, and hangs up. Is this a joke? I don’t know.

Atticus leaves the house. On the way out, the Leprechaun sees him and asks if he saw Mary. Atticus confirms he did, and that he’ll talk to her about it after work. And so he goes to work, although he tells us that his store has an automated inventory, so whenever something gets sold a replacement is automatically ordered, and so he doesn’t actually have to do much in the store other than show up from time to time and run the apothecary. He could have his employee Perry run most of the store with no problem.

Reminder that Perry Thomas is, according to Atticus, “the cheeriest Goth kid I’ve ever met.” And as discussed before, no, that’s NOT a typo, for whatever reason Hearne thinks that ‘goth’, as in the subculture, is supposed to be capitalized. I think in the comments for the last book we decided that we’re just going to assume that he’s actually a Goth, a member of one of the tribes of Germanic peoples who fought the Roman Empire and set up kingdoms throughout Europe.

Also, have you MET any goths? There is a reason Perky Goth has a page on TV Tropes. It’s not really that uncommon.

Perry isn’t very good with mixing potions other than, say, basic tea, and doesn’t really pay attention to the herbs and can’t recognize that they’re low on something. In short, it doesn’t capture his interest at all and he has trouble working with it, so Atticus doesn’t let him sell those herbs and stuff outside of basic mixtures.

Granuaile’s in the store practicing Latin on her laptop. Atticus assures us she’s picking it up pretty quickly–they can trade basic sentences. She smiles at him when he walks in, and because he’s apparently incapable of NOT thinking about sex around Granny¹ he immediately starts trying to remember boring baseball facts to avoid getting a boner. We get a quick rundown of current customers in the store (two professors talking, a short guy asking about random occult topics), and then Granny tells her boss that three people are coming in for job interviews in the afternoon.

And then a priest and rabbi walk in and ask for the store’s owner. Atticus introduces himself as such and asks if this is a joke. They don’t get it, so he tells them, “You know, a tall priest and a short rabbi walk into a pagan bookstore,” and to be fair, that does sound like the setup for a joke. The priest even finds it a little amusing.

After they introduce themselves as Father Gregory Fletcher and Rabbi Yosef Zalman Bialik, they ask after Atticus O’Sullivan, and he replies *“You’re talkin’ to him.”

I laid on the college kid’s informality pretty thick. These fellows didn’t look right to me, and until I knew what they were after, they weren’t going to see anything but the facade I presented to the general public.

Ah yes, he’s hiding behind a college kid persona. Right after admitting he owns a New Age Bookstore. I’m sorry, how many college kids do you know that run their own stores? Not like an Etsy shop, an actual, successful, independently-owned store in a building that has an actual collection of antiques. It’s not impossible, but it’s very far from the ordinary in the US. So right off the bat, he’s putting up a front that’s suspicious and unusual.

He does have reason to be cautious though–he looks at their auras, and they’re weirdly power hungry? That’s apparently a thing you can tell from auras. Also, the rabbi looks like a magic user in Atticus’s magic vision.

Father Fletcher says he expected someone older considering his reputation, and when Atticus points out he doesn’t expect that he has a reputation among the clergy. Fletcher replies that he’s known in some circles, but when our protagonist asks what circles, he changes the subject.

And really, is that difficult to understand? As indicated by the first chapter of this book, the entire supernatural community knows where Atticus lives (something which Atticus doesn’t care about despite his “paranoia”). It is not a stretch to say that a major world religion, one which has a rite of exorcism–in a world in which demons are very real–would know of someone who had just shaken the status quo of the supernatural world.

This conversation feels very odd because Atticus clearly wants to play his cards close to his chest, which is understandable. Or at least it would be if it wasn’t an open secret. Everyone in the supernatural world already knows! All they have to do is find someone else in the community and ask about it!

Cutting to the chase, Father Fletcher asks Atticus if he was “involved in an unusual situation in the Superstition Mountains about three weeks ago,” or put plainly: were you involved in what happened at the end of the last book? Which again, everyone in the supernatural community knows about, and knows he was involved. It’s barely even a secret.

Atticus’s reply is “Nope, never been out there.” The rabbi calls him a liar, but in Russian², working under the assumption that he wouldn’t understand Russian. Of course, Atticus does, but he decides to pretend not to.

“Hey, I’m an American,” I said, “and the only language I speak is English, and not too good neither. When you speak that other stuff, it makes me think you’re sayin’ something rude about me.”

Am I wrong to read this in a Southern accent? It looks like a Southern accent to me. Which is weird, because they’re in Arizona. I suppose Arizona is in the South, but in the Southwest. Do they have Southern accents there?

Or is this just how he thinks college kids talk? I’ll give it a count just in case:

The Kids These Days: 6

Father Fletcher apologizes and then asks if he was at Skyline High School this morning, and now Atticus is worried, because no one should know about that but Coyote and Mary. He also says that it “took me to new heights of paranoia,” which is justified, but again I’m pretty sure he’s going to do nothing about this. So he denies and says he’s been in the store all day, which anyone could easily prove he wasn’t if they went snooping. C’mon man, at least make your lies convincing!

You Keep Using That Word: 8

Father Fletcher just moves on and asks to see the rare books collection, while Rabbi Yosef is standing there fuming because he knows, and we know, that he’s not telling the truth.

Onto the rare books! He does actually have legitimately rare books, including spellbooks that are old as dirt. Atticus also tells us that there are manuscripts with secrets and directions to ancient treasures and stuff? For instance, one of the books says where one might find some Aztec gold that conquistadores hid away and never made it back to.

I like knowing secrets like that, and I admit that when I’m all alone in the shop sometimes, I rub my hands together greedily and laugh like a one-eyed, black-mustached pirate to think that I have a bona fide treasure map locked up in my cabinet.

He has the location of a priceless treasure the Spanish stole from the Mexica people, and he’s just _sitting on it. _I’m not saying I want him to take the gold; what bothers me is his motivation. Atticus isn’t keeping this secret because he wants to protect the cultural heritage from colonizers, or opportunistic treasure hunters. He doesn’t keep the secret because he wants the gold for himself. It doesn’t mean anything to him! He just likes knowing something that other people don’t! He just likes something else to be smug about!

Imagine being in a writer’s group, and talking about your protagonist you tell your fellow writers, “Yeah, my protagonist has a treasure map to secret Aztec gold. He’s not telling anyone about it. He doesn’t plan to take it. He just likes to have things like that to make himself feel cooler than everyone else.”

Let’s give it a

Better Than You: 4

Hearne tells us about the book display case, which is sealed, behind bulletproof glass, and also magically protected. Father Fletcher asks about the books, and Atticus says the section’s not for browsing, that none of the antique books were for sale–though he tells the audience that he sells one at an auction once a year, which again, these things could easily be traced if these guys are that interested, why are you telling a lie that can easily be uncovered?

You Keep Using That Word: 9

Atticus gets between them and the door when they’re about to leave and asks why they’re here.

“Why did you come here today, gentlemen?” I said, a challenge in my tone.

Yeah, that doesn’t clash with the early tone/accent you did earlier, does it? And Atticus admits this, but doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue. Because a coherent cover isn’t something Atticus thinks is worth building?

For whatever reason the priest starts stammering, because apparently he didn’t actually consider what would happen if the person he was interrogating about the supernatural started acting wary around him? The rabbi shoots back in English that they don’t have to tell Atticus jack because he hasn’t been honest with them. Atticus replies that they’ve been acting sketch since they arrived, and he doesn’t even know that they’re truly clergymen. Their reaction to that comment makes Atticus think that they are, because they never seemed to even consider the idea of faking being a priest and rabbi.

So Father Fletcher apologizes and says that the two of them represent a group that is interested in Atticus. Rabbi Yosef gets annoyed and they leave.

They clearly knew more about me than I knew about them, and that’s an extremely uncomfortable feeling for an old Druid.

ALL THE GODS KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!!!!

Anyhow after they leave, it’s time for job interviews! There are two guys and a girl. Take a guess which ones are dismissed in a few sentences without dialogue and which gets a long character description and a conversation.

Go on, guess.

…if you guessed the female candidate, you win! After all, it’s not like Hearne is ever going to pass up an opportunity to talk about how HAWT a woman is.

If you guessed the two male candidates, you’re clearly not paying attention.

The first two candidates were semi-sentient boys who stared at me with their mouths open whenever I was talking. Their eyes were dead and never lit up until I asked them if they liked video games. They’d probably have difficulty alphabetizing.

Better Than You: 5

See, Atticus isn’t like other young men, who play video games and are so stupid that they can’t even figure out the alphabet! Atticus is much cleverer and cooler and smarter than the average man!

I mean, look at this! This is what Hearne thinks of a large chunk of his audience. Are you a young man who likes video games? Well, sorry. According to Hearne, you’re an idiot. You have no critical thinking skills. You can’t understand basic conversations. You can’t even read. You’re barely even alive, if “semi-sentient” is anything to go by.

I am not, in theory, against the idea of going through job candidates and dismissing them because they’re dumb. Have you ever heard of the webcomic Sufficiently Remarkable? There’s a similar scene in which Riti is interviewing potential boyfriends for her roommate, and it has a similar result–she meets several guys who are just terrible and dismisses them out of hand. But given everything before it, like the stupid guys the Morrigan kills in Chapter 2 of the first book I get the impression that, once again, this is just Hearne putting himself up on a pedestal again and showing how his self-insert is a much better man than those other men who are so stupid they can’t read.

And it’s not like Hearne is any better in his portrayal of female characters! The third candidate, who is hired on the spot, is Rebecca Dane, a HAWT blonde who gets a full description for her looks and outfit because, really, what else would you expect from this book? Hearne likes describing attractive women. I’m not typing out that description because I have better things to do than copy out his fetishes.

She also has a necklace of religious symbols for “practically every known world religion.” Atticus asks about it, and she replies that she’s “kind of checking out the whole buffet” and I hate this? I mean, it actually fits fine with the worldbuilding of the series, but Rebecca doesn’t know that. I am of the opinion that religion, any religion, is something to be taken seriously, because it’s making fundamental claims about the nature of the universe. Skipping through belief systems whenever you feel like it is something I think of the same way someone might view a person who hops back and forth between political parties. You’re not wise, you’re just an indecisive fool.

Well that impresses Atticus because he’s a bigger fool, and she knows some stuff about herbs so he hires her on the spot, promising to double her starting salary if she learns to work the apothecary in store.

After that Atticus talks with Granny for a while, and then the two of them go back to his neighborhood to talk to the Leprechaun. They tell her Granny’s training to become a Druid, and the Leprechaun is surprised because she assumed that she “raised a proper Catholic girl” and what? Why would she think that? It’s not like she met Granny in church or seen her wearing a crucifix. I guess because of Irish stereotypes, the Leprechauns saw a young redhead and assumed she was Irish Catholic?

[shrugs] I dunno.

Granny’s answer is dumb too, because she says as a philosophy major, she feels like there are no certain answers or something. I don’t care. The two of them go back to Atticus’s house, and while Granny hangs out with Oberon, Atticus tries calling his vampire lawyer Leif. Leif picks up asking if Atticus is willing to go kill Thor now, and when Atticus still says ‘no’ Leif hangs up. Granny asks if there’s a way to apologize.

“Well, no, it’s not like I can send him a box of chocolates. I have scruples about sending him people for dinner.

You have no scruples about helping him figure out how to approach his prey more easily though, given the first chapter? The line here makes it sound like Atticus doesn’t like the idea of Leif killing people for blood, but it’s not like he does anything to stop it. He might as well, at this point.

Anyhow Laksha calls to say she arrived at the airport and needs to be picked up. So Atticus puts on his sword and hops in the car with Granny. That’s how we end this chapter.

¹ Man, I just realized that without the context that ‘Granny’ is short for ‘Granuaile,’ this sentence sounds very strange.

² “On ne gavarit pravdu,” which is translated by Hearne as “He is not telling the truth.” If I plug the English phrase into Google Translate, I get the same result, but I don’t know any Russian-speakers who could double check this for me. I would not be surprised if it was done only with Google Translate.

Better Than You: 5
Did Not Do Homework: 10
The Kids These Days: 6
You Keep Using That Word: 9
Make It Easy!: 7
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 11

Comment [9]

Yo-ho, yo-ho, a happy Lent for me. Does reading this count as penance?

Do you remember how I was like, “Hearne is not kind to the average man in these books?” In case you had any doubts it’s not like these books express a great view of women either, as Chapter 11 starts like this:

The tendency of modern American women to exclaim “Hiiiiiiiiiiii!” in soprano octaves and hug each other upon sight can be disconcerting to those unfamiliar with it. Laksha was definitely unfamiliar with it, judging by the widening of her eyes and the stiffness of her limbs when Granuaile assaulted her with effusive greetings.

This sounds like a Boomer comedian complaining about his wife.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 12

For the record, I neither know nor care if I got the correct number of ‘i’s in that ‘Hiiiiiii!’. Probably not. Moving on.

Reminder if you don’t remember, didn’t read the last sporking, or don’t care: Laksha is an Indian witch who previously made herself immortal by body jumping. She last lived in Granuaile’s head, where they mostly got along. She popped in at the end of the last book as someone who just so happened to be qualified to deal with the leader of the evil witches, and because Atticus hates women I mean witches he tells her to buzz off after she does her assigned Plot role. She agrees to pick a body in a coma that’s unlikely to recover to possess (and just so happens to be hawt), Atticus hands her thirty thousand dollars, and she’s gone.

Earlier in this book, Atticus called her in to deal with the Bacchants because they’re immune to iron weapons so his magic cut-anything-sword won’t be effective, and they have pheromones which can mess with people’s minds, so he’s not thrilled about facing them himself. Considering he’s super-strong, can control plants, earth, and winds, and can make potions like no one’s business, you’d think he’d come up with a creative solution, but Hearne Atticus isn’t that clever at dealing with problems other than ‘hit it.’

Granny apologizes when she sees how uncomfortable Laksha is, and explains that this is supposedly a thing American women do when they haven’t seen each other in a while. Laksha points out that they last saw each other last week. So Granny tries that she’s been so far away (North Carolina), and so Laksha suggests that “distance must be taken into account” when doing greetings, and Granny uncertainly agrees.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 13

…Laksha previously lived in Granny’s head. This kind of behavior shouldn’t be a surprise. The whole ‘This is how we Americans do it!’ thing shouldn’t be that big of a surprise.

Also! Might as well give it a

The Kids These Days: 7

Atticus greets her, and if you thought that we wouldn’t get a detailed description of a gorgeous young woman, then you clearly haven’t learned how these books work. She’s also excited that since no one was using the body, it apparently has no effect on her karma. The body is still wounded (hence the coma) but she explains that she can still use the body and possibly heal the injury with her magic over time.

Also her host body was married? Laksha explains that her husband has been given no notification that she was leaving. She thinks that will make him mad but she’s already planning to divorce him (after a week) because she’s already done a background check on him and found out he was cheating on her, because of course a man with a wife in a coma is unfaithful, that’s how Hearne thinks men are.

Man, you just hold everyone in contempt, don’t you Kevin?

And hey, it’s really convenient that you have a quick reason to write out a marriage that might make things difficult for our character down the line, isn’t it? That within a week there’s a legitimate reason to get Laksha out of this sticky situation so she has no reason not to appear in further installments?

Make It Easy!: 8

Also to bring up a thing that bugs me, not just about Iron Druid but about a lot of fiction (and so I’m not taking another ‘Make It Easy’ point): does Laksha’s host not have family or friends? Other than her husband? And from what I’ve seen of the Indian-American community, that’s pretty weird. It also appears that Granuaile, despite explicitly being shown to be pretty outgoing and consistently described as hawt has apparently no friends other than Atticus. I have more friends than Granny or Laksha’s host does, and I am not a particularly outgoing person.

Fictional characters, as a general rule, have remarkably small social circles. And I understand why, don’t get me wrong–it’s a lot easier to juggle a smaller set of characters than to have to write about dozens of someone’s friends and acquaintances all the time. For television examples it’s also a matter of limited screen time and not having to hire a bunch of actors for bit parts. So I get it but it still bugs me because even if Laksha dumps her host’s husband, there’s no reason to think that her host doesn’t have any other familial attachments or friends back in North Carolina that are also going to wonder what’s going on.

As a side note, Atticus himself starts the story with an astonishingly large social circle for a fictional character–there’s his lawyers who he hangs out with from time to time, their entire wolfpack who he mostly gets along with, his elderly neighbor he helps in the lawn sometimes, Perry the Goth, he hits on the bartender in his favorite bar… I mean, yeah, he and his supporting cast are far from well-written, but they’re there and I’m kind of impressed that Hearne managed to get that many characters into the story. Points for that.

Anyhow they go to a restaurant called Los Olivos (which is a real place, by the way) and after chillaxing for a bit Laksha asks what it is that Atticus wants, and he replies that he wants “the Bacchants out of town.” Laksha is surprised that he wants to do “the humanitarian option” (instead of just killing them) and asks if he thinks she has the kind of power to make them go away.

“I hoped you would at least consider it seriously instead of laughing at it.”

“Mr. Chamkanni said much the same thing in bed the first night home from the hospital!”

Granuaile nearly spat out what she was chewing and slapped the table repeatedly as she struggled to control her mirth. I steepled my fingers over my plate, elbows on the table, and waited patiently for them to wind down.

I mean, that is precisely the kind of humor that Hearne/Atticus goes for so I don’t get why he’s put in the role of ‘mature adult’ in this bit of dialogue. But okay.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 14

After calming down Laksha explains that she’s not a witch who specializes in mind control, she’s much better at killing people. And Atticus admits that’s why he brought her here, and I’m wondering why he even mentioned the possibility of not killing them. Granny, however, acts very surprised at the idea that Atticus wants to kill the Bacchants, and strongly disapproves, calling it murder. Laksha adds that it would be very bad karma. Atticus has a brief aside to the audience claiming that he still sticks to his Iron Age Celtic cultural values, and I’m sorry this is all horses***.

Look, we know that Atticus doesn’t stick to ancient Iron Age values or ideals. He’s constantly talking and acting like a modern frat boy. So this idea that he’s got the mindset of a man from a much earlier era? I don’t buy it. I don’t see how anyone who has read the story up until this point could believe it. It’s nonsense. I think it’s a way to handwave whenever Atticus decides to do something dickish.

Furthermore–Granny has seen Atticus kill before. The resolution of the last book involved Atticus, his werewolf buddies, and Laksha killing a bunch of witches! They were a lot more human than the Bacchants he’s about to face in this book. Atticus even beheads Emilya and plans to send it to Malina as a warning. Why would Granny be wound up about this situation but not that one which she was a witness to?

This discussion also explains a bit more about how Bacchants work. Atticus says they’re not really human anymore, that they’re “more like walking disease vectors, spreading madness” and that they don’t have any way to go back to normal. Granny argues that makes them victims, but Atticus says there’s no way to cure them, and they’re nearly unstoppable, and goes on to compare them to zombies from the movies–either take them out, or the contagion spreads.

Granny points out that they’re not zombies, so there should be a better way to contain them. And Atticus’s says they can’t be put in prison, because police wouldn’t be able to resist the frenzy they spread. When asked if his own magic can do anything, Atticus explains that his magic is based on the Earth, and the Bacchants tend to stay in artificial environments, that he himself is susceptible to the spell Bacchants spread, and that he doesn’t have a way of curing them.

The final question Granny asks is why can’t Atticus talk to Bacchus, or Bacchus’s boss Jupiter, as he talks to Irish gods all the time.

“Bacchus is the Roman god of the vine, and the Romans hated Druids like no one else. They and the Christians killed us all, actually, yours truly excepted, and they would have gotten me too if it weren’t for the Morrigan….So I think Bacchus would roast me on a spit before he’d have three words’ conference with me. And if he thought I even existed, much less got myself involved in killing his Bacchants tonight, he might decide to show up personally.”

Some points:

ONE: Again, historically speaking, there’s not really any evidence that there was a Christian campaign to kill all the druids, despite what this book and the “Wrath of the Druids” expansion of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla would tell you. But yes, actually, the Romans very much hated the druids of the Celtic lands they conquered and did their best to wipe them out. The reason being that they were the learned class, and the ones in charge, so they naturally were the ones who organized resistance to Roman conquest and rule. Of course the Romans saw them as a threat and had them eliminated.

TWO: This is actually the best I can remember there being any explanation as to how Atticus survived the genocide of Druids–the Morrigan helped him. Guess it’s handy when the goddess of war has a crush on you. But again I ask HOW the Romans and Christians managed to wipe out an order of magic users who have as many powers as Druids do in this universe. I suppose that it takes a while to train new Druids, given what Atticus has explained to Granny, but they’re apparently warriors, can heal themselves, good at potions, can control earth and plants, and can make alliances with nature spirits. It’s implied Atticus is a better Druid than most, but they should still all be formidable opponents. We have heard of no Roman or Christian magical equivalent that could match them.

THREE: …why would Bacchus care? The reason the Romans killed the druids was because they led resistance to the Romans. Essentially, they’re holding out against imperialism. Why the fudge would Bacchus care? The expansion of Roman power was not really his wheelhouse. He was the god of parties and revelry. As we see in this book his followers are more interested in spreading a massive unstoppable party than anything else. He wasn’t really a Roman military god who would have reason to kill Druids. And even if he was it’s not like the Roman military is trying to conquer the world right now. I suppose it’s possible that there’s a rule Jupiter laid down and Bacchus would have to follow it because them’s The Rules, but it seems kind of weak.

FOUR: What do Atticus mean “if he thought I even existed”? We established at the beginning of this book that the gods all know where he lives. It doesn’t say that the Roman gods do, but the Greeks do, as do several other pantheons who send representatives and messages to his house. Chapter 1 explains that his killing of Bres and Aenghus Og has been front-page news in the divine community. All evidence points to the idea that the Roman gods either already know or have the means to know that Atticus is alive and kicking.

Granny seems very surprised that they’re even suggesting killing someone for payment, and I’m reminded of this bit from the American Gods show:

Wednesday: What are you so pissed off about?

Shadow: You just cut off your friend’s head! And now you’re getting a suit made like you’re the goddamn Godfather?!

Nancy: Who the fuck did you think he was?!

Did she not realize the kind of business she was getting into? Again, she was involved in the end of the last book and saw the kinds of things Atticus did to his enemies. This should not be news to her. Atticus insists again that killing Bacchants is basically the same as killing zombies.

“But zombies are already dead and they want to eat your brains. Bacchants are living people and they just want to have drunk sex on the dance floor. That’s a significant difference. Make love not war, you know?”

It’s also very frustrating, because he could easily use a simple argument by pointing out what happened to Orpheus. Instead (in a paragraph summarizes his talking instead of dialogue) he gives Malina’s explanation about the chaos they will cause, as well as “the Druidic belief that the soul never dies” and so by killing them, he is actually freeing their souls from slaver! So it’s fine, right? Granny isn’t happy with this, but it does shut her up.

BTW, the “killing them is actually good for their souls” sounds an awful lot like what you’d see coming out of the mouth of a fanatical religious fundamentalist character.

Anyhow Laksha brings the conversation around to payment, and specifies that she doesn’t want money, she wants something else in return. Particularly, she wants some of the golden apples of Idunn. Which would, of course, require a trip to Asgard.

[For those not in the know, in Norse mythology the gods aren’t actually ageless, but with the apples of the goddess Idunn, they are able to stay young.]

Atticus is, quite reasonably, against this. He explains to Granny that the reason Laksha needs Atticus to do this is because “Druids can walk the planes”—jot that down as another superpower he has, I guess–and also insists with Laksha that Granny is not a part of this deal, which Laksha agrees to. He points out that this isn’t a fair deal either–Laksha can kill the Bacchants without making too many enemies, as Bacchus apparently won’t care too much. But if Atticus breaks into Asgard to steal the golden apples, then he makes an enemy of all the Aesir, including Thor.

Laksha smiled conspiratorially and leaned forward. “You know what Baba Yaga calls Thor?”

I leaned forward. “I don’t care. You’re missing the point.”

“Granuaile leaned forward. “You’ve met Baba Yaga?”

“She calls him that muscle-cocked goat-fucker!” Laksha slapped the table, leaned back, and laughed heartily while we stared at her bemusedly.

…another one.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 15

Also Granny is apparently struggling with learning that Baba Yaga is a real person in this setting, and I don’t know why considering what we know of the mythological world. How is this harder than, say, Thor or the Morrigan? Atticus also takes this comment as Baba Yaga being “familiar with Thor’s intimate life” but that’s not what’s being said here? It’s just an insult. I don’t think anyone’s actually suggesting that this version of Thor likes his goats that much. At least I hope not.

Maybe I should have started a count for every time someone talks smack about Thor.

Atticus asks her why she wants the golden apples anyway. Because while she doesn’t want to go on changing bodies every few decades to survive, there are other ways to achieve immortality or eternal youth. He suggests the brew of Goibhniu for immortality, as getting a favor from the Irish gods would be much easier. But Laksha refuses because it’s something that she would have to keep taking over time. With the apples, she’s hoping to take the seeds and grow her own trees, and therefore not have to worry about relying on someone else for immortality. Atticus warns her that the soil chemistry is different on Asgard or something? So they won’t grow on Earth? I guess? Laksha dismisses this concern and says she’s willing to give it a try anyway.

The temptation to get up and walk away nearly overwhelmed me: This wasn’t my fight. It was Malina’s. And if her coven couldn’t hack it, then Leif could tear them apart, or Magnusson would sic his boys on them once they screwed enough of his clients. I hadn’t lived for 2,100 years by volunteering to take point in every magical scrap in my neighborhood.

I’m going to give this a

You Keep Using That Word: 10

Because yes, Atticus, this is definitely your fight. And he does eventually admit it, but not for actually good reasons.

Hostile magical beings with a chaotic effect on the people around them are going to move into his neighborhood and he’s seriously trying to tell the audience that this isn’t his problem. To be fair, he does suggest leaving town, but he points out that there’s that land around Tony’s Cabin that got blighted by Aenghus Og at the end of the last book, and he still has to take care of that. You know, what he says is his sacred duty as a Druid? And he still hasn’t gotten around to it yet? Yeah that, he hasn’t gotten to it. He says “Its very existence nagged at me; I felt it through the tattoos binding me to the earth. It was like a necrotic wound on the back of one’s hand” yadda yadda, which is an interesting idea, but this is the first we’re hearing of it. If he’d been bothered by it the entire book so far, I’d think it more interesting here, but it’s right the fudge out of nowhere. And if it actually physically bothers him so much, you’d think he’d have gotten right to it instead of buying a poodle harem for his dog.

If he really was paranoid, he would have taken care of the blighted land as soon as it became a problem and have already made a plan to deal with the Bacchants. Instead, he’d prefer to continue about his day and jack off, I guess.

Also given that someone else will apparently handle the Bacchants, regardless:

Make It Easy!: 9

Yeah, really making me feel the urgency of this Plot, Hearne.

This lengthy introspection also has a couple of acknowledgements that Atticus has refused to make until this point: one, that Malina and her coven don’t wish him harm, and so they’re a better alternative than the evil witches targeting both of them, and two, that since killing Aenghus Og apparently a large part of the supernatural community knows where he lives. Enough that the priest and rabbi from the last chapter know who he is and where he works. If the supernatural players decide to come for him, better to stay where he’s built some power. At least, that’s his reasoning.

Atticus asks Laksha if his vampire lawyer put her up to this, to give him another reason to go after Thor, because he really, really hates Thor, but Laksha says no, and points out that everyone in the supernatural world hates Thor in this setting.

So he tries to bargain for stealing a single apple, as to try to not get the least attention from the Aesir as possible. Idunn carries the apples in a basket, so getting one is hard enough. More than one? It’s going to be noticed. And if she wants to grow a tree, wouldn’t a seed be enough? But nope, Laksha, having more forethought than most characters in this book, says she wants several apples and seeds, in case it takes more than one try to grow a tree.

The deal is eventually struck, Laksha agrees to kill twelve Bacchants that very night in exchange for the golden apples of immortality before New Year’s.

It’s late autumn now, in the book, I think? So that’s not actually that long.

And we end with this:

We shook hands on it while Granuaile shook her head in wonder. “I’ve listened in on some pretty weird conversations while tending bar,” she said, “but I think this is the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard.”

There is no way that’s the case. That’s not the weirdest conversation Granny has been a part of in this series, and it’s only a third of the way into the second book. I would have thought finding out there’s a witch’s ghost living in her head would have been weirder, and the conversations with Atticus about Druidry would be stranger still. Remember that bit where she signed up to get tattoos through thorns?

Join us next time, as we actually deal with the Bacchants, and then move on from this little sidequest.

Better Than You: 5
Did Not Do Homework: 10
The Kids These Days: 7
You Keep Using That Word: 10
Make It Easy!: 9
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 15

Comment [3]

Alright listen up, buckos, it’s time for a public service announcement.

I read books. I read a lot of books. And over the past month or so, two of the books I’ve read have this quote (or some variation thereof) in them, and I know that they’re not the only ones. It goes something like this:

Dante tells us that the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those that preserve neutrality in times of great moral crisis.

Or this:

This is, of course, meant to be a reference to Inferno, the only part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy that anyone seems to be aware of. If you’re not aware, The Divine Comedy is a long narrative poem from the Middle Ages, in which the poet, Dante Alighieri, finds himself going on a journey through the three realms of the afterlife according to Catholic belief: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. It’s got loads of references to history, classical mythology, medieval folklore, and the people the author knew from home.¹

There is a not-baseless argument that it’s self-insert fanfiction. Dante is guided by his favorite author (Virgil) and his childhood crush (Beatrice). It’s wild.

I want to slide in a disclaimer here while I’m at it: The Divine Comedy is not dogma. Despite whatever pop culture tells you, there is no Catholic theologian, or theologian from any major denomination, who takes this text as an accurate depiction of the afterlife. This is not canon. It IS very popular with Christian theologian and historian types, but it’s not canon.

Anyhow, with Inferno, the part that people actually know about because that’s the kind of world we live in, there are nine circles in Hell, and each one is dedicated to punishing a different kind of sin or shortcoming. And many times within those circles there are subdivisions and such. But you know what sin very noticeably doesn’t get its own section of Hell? The people who don’t take sides in moral crises.

This quote wasn’t said or written by Dante Alighieri in any record that survives today. It is not a paraphrase of a quote from Inferno. It is not a summation of part of or an idea presented in the text.

There is a section of Inferno that deals with those that stay neutral in conflicts: it’s at the very beginning. Because those that didn’t take sides aren’t even in Hell, they’re running around outside, along with the angels who didn’t take sides in the War in Heaven, being chased by stinging insects while they try to pursue an ever-shifting banner. Dante clearly didn’t have a high opinion of them, because he thinks them so unworthy that even Hell doesn’t want them.

They are certainly in a horrible place. But the hottest place in Hell? Not by a longshot. They’re not in Hell, and it’s not particularly hot by comparison to the people suffering for heresy. The idea of the worst punishments in Hell being a certain intensity of fire kind of misses the point Dante’s going for. The deepest circle of Hell is actually a frozen lake. And as Jack Sparrow points out in Curse of the Black Pearl, it’s reserved for traitors. [2]

Now this quote, about “The hottest places in Hell” was written or recorded, in fact, by Henry Powell Spring in the 1940’s. At least, according to Wikiquote. The point is, Dante didn’t say or write it. For whatever reason the quote was attributed to Dante even then, and then John F. Kennedy started using it in speeches while claiming that Dante said it.³ And from there it picked up, until you see it all over the place, from Letters to a Young Contrarian to lame Facebook meme posts.

Basically, we have a bunch of would-be intellectuals claiming they’re quoting a famous philosophical text, or a renowned medieval writer, all the while proving that they clearly haven’t read the work they think they’re referring to.

Figures.

Part of why this bugs me is because it’s a quote that’s so ingrained in popular consciousness that it’s trotted out all the time. One of the comics I read recently was a tie-in to Assassin’s Creed in which it’s a plot point that one of the characters has read The Divine Comedy, and the way it’s proven is that he recites this quote. Which again, proves that the character, the author, and the editors aren’t as familiar with the text as they want you to think. It comes up over and over again, even though it’s made up!

And what makes this worse is that you don’t even have to know that much about Inferno to know it’s a false quote! We see the fate of those who didn’t take sides in moral crises–it’s in the beginning of the book, as the journey is getting started. You didn’t need to read far into the book to see that it’s wrong. Heck, if you looked up the book on Wikipedia you’d know that it’s nonsense. But all of these authors, speakers, and meme makers couldn’t be bothered to read even a basic summary of the book, to ask someone who’d actually read it, what it said on the topic.

So dear reader, I pass this charge to you: if you see someone say or spread this quote, you need to hit this person. Preferably with a copy of The Divine Comedy, but if you don’t have that on hand (regrettable, but understandable), use whatever you have. Not hard enough to do any permanent damage, because we want this problem fixed, but hit hard enough to get the point across.

This error must absolutely be stamped out. Do not hesitate. Show no second thoughts. Just HIT the darn person in question, because it proves that–in that instant at least–the person using the fake quote is being an ignorant nincompoop trying to look smarter than he or she is.

This has been a public service announcement from your grumpy Internet English major.

¹ Something I don’t think is talked about enough is that Dante totally put people he knew in certain parts of Hell for their sins. People who weren’t dead yet when he wrote the poem. Think about that for a second.

² I’m still absolutely flummoxed that Pirates of the Caribbean of all things did a Divine Comedy reference correctly when so many others can’t.

³ Yes, the sad fact is that here in America, our presidents and politicians have been spouting nonsense for decades. It’s a recurring problem.

Comment [7]

I’m so sorry that this is late; I meant to have this chapter sporked a couple of months ago, and never got around to it. I should being doing better, considering that there’s really not much else going on the site.

So I have a thesis, in-progress, that this book’s quality is better than the last one? That’s a low bar, I realize, but it’s something. I’ll talk about it more when we get to the end, but it is mildly more competent in writing style than Hounded was.

Are you ready for Atticus to finally face these Bacchants? No? Well deal with it.

So how do we start this chapter?

People who don’t live in Scottsdale like to sneer derisively and call it “Snotsdale.” People who do live there tend to call everyone else “jealous.” Both groups have a point.

You know, I talk a lot about the impression I think we’re supposed to get from Atticus, and how that falls flat. Right now I’m thinking that he’s supposed to sound like an urban fantasy Michael Weston. From Burn Notice? If you’re not familiar, it’s a television show about a spy who has been fired (“burned”) and goes around helping people in Miami with his intelligence skills and know-how. He narrates the story by giving facts about espionage, about Miami, about how to avoid getting shot, and that kind of thing, all with a snarky tone of voice.

Atticus thinks he’s that clever.

So after a while of explaining that Scottsdale is THE nice upscale neighborhood in the area, he tells us that the night club the Bacchants are hanging out in, Saturn, is there. Before heading there, he and Laksha send home Granny before driving to Target to buy baseball bats. If you’ve forgotten, the Bacchants are immune to iron weapons, so the weapon they come up with is wooden baseball bats. They’re not bad weapons, but they’re not great ones either. A sharpened stake should work just fine too. And Atticus has control of plants and wind–he should be able to use those elemental powers to easily overpower an opponent.

Then again, Hearne probably just wants to have his protagonist beat the snot out of someone with a bat. And I get that urge, I suppose. But it’s still silly.

We’re explicitly told that the cashier gives them a look, because they are buying baseball bats and Atticus is wearing a sword on him, without bothering to use magic to cloak it. He says that security didn’t realize he was carrying a weapon until he was checking out at the cashier, which is stupid–it’s hard to hide a sword strapped to your back. Security escorts him to the store’s exit.

Yeah, real paranoid, this guy. Have you ever been so paranoid you blatantly showed everyone you’re packing a weapon, even when you could easily hide it?

You Keep Using That Word: 11

Atticus and Laksha convince their taxi driver that their martial arts enthusiasts that are in town for a convention? And so they’re going to a club? Even if the taxi driver bought that they were martial artists, and that’s why they have a sword (which is somewhat believable), I don’t think he’d believe the story when they say they want to go to a nightclub with that sword. The only comment it draws is that when the driver drops them off, he tells them they won’t let him inside with a sword, which Atticus waves off.

Also when they tell him they’re martial artists, his reply is this? Not even conveyed in dialogue.

Said he was going to be a ninja once, but things didn’t work out the way he planned.

Look, this is actually more amusing than 90% of the stupid jokes out of named characters’ mouths, and it’s a throwaway line that Hearne clearly didn’t care about. But I wanted to share it with you. No, it’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s amusing.

At the club, Atticus notes that they don’t have a bouncer at the door, and that music is coming from inside. He asks Laksha if she needs to do any weird magic preparations before entering, and she denies it more than once. Atticus doesn’t feel comfortable going in, and the following discussion reveals why Laksha is immune to the Bacchants’ magic: she has complete control of her body. Because of that, she’s immune to their pheromones.

The way Laksha describes it, saying she’s in complete control of her nervous system, hormones, reactions to pheromones and other stimuli, uh… makes me think that Laksha should be acting more like Spock and less like, well, a Hearne character. Not that she’s particularly emotional, but we see scenes in which she finds things uncontrollably hilarious, she’s seemingly very fond of sex, and seems to get a kick out of making people feel uncomfortable. If she is in complete control of her body and nervous system, and she doesn’t feel things unless she wants to, I’d expect that to be very toned down?

[I thought that the last book mentioned that Laksha was in complete control of her body too, but I can’t find a mention of it in my quick glances of the last few sporking chapters.]

Atticus is also pleased to have his suspicions confirmed that the Bacchants use magic through pheromones, but I wonder why this was here? Why would this be his theory he holds earlier in the book if another character just confirms it and we move on? It’s narratively lazy. I suppose Laksha doesn’t technically confirm, she just assumes so, given what she knows of their magic, but I don’t get why it’s not just established from the get-go that pheromones are what they use.

Because Atticus is clearly NOT in control of himself at the best of times, he thinks entering the club might be dangerous. Laksha insists that he at least come inside and look around, and she’ll kick him out if when he loses control.

I will escort you out once you begin touching yourself.”

“What? Hey, don’t let it go that far. That’s not right.”

Look, considering Atticus, it won’t take long to get that far.

They leave the bats outside on Laksha’s advice, because the Bacchants would consider them threatening. Not the sword though. Which doesn’t make sense. Because yes, the sword can’t hurt them, because they’re immune to iron weapons, but it’s still a weapon. They’d recognize it as something someone intends to use to harm someone else.

They go into the club, and we get a description of the inside area and I don’t care to relate it all to you, especially since so little time is spent in it. It’s a fancy nightclub and a bar. I don’t know if this is based off of a real place that Hearne just described for the novel, but I can’t find a record of it as I type this sporking, so maybe it’s just out of his imagination.

So because of the Bacchants’ magic, everyone in the club is one the floor having sex. We don’t get a detailed description, only that it’s going on and that Atticus is trying to fill his head with facts about baseball to crowd out the intrusive thoughts about sex.

Laksha explains that she’s worried her body will be vulnerable as she performs her magic. She plans to go into a sort of meditative state, during which she’ll use magic to kill the Bacchants as agreed. Atticus assumes she’s going to do something like push their souls out of their bodies, but she explains that she’s going to just shut off their hypothalamuses (hypothalami?) one by one.¹ Which is crazy and creepy? Atticus doesn’t really react to this, despite constantly saying how sketch witchcraft is.

Her body will have no protection while she does this, and while she’s talking a man bewitched by the Bacchants tries to grope her. Laksha stomps on his foot and hits him in the head, knocking him out.

While observing one of the Bacchants, Atticus gets distracted, and starts making out with someone until Laksha slaps him. Exasperated, Laksha sends him outside because “he’s already useless.”

Which is how I summarize the character in general.

She has him outside the door, and tells him to stay further out so he’s not tempted to walk back in. Atticus gets his baseball bats, feeling awkward about standing in a parking lot holding two baseball bats and holding a sword, reflecting that he looks really suspicious. Which makes me wonder why he brought the sword at all.

And then two police officers roll up. Atticus feels really stupid now, because he looks VERY suspicious.

I should have learned my lesson back at Target, but I’d been too focused on accomplishing the night’s objective to worry about doing it surreptitiously.

I know, right? It’s almost like instead of being paranoid, his default state is that he didn’t think this through at all.

You Keep Using That Word: 12

Atticus tries to say that he’s waiting for a friend. This doesn’t go over well.

“With a sword and a couple of bats? You sure it’s a friend you’re waiting for?”

Random side characters in this chapter have got it going on with random quips, huh?

Atticus uses magic to hide the sword, acting like he never had one to begin with, which doesn’t work very well after the cops have already seen it. They ask him to put down the potential weapons and show identification. Instead of doing that, he magically makes his bats disappear, leading them to demand ID again. And so Atticus turns himself invisible.

What’s messed up is that Atticus KNOWS that they wouldn’t just leave after that, so he’s intentionally screwing with them while saying he “was trying to be one of the good guys here.” That’s not what this looks like, man! I know that cops are not popular these days, for fairly understandable reasons, but he’s basically screwing around with two bystander guys near a dangerous situation, and they have no idea what’s going on. They are armed officers of the law, but they’re not equipped to deal with this situation. They could easily get slaughtered (and spoiler alert, that’s exactly what happens).

If Atticus was anything like a sympathetic character, he’d be doing his best to get these guys out of here. Either by talking them out of this, or by leading them someplace else. Instead, he just… messes with them, and hopes that’s enough. He’s really acting as if he thought this would get them to leave him alone, which is not what a reasonable person would assume.

Also this:

There were times in my past when I probably deserved to be harassed, but this wasn’t one of them.

Let me fix this for you, Atticus:

There were times in my past when I probably deserved to be harassed but this wasn’t one of them.

There we go.

Because he straight-up disappeared, the cops come to the conclusion that the dangerous-looking suspicious man might have gone into the nightclub nearby, and that would be bad, so they want to go in and investigate. You know, the exact opposite of what Atticus was trying to do, but what anyone thinking about the situation would think would be happening.

Deciding this would be bad, Atticus tries to prevent them from it. Using the vaguely-defined “binding” power that Druids have, he binds them together, but in a way that it makes one of them slap the other across the face. The two police officers then start having a slap fight? Because yeah, this is what the story needs now, right?

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 16

This erupts into fists, and one cop actually pops another in the nose, and they get serious, rolling around on the pavement beating each other and bleeding, and WHAT THE FUDGE IS GOING ON HEARNE?

Given Chapter 16 of the last book I think Hearne assumes that cops are all ready to go homicidal at the drop of a hat? And yeah, sadly, looking at some headlines, it’s a problem we’ve had to deal with, but that doesn’t make it good writing! Especially since Atticus is sitting here giggling to himself while watching! Well, not giggling, but he does comment about how they’re insulting each other after the violence.

…they were content to lie there bleeding, sling various anatomical epithets at each other, and accuse their mothers of sexual adventures with farm animals. Good times.

YOU DID THIS TO THEM!

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 17

The cops get up and decide they’re going to blame the crazy guy with bats for their injuries. As they get in the car, Atticus hears screams from the club and Laksha exits with a crowd of people, running out of the club while screaming. Atticus, currently magically cloaked, gets her attention, and they talk.

Laksha explains that she killed twelve Bacchants as they agreed. Atticus wonders why everyone is panicking then, and the witch explains that it’s because there are three more homicidal Bacchants in the club killing people.

“Well, why didn’t you kill them too?” I asked.

“Because we agreed on twelve.”

“I’ll be sure not to fetch you any extra apples, then.

Wow, Atticus, it’s almost like you, a man who constantly tells the reader that witches are sketch and untrustworthy, should definitely see it coming when a witch does something sketch and untrustworthy. You would think a really paranoid immortal would think about details in binding agreements like that, and would stop constantly putting trust in people he tells everyone not to trust!

You Keep Using That Word: 13

We get to see a Bacchant walk out of the club, grab some rando woman, and chuck her across the parking lot. Atticus laments that Granny isn’t here to see it, because then she’d understand that the Bacchants aren’t victims. Also a woman just got murdered, but Atticus only kind of cares about that. I mean, he criticizes that Laksha laughs over this, as if this makes her a sociopath, but Atticus was just sort of amused as he watched two cops beating the snot out of each other, and he’s not exactly perturbed by this death either.

Also now that the Bacchants are in murder mode, they don’t release sex pheromones, I guess? Makes it handy. I’m debating whether or not to slip a ‘Make it Easy!’ count in there.

Ah, screw it, I don’t use these counts enough.

Make It Easy!: 10

So he concludes that Laksha has done all she’s gonna, camouflaged Atticus takes out one Bacchant by knocking her down and beating her skull with the bat. He makes a point of wondering who she was before she became a mad servant of Bacchus, if she was a normal young woman, and this would hold more weight if anything else was taken seriously in the story. Look, sometimes Hearne tries to drop heavy ideas on us and act as if he’s taking these characters and ideas seriously, but then he goes to telling dumb jokes like shooting a fallen angel in the butthole, and it makes me think those serious bits were suggested by an editor in the fourth draft as a way to make Atticus more sympathetic.

Second Bacchant senses him coming and blocks his bat swing, breaking the bat. So when she grabs him, he stabs her in the neck with the splinters of the broken bat. Though it’s described as a fatal wound, she takes her time dying and keeps attacking him until he can snap her neck. However, the strength for that move uses the last of his magical energy stored in his amulet, so he can’t heal and his camouflage spell poops out.

The fight scene is alright, I guess, but I’m still a little disappointed that all of the fight scenes in this book take considerably longer than that time Atticus killed Bres, a Fomorian god, just by tripping him and lopping off his head.

The cops can now see Atticus and decide to arrest him. They handcuff him on the ground while people are running around screaming. They realize that the people are running from something inside the club though, and decide to go investigate. Atticus tries to dissuade them, saying “One of them is still in there,” but of course he can’t really explain much other than that they’re better off using batons than guns.

Also one of the officers tries to remove the sword, but it’s bound to Atticus by some magic BS independent of his amulet, so it won’t go more than a few feet away. Or something. It’s confusing the officer.

Atticus asks what kind of bullets they use, hoping they’re copper jackets, but the officer says they’re steel. As iron doesn’t work on the Bacchants (and steel is made from iron and carbon, don’t ya know), this presents a problem. He hears gunshots in the club from the other officer, then the other officer is screaming, and he goes in after his partner, not taking Atticus’s advice to use his baton rather than a gun.

From the sounds of gunshots, that officer doesn’t last much longer. Both police officers are now dead.

Atticus wanders to a patch of ground where he can draw some power to go back into stealth mode and charge his amulet again. He uses more “bonding magic” BS to weaken “the molecular bonds” and make his handcuffs easier to break. What, Druid magic works on molecular bonds, implying they understand the concept of molecules, but the Irish gods (who themselves are souped up Druids) can’t understand how a blender works? What?

The last Bacchant walks out, covered in blood and carrying her thyrsus (which is the staff they use, and the symbol of Bacchus). Atticus tells us he has no weapons on him other than the sword (which won’t work, because Bacchants are immune to iron), but he still can pick up the broken baseball bat pieces, yes?

Though he’s magically cloaked, the Bacchant can smell him (or at least, his magic, she says), so she walks right up to him and asks what he is. Specifically, she asks if he’s one of the Polish witches. He denies that, and she asks if he’s the vampire lawyer, Leif Helgarson, which Atticus thinks is pretty interesting, because it implies that Leif has enough of a reputation that the invading Bacchants have heard of him and consider him a threat.

On her third guess, she decides he must be the Druid, Atticus O’Sullivan, which instead of denying (because he’s invisible, remember, she can’t prove jack), he says “Pleased to meet you… But not really” and she decides that her boss, Bacchus, needs to hear about that. Also he’s incredibly surprised that she guessed who he was, but A) it took her three tries and B) Hearne established in the first chapter that he’s a very famous figure in the supernatural world, and most of the gods know where he lives.

It’s almost like he doesn’t realize that being famous in supernatural circles would allow certain antagonistic parties to figure out who he is and where he lives.

He’s really bad at being paranoid.

You Keep Using That Word: 14

The Bacchant books it out of there, and because he’s out of power, no bare earth in the parking lot, and no strength to try to catch up running, the Bacchant just… leaves. She’s gone. If I’m not wrong, that’s the end of that subplot for this book.

Atticus is not thrilled with this development. As he points out, one Bacchant got away, is evidently going to tell a Roman god of his survival and where he lives, and they could come back in force. Several civilians and two cops are dead and a nightclub got wrecked. This could easily be national news, and though he’s really bad at not drawing attention he doesn’t want to be anywhere near a front page story.

Emergency vehicles start rolling up, so after removing his fingerprints from the baseball bat remains, he “jogged wearily south”, finds a shopping center, and calls a taxi. The taxi driver gives him funny looks over the sword and broken handcuffs, but Atticus pays him cash up front and has him drop him off nearby instead of at his home address in case the guy decides to call the cops anyway. He jogs home while magically cloaked.

See? It’s like Hearne learned at least a little bit from the last book. In Hounded Atticus would’ve taken the cab straight home after getting funny looks from the driver, and wouldn’t think to question if it was a bad idea. Growth? Or the writer is getting slightly better?

That being said, he gets home and lies down in the yard to sleep so he can heal with the Earth’s power, without any clothes on, and that’s not… that’s dumb. Like, I get he has healing while he’s in touch with the Earth, and he needs to sleep, and he needs to heal, but again, the supernatural community knows where he lives. They have his home address. And sure, he’s magically cloaked, but one could easily just… firebomb his yard, if so inclined. He’d be screwed.

I contacted the iron elemental who lurked around my shop to come eat away the cuffs on my wrists, and after the rain finally quit, my mind found rest on Lethe’s shore.

Oh yeah, that iron elemental that only exists when it’s convenient. It did something.

Also hey, “Lethe’s shore” is a very dramatic way to talk about sleep? Especially since very often he talks about the Greco-Roman gods as being distinctly not his, a casual reference here makes me think Hearne’s trying to make him sound smart again.

We are over a third of the way through the book, in case you’re wondering. Join us next time, when Attticus has sex with a goddess. Again. Well, a different goddess than the one he slept with in that last book.

[wearily waves finger flag] Yay.

Better Than You: 5
Did Not Do Homework: 10
The Kids These Days: 7
You Keep Using That Word: 14
Make It Easy!: 10
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 17

¹ The hypothalamus is, according to Laksha, the part of the brain that regulates heartbeat. I don’t understand the Wikipedia page enough to confirm whether that’s true, but I THINK so.

Comment [9]

I really, deeply apologize for not getting to this sooner. A few weeks back I told myself I’d get to writing this entry, and I’d already reread the chapter a couple of times to get acquainted with it. But things came up, and now I’m woefully behind on writing this. I even had a couple of ideas and started drafting non-sporking articles, but I didn’t get that far with those, either. I couldn’t think of what to say about Rick Riordan shipping Dante x Virgil other than, “No. Shut up.”

This chapter doesn’t have too much going on in it, but it, and the following chapter, are long enough that they each deserve their own entries in the sporking. I apologize that this update isn’t more exciting, but that’s Iron Druid for you: when something exciting could be happening, Atticus is farting around, and when something exciting does happen, Atticus handles it in the least interesting way possible.

Anyways, how does Chapter 13 begin?

I confess to feeling a sense of entitlement at times.

YA THINK?!?

Okay what he’s actually talking about is that after having lived for so long, he feels like he should be able to wake up peacefully and have a relaxing morning routine. He’s not even asking for a peaceful day, just a peaceful morning. And I get that. I hate when I have to wake up suddenly to get stuff done. I have a routine I like to follow.

So he’s obviously a bit upset that he is instead opening his eyes to “a giant bloody crow that’s forever branded in my cultural memory as a harbinger of death.”

[Are you culturally Irish or American? Make up your mind, Atticus.]

The crow caws in his face, and then laughs at his alarmed reaction as he bolts upright. The crow is the Morrigan, of course, who likes messing with him. Which, to be fair, I’d do this all the time if I could because, as we established in Chapter 9, Atticus is VERY easy to mess with. He thinks being made to do something he should have already been doing is some kind of 4D chess.

Apparently the last time the Morrigan saw him (presumably after the battle at the end of the last book), Atticus was in his yard healing, so she asks if he’s been laying here this entire time. Atticus assures her that he has not, but he will need a few minutes to clean himself up and act as a decent host. She flies over to his patio to wait. She also has “a small black leather pouch closed with a drawstring of rawhide”, but Atticus doesn’t want to ask about that until he’s fully woken up.

Oberon hears part of this conversation, and Atticus informs him telepathically that it’s the Morrigan, so the dog decides to stay indoors for now. Better to avoid the goddess of war and violent death for now, amirite?

While Atticus turns on the shower, the Morrigan, now in human form instead of as a crow, slides into the shower with him. Yup, that’s right, the visiting goddess is going to have sex with our protagonist! Why not!

To be entirely fair, this isn’t played for fanservice. Or at least, not entirely–there is some skeeviness here, because what do you expect from this book? Overall though, it’s played… kind of weird, actually, because Atticus is very much not into this. Despite in the first book, Atticus is basically humping her leg when she first appears in naked human form, in this book he explains to us, quite understandably, that while physically the Morrigan looks hawt, she’s also the goddess of violent death, which is something he doesn’t find particularly attractive. But because she’s the goddess of violent death, he doesn’t feel comfortable saying no to her.

I don’t know what I’d call this. Is it rape? Atticus doesn’t characterize it as such, but he’s clearly not comfortable right now. His description lends towards ‘coerced sex’ (ie, rape) though he doesn’t outright SAY that. He does say that it’s the “politic” and “safe thing to do” to let the Morrigan do what she wants right now. I’m going to be real with you! It does not look good. But it’s not as if he treats Morrigan as his rapist in the future, and it’s treated more like, “Pressured into sex I didn’t really enjoy (for hours on end).”

So while I kind of want to nitpick through this next section (there’s a Ghostbusters shoutout, in case you needed reminding that Hearne can’t use intertextual references cleverly), my criticism boils down to this: I don’t know what to make of this. It plays it pretty light considering it’s, at best, semi-consensual, but one could argue that’s how Atticus deals with trauma. My instinct is to write it off as, “Hearne doesn’t really understand the seriousness of the things he’s writing into the story. Again.”

You know what? Because of that, let’s give it a

Make it Easy!: 11

Because this SHOULD be a massive deal, and Atticus is kind of over it pretty quickly.

Also hey, random thought: Atticus brings up more than once, in regards to the Morrigan, that her sensibilities are Bronze Age rather than modern. I don’t buy that, but it makes me wonder (and I’m sorry if this is a creepy question)–does the Morrigan shave her legs? Because the notion that attractive women’s bodies are completely hairless is a fairly recent development, and if the Morrigan doesn’t care about modern ideas, then theoretically she would conform to ancient Irish ideals of beauty, not modern American ones. She is, after all, explicitly out of touch with current events, to the point that she doesn’t know all the modern countries. I suspect Hearne didn’t think much about this one and just imagines her as “Super HAWT”—and that’s how the stupid potheads at the beginning of the last book thought too.

Just throwing that out there.

When it’s over, the Morrigan informs Atticus that she’s regrown his ear, much to his shock. He feels his ear and finds it whole. Apparently ‘chewed off by a demon’ is something his own powers can’t heal, so he’s very thankful about it. But when he calls her ‘nice’ the Morrigan loses it and punches him in the gut, because apparently, being called ‘nice’ is something she finds offensive. So he says *“curse your meddling” and the Morrigan is satisfied.

Also their sex takes all morning, so when they’re done, Oberon lets Atticus knows that he’s really hungry. Atticus apologizes. When he goes out of his room to feed him and grab food for the Morrigan, Oberon notes exactly how many scratches and cuts he has on him, and Atticus tells the audience that he’s trying to heal himself right now.

So he makes breakfast. It’s another fancy omelet but this time he at least lets us know that he feels as if he has to bring out his best food for the Morrigan, or she’d be insulted, and so I’ll let it slide this time. She’s also naked still, because Hearne thought that’d be fun, I guess.

Atticus says that the “Morrigan was making an extraordinary effort to be affable as [he] served her.” She expresses appreciation for the food and coffee multiple times, awkwardly smiles a lot, and while Atticus tries to pretend he doesn’t notice, he totally does and wonders what that’s about.

And she eats a lot. Oberon wonders where she’s putting all that food, and Atticus doesn’t know either. Considering she could eat an entire dead body in the last book, I don’t know why this is a surprise to the two of them. It’s just another dumb joke.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 18

The Morrigan brings up that she’s been gone since the ending of the last book, when she said she’d be around, and asks if Atticus wonders where she’s been. Atticus asks, and she explains that she’s been in Tir na nOg, because the Irish gods have kind of been in the middle of a civil war.

“What? Who was fighting whom?”

Earth to Atticus! THE ENTIRE PLOT of the previous book was about how one of the Irish gods was plotting to overthrow their queen and make himself king! Said queen (who you supposedly WORSHIP) sat down IN YOUR HOUSE and explained all of this to you. You KNEW that there were factions in Tir na nOg, and that there was a war brewing because of it. Did he think because Aenghus Og died that they’d just give up and go home?

Apparently everyone in-setting thought so. The Morrigan explains that Aenghus Og’s supporters decided to rise up against Brighid anyway and it’s been causing a lot of problems. The Irish gods recently purged several of the ringleaders. Because it’d be complicated to the Plot, none of the actual Tuatha De Danann have died. That would cause too many problems.

This is a massive conflict involving the gods and faeries of Irish mythology, and Atticus has absolutely no part of it. Which isn’t necessarily bad; there are different stories in which there are epic conflicts and battles going on in the background, such as Dresden Files! But in those cases, there’s also a lot of epic action happening in the main story. In Iron Druid there is… not that. One could argue that Atticus has his own problems going on, so he can’t help in this Irish mythological civil war business.

Except that doesn’t fly, because Atticus firmly does not care about the Plot in this book or the last. Very often he keeps ignoring his problems until they’re right in his face and then try to make someone else do it for him, or the gods (whether it’s his own gods or someone like Coyote) coerce him into it.

This should be something like, “Hey look, stuff is happening in the world beyond Atticus.” What it comes across as is Hearne saying, “Trust me, a lot of cool stuff is happening; I just can’t be bothered to show you because it’d be complicated/it’d inconvenience Atticus’s daily routine. I’ll have someone else recap a basic outline for you.”

Make It Easy!: 12

The Morrigan also informs us that Brighid’s new armor (that she showed off in the last book to try to counter the “cut-through-anything sword” in case Aenghus Og got his hands on it) was tested in the battle. Atticus is surprised to hear this as

The Tuatha De Danann are loath to put themselves in mortal peril when they can get someone else to die for them.

Again, I really don’t get the impression that he holds the Irish gods in anything other than contempt, or least extreme condescension. We’re meant to believe that other than a few hiccups like killing Aenghus Og and Bres, and being a little critical of the gods, he’s a faithful worshiper of the Irish pantheon. Or something adjacent to that? Instead he just talks down to them, talks smack about them, or has sex with them.

Also, I mean, yeah, they apparently don’t like risking their lives (to the point where they supposedly rarely step out of their home realms), but in the last book it’s established that Brighid is pretty darn powerful and her armor is nigh-invulnerable. When she first appears, she manifests as a ball of flame. I should think that it’s barely a risk for her to show up and fireblast some enemy troops.

The Morrigan says that the fighting’s all over now–otherwise then it might get in Atticus’s life, and can’t have that–and so now she wants the secret to the iron amulet that Atticus wears. Because if you recall (if you don’t, in text Atticus tells us again)! They made a deal in Chapter 2 of the last book. Basically, if Atticus teaches her how to make her own amulet which defends her from magic and lets her kill faeries by poking them, she will not take him to the afterlife, making him effectively unkillable. Yes, this is a thing that happens in the second chapter of the first book of the series: our protagonist becomes unkillable. No, I will not stop harping on that!

Welp the Morrigan is here to collect on that deal! At Atticus’s prompting, she brings out a piece of cold iron, and by that we mean several small chunks of meteor iron. Because apparently, in Iron Druid Chronicles, when they say that “cold iron” is what drives off/harms faeries, what they mean is “iron from a meteorite.” Which is not a thing in European folklore, as far as I can tell? Considering the idea of using a horseshoe or nail to drive off the Fair Folk? There’s debate as to what “cold iron” means, if it means a specific type of or way of forging iron, but I don’t think it’s ever been meant to refer exclusively to iron from a meteor.

According to Wikipedia (which I recognize might be BS so I put this disclaimer here), there ARE special properties ascribed to meteoric iron… but that’s in Tibet, where it was believed that being from the sky, the iron was forged/made by the gods and thus had a special effect against evil forces attached to it. Atticus and the Morrigan, in their discussion, give an explanation here that iron from the sky is better because, as metal not from the Earth, it’s better at repelling or destroying magic from the Earth. Which is cool in concept but isn’t from the mythology that Hearne is supposedly drawing from.

In short, that’s not what cold iron means, so I’m slapping you with a

Did Not Do Homework: 11

In a piece of fiction, you can do what you want with the folklore, I suppose, but Hearne claims that he’s building is based off of folklore. AND the ‘cold iron hurts faeries’ is a thing from folklore, usually illustrated with something like a horseshoe. If suddenly cold iron means something entirely different than what everyone already knows, one would think it’d be lampshaded instead of casually dropped like this. Unless horseshoes are traditionally made with meteorite iron and no one’s told me.

Also, given Atticus (and all beings using Druidic magic, like the Morrigan and other Irish gods) is a servant of the Earth, who is a sentient being in this universe, wouldn’t using sky iron to fight her magic be… I don’t know, sacreligious or something? At the very least, a bit offensive?

“Which one should I use?” she asked. I sat down carefully and picked up each one, examining them carefully.

“Well, as the wee green puppet once said, size matters not,” I replied.

I hate this man so much. We get it, Hearne, you can do Star Wars references. I don’t care.

Atticus lectures the Morrigan (and us) about how much the weight of the piece of iron matters, I don’t really care. Apparently different weights count for different things in spellcasting? As in, too much weight might prevent you from casting spells. Or something. How that works is beyond me. The Morrigan decides she’ll take the iron to Goibhniu, the smith god of the Tuatha De Dannan, and he’ll make more than one. Atticus tells her the extras might come in handy, because he wants one for his apprentice.

So the Morrigan asks what happens after the physical amulet is made, prompting Atticus to explain that she has to bind the iron to her aura. To illustrate, he asks her to look at his aura, and see where one can detect the iron. She compares it to “specks of cookies in cream.”

“What? I had no idea you liked ice cream.

The Morrigan’s eyes flashed red. “If you tell anyone, I’ll rip off your nose.”

Again, any time the Morrigan shows anything that could be construed as a positive trait she gets mad when it’s pointed out? It’s not even cartoonish, it’s just stupid. It’s ice cream! Suggesting that you like ice cream doesn’t mean anything about what kind of person you are! Get over it!

Another

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 19

I want to go through and criticize the way he describes his aura and how it works, but honestly I don’t understand what the fudge he’s saying. It’s like he’s woven bits of iron into his aura all over? And this means that it protects his aura/self from any sort of full-body curses? Or something? And he talks about what happened at the beginning of the book when the evil witches tried to hex him, and brings up how the iron bindings in his aura are like “aliases”, and when the Morrigan asks what that means, he explains that it’s a computer term that–

From what I can understand, the aura redirects the energy of spells sent towards him into his magic amulet. So when the witches tried to hex him at the beginning of the book, it just made his amulet searing hot–which still would have been a big problem if he didn’t have a healing factor. Isn’t it cool how the magic has limitations and downsides, but the protagonist already has safeguards in place so those are meaningless?

[Not giving it a ‘Make It Easy!’ because this was kind of already established? Maybe I won’t feel so generous later on, I don’t know.]

That’s all he had to say! I didn’t need a full lecture! I get he’s trying to describe how it works to the Morrigan, but the way Hearne did it means that the action stops a third of the way into the second novel so his protagonist can explain the mechanics of a magic item that’s been here the entire time! This is not the moment this should be happening!

The Morrigan also says that when that incident at the beginning of the book happened, she didn’t have any premonition of his death, so that means the amulet works very well at blocking harm to his perseon. Which is good, I guess? It still hurts, but as Morrigan points out, it’s not fatal. And it even protects from Hellfire!

“Yes, even that which is spewed from a fallen angel.”

I’m sorry, is there somewhere else that Hellfire can come from??

The Morrigan asks how one binds the iron to the aura, as magically that’s generally a no-go. Atticus tells her that it took him years to figure it out, but that you need an iron elemental to help you out, and to do that you need to become friends with it. The Morrigan freaks out at this because she’s not a goddess of smiths, nor any good at making friends, so how is she supposed to be ones with an iron elemental.

…didn’t she say she had friends in Chapter 2 of the last book? [checks] Yeah, she does. And Atticus is surprised then too.

Atticus tells her that it isn’t hard, and that since iron elementals like to eat faeries, all she needs to do is feed it a few faeries! And they’re a dime a dozen in Tir na nOg, so just grab some, and use that as a basis for friendship!

Yes, our hero is suggesting grabbing people and feeding them to a monster. That is a thing our hero is doing. They’re faeries, so they’re not human people, but they are people. He’s advocating sacrificing people’s lives for personal gain, and let’s not kid ourselves, he’s totally done this himself. Imagine, if you would, writing a protagonist who casually sacrifices other people’s lives, and trying to write him as an approachable, everyday guy.

The Morrigan still thinks this is too hard, and that it’s not in her nature to be able to make friends, claiming that she’s “a stranger to kindness” Atticus tries convincing her otherwise, pointing out that she did heal his ear, and that means she has some kindness in her. She says that was sex, and she can’t precisely do that with an elemental. Atticus offers to help her learn the ins and outs of how to make friends with people.

You can practice all the intricacies of friendship with me. I’d be honored to be your friend.”

Do you have friends, Atticus? Other than Oberon? Because you were pretty happy to let your werewolf friends get killed for your sake in the last book.

The Morrigan abruptly stands up, thanks Atticus for the sex and food, and says she’ll take the iron to Goibhniu, promising to return when she has the finished amulets. Then she turns to a crow and flies out.

That’s it, that’s the end of the chapter.

Because I know the next chapter, it’s because Brighid is at the door, and the Morrigan doesn’t want to be caught there, especially since the queen of the Irish gods plans to proposition him. But we’ll get to that next time.

Until then, folks.

Better Than You: 5
Did Not Do Homework: 11
The Kids These Days: 7
You Keep Using That Word: 14
Make It Easy!: 12
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 19

Comment [4]

Oh gosh. This chapter. This chapter. I am… it’s bad. It’s really bad. Because it puts on blast all the problems with Atticus as a character–how he’s overpowered, how everyone fawns over him, how the author thinks he’s oh-so-clever and cool–and it’s just so dumb. Every single time Hearne goes on in-text about how great Atticus is, it highlights how badly written this character is.

Alright. So. After there’s a quick knock, Oberon informs Atticus that Brighid is at his door. Atticus, still being in the nude, has to throw on some clothes. He realizes that the Morrigan bailed because Brighid had arrived, and he thinks that it will look bad if Brighid realizes they slept together and he’s giving her exclusive lessons on how to make a magic kill anything/defend against anything amulet. So he tells Oberon to stay quiet and stay behind her.

He also works out that probably both goddesses are using him in some capacity, and angry at the idea of being used (sometimes, anyway), he straps on Fragarach, the magic cut-through-anything sword he has.

Atticus opens the door, and Brighid is there, and we’re given a lengthy description telling us how hawt she is. I’m not going to retype it because I maybe have no life, but I have better things to do than relay Hearne’s daydreams to you. There’s a whole thing where he compares it to a hot lady in a beer commercial, and he tells us that she’s more his type than the Morrigan, as Brighid doesn’t eat people. Which, y’know, fair, I guess?

It’s also at this point, before any conversation actually starts, that Atticus explains to the reader the relationship between the Morrigan and Brighid. I’m gonna put that on my ‘Things That Would’ve Been Nice to Know Before Now’ list. Basically: they’re allies, they’ve never been enemies, but they’re Not Friends. They’ve always been rivals, and the only thing keeping them from actually opposing each other is that they’ve been busy dealing with Aenghus Og and his faction.

Which is freaking weird because Atticus never even KNEW about Aenghus Og’s faction until the last book! As far as he knew, Aenghus Og was Just Some Douchebag on his own. He mentions Aenghus Og working with Lugh in Chapter 5 of the first book, but two people is hardly a faction–and I think Lugh is mentioned as being dead nowadays? The only named Irish god that we know of in Aenghus Og’s cabal was Bres, and as far as I can tell, no one liked him!

Atticus, and by extension Hearne, is acting like this has always been the dynamic between Brighid and the Morrigan, but that doesn’t make a lick of sense! Why haven’t we been told about this before? There have been plenty of opportunities for it to be mentioned–especially the part of the first book where the Morrigan warns Atticus that Brighid is coming after he kills her husband. I never got the impression they liked each other, but they hate each other that much? Nah, had no clue.

Also Atticus realizes that both of the goddesses are fighting over him for their own purposes (gag) and so we get this word vomit between Atticus and Oberon:

The scratchy sex, the ear, the second omelet…it was all the Morrigan’s Machiavellian machinations!

Atticus, you know I can hear you when you’re all spazzed up, right? That was a lot of alliteration for a doubtful Druid deliberating over a deity’s dubious designs.

I am not amused.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 20

Atticus and Brighid exchange pleasantries, and her words are given a bajillion modifiers to tell us that she’s sexy, I think? I don’t care. When he offers refreshment she asks for ale, and he gets it for her. She complains about how annoying the civil war in Tir na nOg was, rounding up the ring leaders and getting rid of them. But she also complains about the propaganda she had to wade through. When Atticus asks for clarification, Brighid said that one thing her enemies griped about, apparently, was that she didn’t have a consort.

If you can guess where this is going, you’ll join me in the Headdesk Ceremony.

“as if Bres ever did anything useful or practical in his long life. All he did was sit there and look pretty. He was a pretty man,” she sighed, and then her face drew down into a tiny frown. “And a petty man.”

Hm. Okay, dumb question, but do Bres and Brighid have any children? Because with rulers, generally when people talk about the point of a consort, it’s to make heirs. As far as I know, Bres and Brighid have none–which is an odd thing you see in modern day mythology stories. Authors are happy to tell you that the ancient gods are alive and well, but their families are stuck in a weird stasis where no more fully divine children are being born or taking notable positions in the pantheon for no discernible reason. Shouldn’t there be dozens of newer Irish gods (not to mention gods from other pantheons) running around by now?

This isn’t really a criticism, just something I’ve noticed in fantasy.

Anyhow, Brighid’s talks about Bres being useless seem to be about how dumb he was and how he didn’t do anything in the running of the kingdom–it doesn’t seem to be them trash talking about his sexual prowess/manliness or anything, which is odd considering the subject matter and how Hearne tends to write. Hearne tends to turn back on sex all the time. Remember, Atticus was turned on looking at Brighid in the last book when she was in full armor, so all he could see of her body was her mouth and eyes.

It’s also odd because Bres was just a consort? Unless being the prince consort for the Irish gods means something different, my understanding is that he wouldn’t have another job. I have so little idea of how the kingdom of the Irish gods works that even when belittling Bres at his job, I’m unclear what his job even IS. This insult doesn’t work if we don’t really know what the insult is!

And hey! Since we’re here: why WAS she married to Bres? He was in the myths, sure, but given Hearne is writing them as characters, he should give us some kind of reason. Maybe not to have married in the first place, but to stay married for thousands of years. How does Brighid come across as an interesting or strong ruler to her subjects when she was married for millenia to a stupid, useless man she despised, who was openly supporting her obviously treasonous brother? Don’t give me, “The Fae demanded that she have a consort” crap–are you telling me that in all of the realms that the Irish gods rule, she couldn’t find a single eligible immortal guy that she liked better than Bres?

[sips apple juice out of a curly straw]

Alright so, this is a windup, and after she laughs at something dumb Atticus says and tells him he has a sense of humor (I hate this book), she says that Atticus should be her new consort. No, really. Kevin Hearne wrote a scene in which a super hawt queen goddess appeared on his protagonist’s doorstep, flirts with him, and basically asks if he wants to marry her. For Realzies.

I want to remind you that this author would go on to write a parody fantasy series with Delilah Dawson, launched by the two meeting up and both agreeing that too much of the fantasy genre is white male power fantasy.

This comment makes Atticus spit out his beer. Brighid notes his surprise, but points out that he’s basically earned a place among the Tuatha De Danann–he’s immortal, eternally young, and strong enough to kill two of them. With her favor she says “none will dispute whom I choose to take to bed.” Atticus says he never wanted to be king and rule people, but she points out that it’s just a figurehead position but it has to be filled because the Fae expect it. Which is a weird thing to say after pointing out that Bres was a terrible consort because he didn’t do anything: “Don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything! Just like the last guy in the position, who I just told you about how bad he was at the job!”

Okay, let’s dissect this.

ONE: We finally get some acknowledgement that the difference between Atticus and the Tuatha De Danann is arbitrary. Glad we got that.

TWO: This is… all wrong. This is the second book in a series of nine novels, and our protagonist is offered the throne of the Irish gods, the main pantheon that’s appeared in the story so far. Yes, it’s a ceremonial position, but that’s what this is! The queen of the gods shows up at his door and offers him the throne. This is an insane thing to happen in the second book of the series.

I’m reminded of Percy Jackson and the Olympians in which Percy is offered godhood as a reward for his heroic deeds (and hold onto this because we’ll come back to it). Except that happens in the very last book of the five-book series, after he’s battled monsters and Titans for years and led the demigods’ defense of Mount Olympus. There was a civil war among the gods, and Percy fought on the front lines.

Here? There was a civil war among the gods and Atticus had no clue. Again, he’d been told about it, he just forgot, apparently. And yet he’s being offered the throne. A ceremonial throne, but still a throne. The only role he had in the conflict was killing the ringleaders. He’s not a soldier or officer in the conflict, at best he’s a hired thug. He had to be coerced into exerting any effort, remember?

THREE: Atticus is actually the worst person to pick for this job? I said this before, but regardless of whether or not he was acting under her orders, letting an outsider and a non-god kill two of your own, especially members of your family–like a brother and a husband–set very dangerous precedents. Basically, killing Irish gods is fair game now. And if Atticus takes Bres’s position, that means it could be established that becoming king, or consort at least, can be obtained by killing the one who previously had the post. Even if that’s not assumed, do you think the other gods will feel comfortable with their new king being someone who got his crown by killing two of them?

How does it reflect on Brighid if she marries her husband’s murderer? Won’t that go over badly with the other gods? She can say all she wants that the consort is a secondary, ceremonial position, but what it looks like is that Atticus is some kind of conqueror who gained the dominant position over her by killing her last husband. Now we know that Atticus wouldn’t be in charge, because that’d involve effort on his part (and he can’t have that), but any decision Brighid makes will be questionable. Observers might wonder if it was Atticus’s idea, or if he’s making her do these things: after all, he killed her husband and brother! For all they know, he could be threatening her or holding her hostage! He’s a god killer, after all!

If anything, this isn’t silencing the negative talk of the opposition, this is feeding it. Marrying Atticus is the worst PR decision Brighid could make right now. If you thought about it, if you had any idea how monarchy or public relations works, you’d have realized this.

Did Not Do Homework: 12

Now to be clear, by the end of the chapter it’s revealed that Brighid has ulterior motives for making this proposal. So no, we’re not meant to believe that Atticus is just sooooo attractive that every goddess will throw herself at him with little prompting. It’s still annoying though, because that doesn’t change that we’re not halfway through the second book and our protagonist has had sex with two goddesses and is being propositioned by another. It’s still wish fulfillment.

“I mean, yeah, my protagonist gets to have sex with literal goddesses but it’s not male wish fulfillment! They’re only doing it to get something from him!”

Atticus tries to get out of going to Tir na nOg, since he would only be a figurehead, and he doesn’t want to leave his house. Brighid assures him that he “will have other duties” and it says that “she purred in that triple voice that turned my insides to Jell-O” but I don’t even know what the eff that means. Atticus is very insistent that he likes the mortal world too much.

“But I rather enjoy this plane. There’s so much change and advancement to appreciate and an abundance of knowledge to absorb.”

[takes deep breath]

There is so much wrong with this response.

Let’s… okay, let me give this a try: Atticus’s stated reasoning for not leaving the world for Tir na nOg is because he thinks the world is just awesome. Except look at what he’s saying! “There’s so much change and advancement to appreciate and an abundance of knowledge to absorb.”

This isn’t actually a bad idea. It’s very common to see in fantasy fiction, when someone is offered godhood, that they reject it because of some part of the world they’re still attached to. In a series like Percy Jackson it’s because the title character can’t let go of the people he loves (which is generally how these things go), but hey, for someone who lives alone and is mostly unattached to the people around him, saying he likes seeing humanity’s character development is not a bad answer.

But let’s look, actually LOOK at what Atticus does on a regular basis. This is the kind of stuff he does daily:

-He wakes up, cooks breakfast, and then goes to work at his New Age shop selling trinkets to randos, drugs and teas to college kids, and rare books to collectors (occasionally).
-The REALLY valuable rare books of secret knowledge and hidden treasure, he keeps locked up in cases and has no intention of sharing or acting on that information, ever.
-As a Druid, his mission is supposedly to commune with and protect the Earth using magic, but as far as we can tell he never spends any of his time magically healing the Earth of pollution, or even cleaning the Hell blight from the climax of the last book that he said was a priority for him. We haven’t see so much as seen him picking up litter or promoting recycling.
-He goes to the same Irish pub in town and always orders fish and chips. That’s breaded fish and cuts of potato that are deep fried, in case you didn’t know. Hardly revolutionary or cutting edge in the culinary world.
-He goes hunting with his dog so he can kill animals in public parks.
-He and his dog watch movies together. He’s very fond of… I don’t know, pop culture movies. I don’t think Hearne developed his taste in movies other than that.
-He reads enough Shakespeare to be able to quote it on the spot. He also reads fantasy fiction, as the next book indicates that he’s a huge fan of Neil Gaiman.
-He hangs out with Leif, and the werewolf lawyers, I guess? We’re told they practice sword fighting, but it’s unclear what else he does with them other than run to them when he needs something.
-He apparently gets laid regularly enough, from comments he’s made.

Why am I listing all of this out? Because it doesn’t sound like someone so enthralled with the knowledge, advancement, and change in the world at all, does it? Does this sound like someone who cares about the human race and its evolution? This reminds me of his comment in the end of the last book, in which Atticus claims he “lives simply.” If Atticus really was so interested in the way the world changes and all of the scientific advancement currently happening, wouldn’t he be interested in reading scientific journals, if not hanging around the scientific community? Or at the very least, have some kind of interest in science-fiction? Can you imagine what kind of cool stuff he could explore with his Druid powers? He could visit the bottom of the ocean, or inside a volcano, or something like that. And wouldn’t he actually do his job and see how best to heal the world with his magic instead of staying in the suburbs for most of his routine?

If he was so interested in learning how things have changed over time, wouldn’t he be traveling around the world to see how it’s all different now? Going to universities and studying the latest breakthroughs in science? He’d be happy to associate with tons of different people from all over. He’d be adventurous about different kinds of food, because he’s tried so many over his immortal life that it’s harder to surprise him. And there are people out there doing weird things with how to cook and serve food–shouldn’t that interest someone who likes how things adapt in the modern world? The guy should be all into theories of how societies and languages evolve over time. His film tastes would be into weird movies that push the boundaries of what you can say in a movie. His book tastes should be constantly changing to see the stranger fiction that pushes the envelopes of how narratives can be told.

But he is none of those things. He isn’t absorbing knowledge about the world, except what he thinks will be useful to blend in (and we see how that is). So when he says that he doesn’t want to go to Tir na nOg because he likes the world so much, it isn’t because the human world has so many fascinating developments. It’s because he doesn’t want to be taken out of his usual routine of waking up in his nice suburban house, bicycling to work to sell useless junk to stoners, watching movies with his dog, screwing with his neighbor, and getting laid.

In summary: Atticus is turning down GODHOOD and kingship because he doesn’t want to be taken out of the usual boring routine of his life. He’s declining Brighid’s offer out of sheer laziness, guys.

This is the character Hearne has written.

Brighid tells him that he can still make trips to the human world all he wants, but who cares? He’ll be able to hang out with the gods, and there are meetings with other pantheons. Also he’ll be busy with other things (if you know what I mean) that she thinks are much more interesting than “the latest technological toy.”

Atticus asks about bringing Oberon and his Druid apprentice. Brighid is happy to bring Oberon on board, but says she can’t promise Granny’s safety because it can be a dangerous realm for mortals unused to the Fae. When he says he gave his word to have her fully trained, she relents, though admits she “cannot guarantee her safety.”

“This is a most generous offer and yet wholly unexpected. To become the consort of one’s own goddess is beyond the scope of any man’s ambition. I confess myself unprepared to give you an answer at this moment

Yadda yadda, I hate this dialogue. Brighid calls this “So formal”, making me think that this is meant to be read as impressive, old-fashioned speech, but it’s really stilted. This isn’t a person speaking in a way that’s excessively polite and old-fashioned, it sounds like someone is a twit. Which I suppose Atticus is, but because of the disconnect between what we get and what we’re clearly supposed to get, I’m giving it a

Better Than You: 6

So Brighid, queen of the gods, makes a grab at Atticus’s crotch and is disappointed to find that he doesn’t seem to be too into this right now. He tries to pass it off as he’s really tired and says that he’d be down to do the do with her another time. Brighid knows something is up though, and after a couple of sniffs, she tears open his shirt, revealing all the wounds he got from sex (rape?) with the Morrigan. Knowing that he’s slept with her, Brighid flames on and blasts Atticus like she should have done years ago.

Sadly, it doesn’t work because of his stupid fix-everything amulet. Atticus tells Oberon to remain behind her, and then he draws Fragarach and uses its Sword of Truth powers on Brighid. Remember that it can do that? No? Well it means that she’s immobilized by magic, and has to tell the truth while the sword is pointed at her. Brighid is understandably not very thrilled by this development and demands that he let her go.

“You’re giving me commands? You just tried to fry me and you want me to obey you now? That’s not how it works. And you’re the one who said I was fit to wield the sword.”

She’s your goddess, Atticus, this is exactly how this works.

Seems a good time to point out that Brighid had absolutely no reason to declare him worthy. She points out here that she made that proclamation with his word that he’d never turn it against her, which shows you how much value his word actually has. I mean, yes, she did just try to fry him like a Kentucky chicken, but I think that’s a reasonable reaction to Atticus existing. She also threatens to fry Oberon, but Atticus says he will kill her if she does that. If I cared about these characters I’d say it’s sweet he’s so defensive of his dog, except since I know both Atticus and Oberon are obnoxious poop stains, welp, I don’t care.

He also makes her put out the fire in his kitchen. If you were concerned about that.

Brighid accuses him of being a bad host, and after putting out the fires he reviews the events up until the murder attempt and concludes that actually, she’s the one breaking hospitality rules (although as a goddess, one wonders if the same standards apply?). She points out that he had sex with the Morrigan, but he says he didn’t do when she was there, so it doesn’t count.

Answer my question.”

Sullenly, Brighid said, “The part where I ripped off your shirt was a minor breach of hospitality.”

“We are making excellent progress,” I enthused. “How about the part where you tried to kill me? Was that not also poor conduct for a guest?”

“Yes–strictly speaking. But you gave me cause!”

“No, Brighid, I did not.

Atticus is talking to the queen of the pantheon he worships in a condescending tone as if he’s correcting a petulant child. Even if he’s justified in doing so in context, he’s talking down to someone in a position of extreme power. She doesn’t have that power at the moment, but given that he doesn’t kill her now, considering how she’s characterized it’s entirely possible that she would go home and immediately have Atticus put on her hit list. It’s even more likely when he’s basically rubbing in her face how he’s better than her at following hospitality rules.

And again, Hearne’s going for, “Look how clever and powerful my protagonist is! He’s putting an arrogant goddess in her place!” Which makes me think it deserves another

Better Than You: 7

Also let’s think about the three goddesses that we’ve seen in the series thus far:

-Morrigan, an ax-crazy vamp who frequently disrobes in front of Atticus, feels him up and is constantly trying to please him by warning him of danger and helping him fight Aenghus Og.
-Flidais, a hunter goddess who doesn’t understand how kitchen appliances work, jumps immediately into bed with Atticus, and manipulates him (into doing what he should have done in the first place).
-Brighid, the queen of the Irish gods who was married to a man she hated for millenia, needs Atticus to fix her problems, wants to sleep with him, and throws a hissy fit when she finds out he slept with another goddess.

AGAIN, I remind you, part of his aim with Delilah Dawson in writing their later book Kill the Farm Boy was to talk about how fantasy is often a white male power fantasy. This feels relevant to bring up when we’re reading a series in which an all-powerful white male gets to talk to a queen goddess being treated like a child in a tantrum and gets the better of her to show how calm, intelligent, and level-headed he is by comparison. The man in this book is so much cleverer than those silly goddess wimmins, isn’t he?

Atticus says that if he really was “the Morrigan’s creature” he could have killed Brighid when she came in, but why would the Morrigan want Brighid dead? What would she get out of it? I never got the impression that the Morrigan even wanted political power for herself, much less a throne.

Brighid asks what the Morrigan was here for, and Atticus explains to heal his ear, which she admits she didn’t even know was injured. Atticus also gets her to admit that she had Oberon kidnapped to move him into action in the conclusion of the last book, which we knew already, but all of last book Atticus acted shocked every time a Plot Point was repeated, so I guess we should just be thankful he doesn’t act shocked here.

Through this conversation it’s revealed that the REAL reason Brighid wanted Atticus to be her consort was because she wanted to study his magic amulet and learn how to make it so she could finally be better than the Morrigan. Again, why is this first chapter where we’re hearing that their rivalry is this intense? Both of these characters have appeared before now, and have been relevant to the story, and just now we’re learning that they hate each other that much? For no discernible reason?

ALSO! Atticus is supposed to be Brighid’s worshiper. If she wanted to know about the amulet so bad, why didn’t she just ask about it any of the hundreds of years before this point? Isn’t that how religions are supposed to work? Is paganism so different from the monotheism I’m used to, that your deity can’t ask you for something? Why resort to any sort of trickery or seduction at all?

I’m disgusted with you both. And you know what really chaps my hide here?”

Testify!

SHUT UP OBERON.

“It’s that you’ve come down so dramatically from your pedestal. I can’t even have a proper crisis of faith and vacillate between the image of perfection and my shattered illusions, because you’ve left no doubt that there is nothing divine about your nature. Do you not see how you have debased yourself, or do you persist in thinking that you acted justly in trying to kill me?”

Yeah, I think if, in the second book of the series, your protagonist is able to restrain and tell off the queen of a pantheon, giving her a stern lecture about how she’s being childish, I THINK maybe you have a Mary Sue problem.

Look, he even pulls out the word “hubris” to describe her actions. It’s worth another

Better Than You: 8

Because she’s bound by the magic sword, Brighid says that she plans to rip off the amulet and incinerate him once she’s free, so Atticus has no incentive to free her. So he continues to lecture her, telling her “You’re behaving like a petulant child and not taking responsibility for your actions, like one of the blasted Olympians.” This makes me think that Hearne has a very basic understanding of Greek mythology, but for now there’s not enough to make a full judgment call and we’ll move past it.

It goes on like this for a while. I cannot say how boring this gets because this chapter is just “Brighid threw a hissy fit and Atticus magically gets to tell her off because he’s so much more powerful and mature than his goddess.”

There’s also a bit when her eyes flash blue, and remembering that Morrigan’s eyes flash red, and this quote was highlighted 97 times:

Maybe I should try to figure out how to make my eyes flash green so I could freak out the baristas at Starbucks. “No, you foolish mortal,” I’d say as my eyes glowed, “I ordered a non-fat latte.”

[sarcasm] Isn’t he so funny?

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 21

Through great effort, she apologizes (it takes a lot of effort because due to the sword she’s bound to tell the truth and so she has to actually mean it when she says it), and Atticus extracts a promise that she won’t blast him. She also tries to get him to promise never to make an alliance with the Morrigan, but he tells her that won’t work because the Morrigan has exclusive rights to making the amulet. Brighid obviously has issues with this. Atticus assures her that it still takes centuries to make a finished amulet, and while he can’t teach her how to make it (because his sacred word, I guess?), he will allow her to come visit and study it to see if she can figure it out herself.

Brighid says this at some point:

“Yes, this has been a day for my inadequacies to be made plain.

I hate this book.

Atticus manages to wring out forgiveness from today’s events as a reward for killing Aenghus Og instead of becoming her consort, and Brighid promises not to breach hospitality again. Though she does say she won’t proposition him again and says now he’ll never get the chance to sleep with him.

The chapter ends with some Oberon dialogue and

Usually I think your paranoia is really funny. But right now

You Keep Using That Word: 15

HE’S NOT PARANOID. HE’S IMMUNE TO DEATH. HE SPENT THE ENTIRE CHAPTER TALKING TRASH ABOUT BRIGHID, QUEEN OF THE IRISH GODS, TO HER FACE.

Yes, she promised to forget this day, but how binding is that promise? And how do we know that she won’t at some point turn around and find some way around that? She has every reason to want him dead now: she knows he’s working for her rival, she could take and study the amulet when he’s dead (I don’t know if it will work as well though), and he made her feel like an idiot. Of course he’s going to walk it off and pretend like this entire scene makes him very clever and wise–his only regret being that he missed a chance to sleep with Brighid.

You know what you get when you tell off a goddess? Not good things! Even when you’re right about them! Gilgamesh talked smack to Ishtar’s face and she responded by getting her dad to drop the Bull of Heaven on him. I suppose Gilgy and Enkidu managed to kill it, but the point stands!

[sigh]

Join us next time, as we have MOAR conversations and our protagonist is an idiot to cops again. Y’know, in case you were missing that element from the first book.

Better Than You: 8
Did Not Do Homework: 12
The Kids These Days: 7
You Keep Using That Word: 15
Make It Easy!: 12
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 21

Comment [2]

I apologize because I’m really late in posting this. I had hoped to push the momentum of the sporking forward but then things started rolling forward in life, and the sporking took a backseat. I thought I’d get it done before Christmas 2022, and obviously that did not happen (I also thought to combine this chapter with the next one, but this one grew pretty long).

But I have not given up on you guys! I plan to keep sporking! And after we finished Hexed, who knows. I would like to try to do at least Hammered, but at the rate we’re going I definitely don’t want to make any promises, or try to tell you that we’re going to do more than that.

So let’s get to Chapter 15.

Small note before we begin: I get the impression that many of you feel that I have been too lenient in adding to the counts as I spork. I don’t know if that’s true, but this chapter, for Reasons, got me in A Mood, so I decided. What the heck. Let’s add to them.

Atticus checks his phone for all of the missed calls. He calls back his werewolf lawyer (Hal) first, who is understandably kind of concerned about a massacre that happened at a nearby nightclub.

“Atticus! Tell me you weren’t involved in this Satyrn Massacre business,” he said without preamble.

Atticus doesn’t admit to it, but he asks Hal to come over, and because Hal isn’t as stupid as Atticus is (a low bar), he instantly knows that he was involved. He promises to come over and hangs up. Atticus then calls Granny to assure her that he’s doing okay. She tells him that the priest and rabbi (remember Chapter 10? ) have been back at the shop and wanted something from the rare book case. When Granny told them that she can’t unlock it, they asked religious questions and she was obstructive or whatever–pointing out that he’d be better at answering those questions than she would.

He instructs Granny to go back to studying Latin and get her old job back as a bartender at the Irish pub and, uh, what? Why did she quit in the last book if she’s just going to go back to it? I suppose the author can’t be expected to plan ahead for every single minor detail of the Plot, but this strikes me as a very strange turnaround to make?

Atticus tells her he also wants to put some magical protection on her, because he’s “getting one of those hunches.” Granny asks if it’s “The paranoid kind” because again, we’re meant to think of this man as paranoid despite his complacency. He gives an affirmative answer, and then says “can I tell you one of the many reasons I love you?”

You see, it turns out that sentence is a code phrase that Atticus and Granny worked out early on, and so the narrative stops to explain to us for several paragraphs through flashback dialogue how they came to this phrase. In short, despite constantly telling us how paranoid and prepared he is, it’s actually GRANNY who suggested that they use code phrases and such to convey information.

So we should plan ahead and Be Prepared, you know, like the Boy Scouts.”

“Fuck the Boy Scouts,” I’d said. “Be Prepared was my motto before there were any streets to help little old ladies across.”

“Oh. Right.” Granuaile had paused, and when I failed to fill the silence, she asked, “Does that mean you already have a plan, sensei?”

“No, I’m just establishing my primacy over the Boy Scouts.”

Granuaile’s lips quirked upward. “Duly noted.

Te-he! Isn’t he so FUNNY! Making jokes about the Boy Scouts! It’s FUNNY because he’s older than the Boy Scouts of America! Are you laughing yet?

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 22

And yes, after informing us that he’s oh so paranoid, and then through flashback telling us that he’s always prepared, he admits to his student that he doesn’t have a plan at all. Figures.

You Keep Using That Word: 16

She tells him that he should probably assume that all of his phone calls are being listened to and he might be put on a no-fly list, and Atticus asks who would be listening in and putting him on a no-fly list. Granny says the government, cops, Men in Black, and “Maybe even the Boy Scouts” which is funny dumb because, again, for a really “paranoid” guy, you would think this would have occurred to him. Especially since, yes, the US government is definitely listening to your phone calls, this is not a joke.)

Granny’s suggestion that they start talking like an annoying lovey-dovey couple when they want to make a cover for their conversation or create an alibi, not just to talk in code but because it would be really annoying to try to listen to that. Atticus agrees, and I want to reiterate that the idea of coming up with a pre-established alibi before the inconvenient questions from the authorities come up had not occurred to the “paranoid” immortal Druid.

You Keep Using That Word: 17

I suppose it’s worth noting can apparently come up with cover stories when he needs to, as he did in Chapter 25 of the last book, but as I explained in that sporking, it wasn’t a very good alibi there either, and it didn’t even match the timeline of the story.

So he uses that cover to tell her that he has the broken baseball bats from the fight with the Bacchants, and that he needs her to dispose of them. Also! In his annoying lovey-dovey talk, he calls her “my snookie-wookie” and she asks if he called her a Wookie, because I guess Hearne still thinks that pop culture references are clever/funny.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 23

Atticus hangs up on her and calls Malina. He tells us that he saved this call for last because he knew she wouldn’t be happy with how he handled the Bacchant sidequest–which is fair, because he did a terrible job of it, and it made the headlines (even if his name was not attached). He tries to downplay his failure by saying “Those kinds of opponents aren’t my specialty,” which is a pretty dumb excuse for a two-thousand-year-old Druid who prides himself on how “paranoid” he is to say. He also tells her that he got most of them, and explains that one of them escaped, which is not great news!

However, Malina says that her coven has managed to eliminate two of the evil German witches¹, who apparently were younger and less experienced than other members of the evil coven. Her description makes Atticus realize that she doesn’t need hair or blood to cast lethal spells on people.

She asks for more supplies, he promises to send it. Malina also points out that they didn’t make the news with the two witches they killed, managing to make it look like accidents. But since the enemy coven has been here a while, and know that our “heroes” are onto them, it’s a good chance they’ll attack again soon–so Atticus better watch his back, as they aren’t likely to attack the same way twice.

Hal, Atticus’s werewolf lawyer, arrives so he ends the phone call to talk to the lawyer. Hal sees Atticus with the snot beaten out of him and asks what happened, but notices that his ear has grown back. Hal says this is a good thing, as the police are looking for someone of Atticus’s description, but with a missing right ear–meaning that he’s already going to throw off anyone looking for him.

Atticus wonders how the police would know what he looked like, as the cops on the scene got murderized, but Hal points out that there were plenty of witnesses who saw him handcuffed to the ground as they ran out of the nightclub. THOSE witnesses told the cops about him. Because they didn’t see the tattoos, those aren’t in the description police have, which Atticus thinks is going to be a plus: they’re looking for a guy missing an ear and without tattoos, so his appearance will throw them off.

[Realistically: probably not.]

Hal smells something burnt, and Atticus points out that his house was on fire, so that might have been it. They sit on the front porch, there’s a conversation with Oberon about Hal’s smell that I don’t care about, and he reads the newspaper. The article describes that there are twenty-five dead what the fudge that’s a lot of people.

Atticus quickly explains how he and Granny came up with a cover for why he has baseball bats and there’s security footage/receipts of him buying them, that Oberon will have to chew some baseballs to make it look like he just played ball with his dog that night. Hal points out that if any witnesses bring up the sword, then he’s in trouble, as he’s “been riding around with that thing on your back the past few weeks, everyone up and down Mill Avenue has seen you wearing it”.

“So what? The sword never left its scabbard. Nobody died from sword wounds.”

“They’ll use the sword to palace you at the scene, Atticus. Look, do you still have it around here?”

“Of course. I have two fancy-schmancy swords now”…

“I suggest you hide both of them right now, and hide them well. Don’t lose a minute.”

“What? Why?”

Atticus doesn’t realize why he, a business owner with an active social life, walking around with a sword in public (on his BACK, where swords are not generally worn and creating a distinctive look), and then carrying the same sword when he goes on a secret mission in the next town over that caused an active police investigation, might get him in trouble with the law.

Truly, this man is sooooo paranoid, amirite?

You Keep Using That Word: 18

Hal points out that the police departments of Tempe and Scottsdale are going to work together and they could quite easily get a warrant to search his house. And if they find the swords, he’ll be in a heap of trouble. Atticus then asks if all the other blades and weapons in his garage would be a problem, which of course it is, Hal points out–yeah, it’s legal, but it’s really fishy to find in a situation like this.

To be clear again: ATTICUS HAS TO BE TOLD THAT IT’S FISHY IF THE COPS FIND YOUR GARAGE FULL OF SHARP OBJECTS

You Keep Using That Word:19

Atticus is as paranoid as a dead fish. And considerably less useful.

Hal asks what started the fire in the house anyway, and he’s disbelieving at first that it was a goddess.

“Are you being serious or pulling my hair?”

“Completely serious.” I didn’t tell him the correct expression was “pulling my leg,” because he was doing so well otherwise. Hal was quite a bit younger than Leif and more willing to make an effort to use American vernacular correctly.

We’re going nuts on these counts now, aren’t we?

The Kids These Days: 8

Hal asks if he should be worried, and Atticus tells him, “Nah, it’s all Irish politics.” This doesn’t reassure Hal at all, because he has some functioning brain cells, so he tells Atticus to be careful. Atticus “gaped” at him, because he’s always so careful guys! Because he’s so paranoid! “Fetishitically so” according to Oberon (who wants a treat for using the word “fetishistically” in a sentence and goes on about it for a while). Look, Hearne, no matter how many times you tell me that Atticus is careful and paranoid, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s an idiot who doesn’t realize that maybe, just maybe the cops wouldn’t be cool with him having a garage full of weapons.

Atticus throws a bit of a hissy fit because Hal’s pack leader Gunnar didn’t want to help with the Bacchants the previous day; he claims that what they’re seeing here is the aftermath of what happens when he goes it alone, so really, it’s THEIR fault that he’s in this mess, and how dare Hal tell him to be careful! Hal, being a supporting character and thus spineless in the face of Atticus, only says that it’s not the werewolf pack’s job to police the supernatural community, and Atticus says it’s not his either.

Isn’t it great when our hero is constantly saying “It’s not my problem to stop bad things from happening to the people around me”? Isn’t he such a great guy? Isn’t–

It’s really hard to pronounce. If you’re not careful, you could wind up saying, “feta shit stick-ally,” and then you’d feel like a puppy who forgot to lift his leg, you know?

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 24

SHUT UP! SHUT UP YOU STUPID, SHORT-SIGHTED MUTT! SHUT UP WITH YOUR STUPID “JOKES” AND POINTLESS DIALOGUE THAT DRAGS OUT THIS STUPID SCENE!

[Walks off for a few minutes and returns with a cup of apple juice.]

That doesn’t even make any sense! Oberon is talking telepathically! How do you mispronounce something when you’re speaking telepathically?!

Hal asks why he is involved if it’s really not his problem. Atticus tells us that the long explanation is that he needs a place to live and work while trying to restore the land that Aenghus Og blighted, but that’s a dumb explanation because it’s been weeks since the ending of the last book and he STILL hasn’t lifted a finger to fix this problem (which is apparently his sacred duty). Stop trying to make me think that he cares, Hearne. We both know he doesn’t care about anything that isn’t himself.

In any case, he doesn’t tell Hal all of this, he just repeats “Irish politics.”

There’s some more dialogue I don’t care about, and then Atticus gets off his butt (a shock, I know) to clean up his swords and hide them with magic. Hal also asks him if he is growing anything that could be mistaken for marijuana, and he tells him no. They decide to hide the magically-cloaked weapons on his neighbor’s tree (a different unnamed neighbor than the senior citizen he’s been harassing) using his “binding” powers.

Hal at one point says something like “With those binding powers you’d be really good at wrapping Christmas presents, too bad you don’t celebrate Christmas!” And sure, yeah, of course he doesn’t, he’s an ancient Irish pagan, but at the same time, with how often he tells random people they need to blend into the modern day by talking in (what Hearne thinks is) modern slang, making pop culture references, you would THINK that Atticus would at least pretend to celebrate Christmas for the sake of blending in. Okay, sure, plenty of people today don’t celebrate Christmas, but if Atticus was really doing his best to blend in, he would have gone to a Christmas party or two in his day.

Just saying.

Then the cops arrive shortly after they hide the swords. To cleverly throw the cops off in their suspicions, Atticus decides to put on an anime shirt ( “Put it on, and instant nerd!” he says) and begins talking like an idiot. Because nerds exist to be mocked, right? Honestly, I think Hearne’s been watching too many movies, especially considering how many nerds are part of his intended audience. The dialogue of this upcoming section felt less like well-intentioned ribbing and more like one giant

Better Than You: 9

“Dude! What the hell? Who are you guys?” I said, automatically lowering the IQ to everyone assembled.

Isn’t he so clever.

The cops say they’re looking for a sword, and Atticus decides to claim that he hopes they find it. See, his cover is that he’s a LARP nerd, and he lost his sword. You might be saying something like, “Hey, wait, isn’t this the exact same cover story he had in the first book, but with his dog instead? That his dog was missing so he couldn’t be responsible for the crime they’re investigating?”

Yes. Yes, it is. I think this is supposed to be the Scottsdale Police Department rather than the Tempe one, but you would think that since, as Hal says, the two departments are working together, they’d have some kind of record of this available. However! That conclusion does not consider the fact that everyone in this book is really freaking stupid.

I need it for LARPing. I’m a barbarian warrior who gets plus three damage when I’m berserk.” The detective blinked and looked over at Hal to see if I was pulling his leg. Hal was completely stone-faced

You see what I have to put up with?

Here’s the thing though: if the cops decided to talk to ANYONE ELSE AT ALL about Atticus–say, his employees, his neighbors, the staff at his favorite Irish pub, they would get a completely different picture of his personality, and that would probably get suspicious, no?

And! His cover here is that he’s an unsociable, stereotypical loser nerd, right? There’s a bit where he makes a dumb joke–the police say they’re looking for a guy with a sword and one ear, and Atticus replies that the guy should be more careful with the sword–but then when he needs an alibi for the previous night it was that he was with his girlfriend and dog hitting baseballs in the park. Granny is posing as his girlfriend (though she’s not in the room right now). If he really was supposed to be an antisocial loser, does it add up that he’s dating the incredibly attractive bartender from his favorite bar?

His story is also nonsense, which even the detective realizes and calls out. Because he says that he thinks his sword was stolen while playing in the park, when earlier he said it was stolen. Atticus covers it up with that he sometimes remembers things wrong when he’s “in berserker mode” (playing with his dog??) or that it’s because did drugs when he was younger and sometimes he blacks out. As if THAT is a safe cover story to tell the police.

You Keep Using That Word: 20

Hey, wait, they wouldn’t be using real metal swords for LARPing, would they? I’m not a LARPer, but from what I understand, and what I’ve seen, the weapons they use are obviously foam? Hearne’s running with the idea that the cops don’t know what his main character is talking about, but as far as I can tell, HE doesn’t either.

Did Not Do Homework: 13

The detective asks what he does for a living, and Atticus explains his bookshop and tea business. During this conversation, he pretends to zone out for… Reasons, I guess. The detective then asks why he needs expensive lawyers, and Atticus’s reply is a bit angry–

“Because Tempe cops keep shooting me for no reason and searching my house for shit I don’t have, and then they act all surprised when I actually have both my ears.”

He’s calling attention to his role in a previous investigation, talking smack to cops, and generally not acting like the stereotypical “Loser Nerd” persona he’s supposed to be building. Isn’t he so paranoid?

You Keep Using That Word: 21

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS OBVIOUSLY SUSPICIOUS

The cop then asks about the dog, because as per last book, Atticus’s cover is that he lost his dog, and that Oberon is a new dog, bringing up the cover story that is the exact same as what’s going on with his sword right now. They ask to see the dog, and they do, and Oberon has stupid dialogue about The Man.

Also a female detective knocks over his DVD collection, and Atticus decides to pretend that there’s porn in there. Said detective is quite obviously disgusted with him, and Hal passes him a comment so they can quip about how “clever” he is.

“Hey, the care and feeding of an alter ego is an art form,” I replied

I hate this man so much.

And given the porn joke I’m just going to add a

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 25

What is the feeling Atticus is going for here, exactly? Because like his conversation with Brigid in the first book, he goes across the emotional spectrum. Is he a timid nerd who is nervous around people he doesn’t know? Is he the type of guy to mouth off to cops because they keep bothering him? Is he a stoner who isn’t all that clued in to what’s going on around him? Because he goes through ALL of these impressions and more. I’m not saying characters (and people!) can’t be complex, but he’s trying to sell a fake version of himself to the police, and instead he goes through several different kinds of people in the span of a few minutes. It’s all meant to generate laughs and make us think Atticus is smart, but taken altogether it’s an incoherent image of a person.

Detective (he HAS a name I just don’t care because he’s only filling a function here) then asks about the burns in the kitchen, which Atticus explains with a creme brulee torch because he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing, rocking out to music. Which the detective again obviously finds as BS, but just asks for Granny’s name and address to confirm his story. The cops DO find the garage full of weapons but because there is “no signs of recent use” they just awkwardly leave.

Make It Easy!: 13

Also Atticus heals himself the second the cops leave. Then he and Hal drink to pat themselves on the back for lying to the cops again.

…and when I inspected my DVD collection, I discovered that the female detective had actually alphabetized it for me.

Why would she do that. She got the impression from Atticus that there was porn in there. Why would a female detective who accidentally knocked over a DVD collection, and then get told there was porn in there, go through the trouble of alphabetizing it. This makes no sense, Hearne. Why is this book so stupid.

The only conceivable reason is to make Atticus’s life slightly easier on something that isn’t even part of the Plot. What the heck, we’ll give it a

Make It Easy!: 14

Tell me, Kevin Hearne. I demand you tell me why the female detective would go through the effort of alphabetizing the DVDs she knocked over, thinking that there was porn in there. I need you to give me an explanation other than the one that naturally occurs, which is “There are no consistent or believable characters in this book.”

The chapter ends when Granny calls. The priest and rabbi (remember them from Chapter 10?) are back in his store, and refuse to leave until they talk to Atticus.

¹ The actual Plot of this book, remember? If not, that’s okay. I forget sometimes, too.

Better Than You: 9
Did Not Do Homework: 13
The Kids These Days: 8
You Keep Using That Word: 21
Make It Easy!: 14
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 25

Comment [13]

Hello! I’m sorry I didn’t get this up sooner, but I’m here now. I considered writing an essay about a book I read while I was out, but I’m struggling a bit with it, and with everything else going on.

Also! It’s Easter. Have a blessed day.

To the sporking!

After quickly telling Hal about who those two guys are, Hal offers to go to the store and pretend to be a customer, so that he could help Atticus in case things get ugly. Atticus, in an out of character moment, says he doesn’t want Hal to risk himself as he doesn’t know what the deal is with these two guys, but Hal doesn’t care because he, along with most of the supporting cast (including the villains!), exist to serve Atticus’s needs.

For the same two men to return twice in the same day looking for me at my place of business told me that they didn’t know where I lived, and that was perplexing considering how much else they seemed to know about my whereabouts.

It is odd, considering that the first chapter of THIS VERY BOOK indicates that all the gods know where Atticus lives. For all of his talk about paranoia, the very entities that he moved out to Tempe to avoid know his address. It’s a little weird that a priest and rabbi apparently can’t Google enough to figure it out–heck, they just have to have someone follow him home. He rides his bike. It’s not like it’d be difficult to follow him, or ask around the neighborhood, given one of his neighbors loves him and another hates his guts.

And the urgency with which they wanted to see me indicated that they’d completely exploded my dumb-college-boy facade.

Atticus, you exploded your facade. It was a stupid cover, as I described when you brought it up. Atticus expects the average person to believe that a stereotypical stupid college stoner opened his own successful New Age store with an incredibly valuable antique book collection sitting right there in the public eye.

So Atticus gets into the store, dismisses all his employees, and asks what the priest and rabbi want. The Russian rabbi says they want the books, and Atticus tells them they’re not for sale. The priest assures them it’s for research purposes, to look up information about the occult, but Atticus tells them to go to a library instead.

Then Hal (Atticus’s werewolf lawyer, if you’ve forgotten) walks in.

The rabbi has a freakout the second he sees Hal, and he tries to pull a silver knife out only for Atticus to use his “binding powers” in a way actually related to binding, using his jacket sleeves to hold his arms in place. Apparently, the rabbi could instantly tell Hal was a werewolf, considering he yelled “Die, wolf!” right before he attempts to chuck a throwing knife at the lawyer.

Atticus goes on to bind the arms of the priest as well, and both of their legs.

Hal was understandably upset that a complete stranger had been ready to kill him on sight, but I really didn’t want him to get more involved. Gunnar was already steamed at me, and if I got Hal killed, he’d probably eat me like a Lunchable.

…with ham and cheese between two crackers?

Why “Lunchables”? That’s not something you snack on if you’re above middle school age, and it’s not something that makes sense with the imagery of the werewolf. If you’d said “bratwursts” or “bacon” you’d get the same message across and it’d feel more natural to the image. It’s like the time in the last book in which Atticus talks about werewolves going “apeshit” when they’re made.

Of course, the reason that Atticus went with Lunchables as the food of choice was because it’s something distinctly modern and Hearne is convinced that he needs to throw as many references to modern day life into the text as he possibly can. Because Atticus is hip and cool with what the kids are into, right? That’s the only way people will read a fantasy book, right?

The Kids These Days: 9

I saw a fan’s defense recently, that Atticus’s attempts at sounding modern are supposed to be grating, because he’s trying too hard to sound like a modern person. I don’t buy it, considering how he’s lecturing us and other characters about how to fit in, and his inner monologue (of which this is another example) is just as annoying about this kind of thing.

I’m also, y’know, very skeptical of the claim that the protagonist and narrator is written to be deliberately annoying. It sounds like someone’s coming up with excuses for a badly-written character. Yes, there are characters that are meant to be annoying (Prince Rhun the first time he appears in Chronicles of Prydain comes to mind), but generally they aren’t the protagonist. And if they are, the point is that they get less annoying as the story goes on as character development. In this book and the previous one, if anything, we’re told how cool Atticus is for doing this.

“But in later books–” I don’t care. If the first two installments of the series aren’t complete stories, then I don’t know why I should be invested in what happens later. Why should I care what happens later in the series if the first two don’t know how to write a compelling character or Plot?

But moving back to the text at hand: it’s a bit messed up that when Hal, Atticus’s friend, has his life threatened, Atticus’s first thought was that if he got killed Hal’s boss would be mad at him. It’s also silly because we know Atticus could take Gunnar–Gunnar is only a werewolf compared to a Druid, that’s not that big a deal. Gunnar being angry at Atticus would only result in a one-sided fight. Although being realistic, Hearne would probably have Atticus talk him down and Gunnar would apologize for being so inconsiderate or something.

So Atticus pretends he doesn’t know Hal as an excuse to get him out of the store, dismissing him and offering to help him some other time. Hal silently agrees and leaves. Atticus tells the priest and rabbi that they’re horrible customers and tells Father Gregory, “What would Jesus do?”

Quivering impotently and with flecks of spittle forming on his lips, he bellowed, “He’d rain fire down upon you for consorting with minions of hell!”

Ah, yes, Hearne only knows how to write angry villains one way: as rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth maniacs. Seriously, with how Father Gregory has been written up until now, he doesn’t seem to be the type who would start screaming and cursing the second he’s captured. Yeah, he could be angry, but there are other ways of expressing anger. Of course, the reason he’s like this is just like why Brighid was written the way she was in Chapter 14–so that Atticus can look reasonable by comparison.

Also, the word ‘hell’ should probably be capitalized if he’s referring to the place in Christian mythology.

“Whoa, slow down, there, Father. I think you’ve made several giant leaps of logic and faith and I’m not following. First, I don’t know any minions of hell.

Again, ‘hell’ should be capitalized. It’s an actual location/realm in this universe, guys.

Second, I don’t consort with anyone, because I’m not fond of that word. And third, have you ever actually talked to Jesus? Because I have, and he’s not really a rain-fire-down-upon-bookstores kind of guy, just so you know. Now, who are you guys, really?”

[rubs forehead] I just know I’m really going to hate it whenever this series gets to depicting Jesus, aren’t I?

The “consort” thing is a running joke from the last book, in case you didn’t catch that.

Part of why this doesn’t land, this whole, “Why do you think I’m evil? I don’t hang out with demons!” thing from Atticus, is because regardless, he’s still a garbage person who will happily kill bystanders, or let bystanders be murdered by his friends, and hangs out with incredibly suspect supernatural beings. Sure, the Morrigan isn’t a demon from Hell, but she’s a violent immortal murderer and rapist who he never deters from her more heinous acts. One of his friends is a vampire who kills people for the crime of using hammers, and has his own cleanup crew of ghouls on speed dial. Let’s not forget that the beginning of this book has Atticus giving Leif tips to prey on college girls!

Just imagine, if you would, a remorseless criminal being put on trial, known for associating with murderers, rapists, and drug dealers, and his defense was something like, “Why are you being so mean to me? I’m a good person! I don’t hang out with Nazis, after all!” You don’t come across as anything close to a good person! At BEST, you get a “Not as Big a Villain as You Could Have Been” sticker.

The Rabbi Yosef tells Atticus he has no idea who he’s dealing with, and Atticus is all like, “Yeah, that’s why I’m asking,” once again proving he needs a good smack across the face with an artillery shell. The rabbi’s beard is moving though, and Atticus mentions that, asking if he has “some roaches living in” the beard, and it stops moving.

He goes to pick up the knife that the rabbi dropped. There’s an engraving on it representing the Kabbalistic Tree of Life image,) which I doubt Hearne understands other than, “Here is an image from Jewish tradition with magic associations.” To be fair, I don’t understand the Kabbalistic Tree of Life either, but it seems a very odd thing to put on a silver weapon meant for killing monsters. It’s more suitable for something like, say, mysterious doors to the room where you meet God.

The voice coming out of the rabbi’s beard tells Atticus that he can keep the knife if he lets the two men go, and to think of it as a gift. Atticus replies that his mother “told me to beware of hairy men bearing gifts” and Father Gregory corrects the actual expression (“Greeks bearing gifts,” a mythology reference), because Hearne thinks we won’t get the joke otherwise, I guess. Even if you don’t know the original expression (and who doesn’t?), the joke stands fine on its own. It’d be mildly amusing if it wasn’t in this book.

Hey, do you remember that throughout the last book, there was a running thing of how Atticus refused to tell his even closest friends how old he is? And the hints he gave were only when he slipped up? Cool, we’re throwing that out the window because he says here:

“My mom didn’t know the Greeks existed,” I told him. “She was worried about cattle raiders coming out of what is now County Tipperary.”

You Keep Using That Word: 22

Father Gregory claims that the reference to cattle raiders ages him to before Saint Patrick’s time. Does it? Someone who knows Irish history, tell me. It’s certainly not a pre-Christian phenomenon everywhere. We definitely had cattle raiders in the United States. Maybe we still do! I also know that there’s the famous one from Irish mythology, but are we expected to believe that Saint Patrick did his thing and then all cattle raids in rural Ireland just… stopped? According to Wikipedia they went on well into the Enlightenment era.

Did Not Do Homework: 14

Atticus’s reply is “Well you claim to know everything about me, but do you know why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch so don’t you know this already?” Whatever, he’s an idiot. He investigates the knife, wondering if the magic of his store could overcome the magic of this knife. His wards are designed for faeries, demons, and witches, rather than Kabbalistic magic. He’s met Kabbalists before, but he’s never found them antagonistic so he didn’t see the need.

Hey, wait, there’s this kind of magic he’s run into before, but because he’s never had to fight it, he’s never considered having to do so and not put that into account when designing his magical protections? Yeah, this guy’s so paranoid, am I right?

You Keep Using That Word: 23

You know how Batman always keeps a piece of Kryptonite around, usually in a lockbox somewhere? Imagine if he didn’t do that, because “Well the only Kryptonian I know is Superman, and we’re buddies! Why would I need that?”

He has some level of caution though, because he assumes the rabbi wants him to touch the knife because it’s magically booby trapped or something. He deactivates the magic by…. I don’t know, the text says that he “expanded my definition of magic to include the Kabbalistic Tree of Life” when adjusting his shop’s magic wards and then the magic on the knife just… breaks down, I guess?

Make It Easy!: 15

So he picks up the knife, the rabbi is shocked that nothing happened to him, and asks to sit and talk things out. The rabbi spits out in Russian that they shouldn’t trust him.

It’s a bit weird that in this book, where there’s a Catholic priest and Jewish rabbi, that Hearne is making the rabbi into the overt intolerant religious fanatic of the two.

Father Gregory says that the rabbi has a temper, yes, but he did nothing wrong in attacking a werewolf because “Werewolves must be slain on sight!” This leads Atticus to ask why.

Also the rabbi is struggling to get out of his bonds and Atticus finds this hilarious. Just… reminder that’s going on, and I’m uncomfortable with Hearne creating a Jewish character just to be laughed at as an incompetent villain.

“Werewolves are abominations of nature. Nearly every religion acknowledges this.”

I suppose, considering that in this universe, the Roman Catholic Church killed all the Druids, its history is a bit different from real-world history. Still, as a Catholic, I want to know where in the Catechism it says that we should kill werewolves. I don’t remember any homilies on it in Mass (and I’ve heard some weird homilies at times). There are rules about witchcraft and the occult, but werewolves? No, we don’t really have a rule about them.

Did Not Do Homework: 16

Actual fun fact for you: Saint Thomas Aquinas didn’t believe becoming a werewolf was A Thing, as seeing someone turn into a wolf must be some sort of demonic illusion. The more you know!

Also, a random thing my research led to: someone wrote a historical murder mystery novel in which Saint Thomas Aquinas and his teacher Saint Albert the Great investigate werewolf murders? I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t speak to its quality, but that premise makes it sound like it could be AMAZING in a B-movie sort of way.

Back on point though: as far as I know, most religions don’t really have rules on werewolves. There is the general belief that werewolves are demonic, or cursed, or the result of some kind of witchcraft, so yes, I understand that historically speaking, Christianity and lycanthropy have not had a great relationship. But it’s not a core tenant, to believe that werewolves are by nature evil, and in a world where werewolves are actually A Thing, I don’t know if this idea would pop up.

[YES, I know about the Hounds of God story, don’t yell at me.]

Also, what other religions have had this relationship with lycanthropy? Father Gregory says that “Nearly every religion” has a thing against werewolves. Uh, citations please? Yeah, werewolves exist in non-Christian folklore, but this belief that they’re necessarily evil? I’m not super-versed in Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Native American traditional religion, Bahai, Neopaganism, Wicca, or Zoroastrianism, but I really don’t know of any rules or history they have regarding werewolves. I don’t think most of them even have hard rules, considering most believers probably don’t think werewolves exist.

Atticus asks him how he feels about vampires, and of course Father Gregory says that they kill them too. And then he asks witches, and they “do not suffer them to live!” And we’re supposed to see Father Gregory and Rabbi Yosef as being religious nuts, but let’s look at the facts: the one vampire we know kills people for using hammers and Atticus himself is constantly talking about how he should kill the witches. And witches in this universe very often gain their powers by making deals with demons. The good coven in this story only worships Slavic goddesses, sure, but Laksha explicitly says she has pacts with demonic beings, and Atticus seems to find this pretty normal for witches.

Atticus then asks what they think of him, and basically Father Gregory says that they seem to consider him a holy man who has somehow broken his calling by using demonic powers. Apparently they are under the impression that Druids are a type of priest–which to be fair, they ARE in real life, but again, in this series a Druid is just a type of magic user who is connected to the Earth.

Atticus asks about the demonic powers thing, and basically it’s that they’ve somehow picked up that in the climax of the last book, someone using Druid magic opened up a portal to Hell, and Atticus was there. Of course, we know that it was Aenghus Og who opened the demon, and Atticus tells them he killed all the demons, along with the fallen angel earlier in this book. The priest is terrified that Atticus was able to kill a fallen angel, and the rabbi says in Russian that he thinks Atticus is lying because he can’t be that powerful.

Well, I’m strong enough to render you impotent, I thought.

It ALWAYS comes back to sex with this guy, doesn’t it? I also think that threatening to make an elderly man in the religious life impotent is not actually as big of a deal as Atticus thinks, unless he’s also as big of a perv as Atticus.

Rewinding a bit: Father Gregory’s going through that thing where Hearne can’t decide what a guy’s feeling in this scene. His emotions are across the board, just so Atticus’s reactions can be reasonable and awesome by comparison. He’s deceitful when he appears, then he’s bound and he’s frothing-at-the-mouth furious, then he’s talkative but seething, and then he’s terrified and completely cowed. The dude’s emotional state changes from one line to the next, because Hearne doesn’t actually develop him as a character as much as assign him an emotion based on what makes Atticus sounds better.

Right, so Atticus tells them to get lost and never come back, because when it comes to Hell, they’re on the same side, right? He asks them if they’re satisfied, and Father Gregory agrees, but Rabbi Yosef breaks free and tries to do a Hebrew spell or something? Again, I’m fairly certain this isn’t how Kabbbalistic magic works, but I’m not an expert. It reads more like the rabbi picked ‘Jew’ as his RPG class in the South Park video game.

Of course, because Atticus [checks text] right, “expanded my definition of magic to include the Kabbalistic Tree of Life” when he reset his wards, this spell does absolutely nothing. Atticus lets the priest leave, but keeps Rabbi Yosef around to talk for a little bit.

Atticus tells the rabbi that he thinks he’s the type to hold a grudge, and Yosef responds by saying that he knows Atticus is the type to associate with creatures like vampires, werewolves, and witches, and so he’ll one day be coming to kill him. Not because of a grudge, but because it’s his job. Atticus shoots back that he thinks Rabbi Yosef is a douchebag, and that the rabbi is a self-righteous extremist who wants to pick a fight with him when all Atticus wants is to be left alone. Then he lets the rabbi go.

Again, is it just me, or is it really, really weird that out of these two, the Catholic priest and the Jewish rabbi, that Hearne decided to make the Jewish rabbi the one who is more of the violent extremist? Is it not weird to anyone else that Hearne sat down and said, “One of the antagonists in my book is going to be a crazy aggressive Jewish guy?” This doesn’t seem to fit into any antisemitic cliches or conspiracy theories that I’ve heard of (though I want to iterate that it’s not a rabbit hole I’m too familiar with, by the grace of God), so I’m not pinging it as overt discrimination, but it is strange, isn’t it?

This all goes into something I think about a lot.

I’ve long had trouble with religious fanatics in most popular fiction. Again, full disclosure: I’m religious. But what bothers me isn’t that I find it an offensive stereotype, like, “Oh no, how dare you say this about religious people!” No, it’s mostly that in pop cultural settings, religious fanatic villains act in ways that are plain nonsensical. For instance, in Mike Mignola’s Baltimore comics, there’s an Inquisitor who goes around being evil for no discernible reason. He doesn’t torture people to make them confess sins or as a penance, he outright mutilates people to death, cutting off limbs and plucking out eyeballs to “purify” people. The “Siege of Paris” DLC of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla has a group of fanatical Christians who do this thing called “deliverance” (in a goofy French accent) where they just ritually sacrifice people and then cut up the bodies. Why they do this is never explained, other than that they’re evil maniacs.

There’s a critique I see sometimes about writing insane villains, that the writers often don’t give comprehensible motivations to these characters and instead just say, “This guy’s CRAZY!” to handwave any irrational behavior. That’s what writers tend to do with religious fanatics, too. You just stick the label “religious fanatic” on a villainous character, and you don’t have to write any motivations. How religion informs their villainous actions, or how the character rationalizes this behavior when it seems to go against the tenants of his or her religion–those aren’t gone into. “This person is just insane,” the writers say. “Because religion.”

It’s even more frustrating here in Iron Druid Chronicles, because… I mean, in a world with vampires, evil faeries, witches, and demons running around, it is absolutely an understandable position to be a religious person who is “fanatically” against the supernatural. We’ve gone over this, but–there are vampires running around, and we have yet to get any actual good examples of that. We don’t know that the werewolves murder people, but they’re clearly dangerous, and one of them is a doctor who falsifies medical reports to get what he wants. The “good” witches in the book are still using magic to take advantage of people and make themselves rich. And we’re often told that evil witches associate with demons for power, and the demons we’ve seen blight the Earth and munch on kids. Faith-based magic like Kabbalism apparently works, and those with enough faith can call on figures like Mary to bless weapons against demons. Maybe they wouldn’t be right on all counts, but from the perspective of an average religious person? This isn’t a bad position to hold. Certainly someone should be defending humanity against the forces of the supernatural, after all.

It’s certainly more legit than Atticus, a man supposedly dedicated to protecting the Earth, and yet he still hasn’t shown any sign of when he plans to clean up that demonic blight from the end of the last book, nor does his supposedly sacred duty stop him from associating with beings who happily murder humans on a whim. We’re supposed to see these two guys as unfairly persecuting Atticus because they assume he’s friends with demons, but his friends are all happily murderers, rapists, thieves, and cannibals. Again, this is like saying, “It’s fine! At least they’re not Nazis!”

[sigh]

Anyhow, Atticus closes the store, grabs the ingredients that Malina needed, and updates the wards against Kabbalistic magic. He suspects that the two guys were from a zealous religious organization (no DUH) and that Rabbi Yosef might be watching his shop. So he escapes through a trapdoor on the roof, turns into an invisible owl and flies off. To his credit, he does check to make sure he isn’t being followed. Then he goes home.

He makes dinner for himself and Oberon, he calls Hal to look into the priest and rabbi’s organization, and he updates his house wards to protect against Kabbalists. And that’s the end of the chapter.

Hey, it’s really crazy that when he adapts his magical defenses to a new system of magic, he just has to… rewire it, I guess? He does specify that doing it for the shop takes up three hours of his time, but it isn’t as if he doesn’t know how to do it, or that it requires special ingredients or anything. And it takes literal seconds to do it enough to disable a magical weapon like the silver knife and the rabbi’s spell.

Make It Easy!: 17

It doesn’t cost Atticus anything to reset his magical defenses against a completely different form of magic! One that he’s never fought before! It costs him time, but not actual time to us, because it’s handwaved for the reader. It’s not as if that time cost him anything–we don’t find out later that while he was fixing his magical defenses, something important happened that he could have been dealing with. It’s just another thing he can just do because he’s too powerful. The biggest difficulty he actually has in this chapter is that when he turns into an owl, he has to leave his clothes behind at the store.

We all realize this is a problem, don’t we? That a new enemy shows up and threatens Atticus with a type of magic he’s unfamiliar with, and he just deals with it and moves on! Rabbi Yosef and Father Gregory are quite obviously set up for a subplot, one that isn’t resolved in this book, making this feel like a waste of time. It’s like the Coyote and fallen angel side quest–chapters that should be spent on developing the Plot is spent doing something with characters Hearne wants to use in later books.

We are about halfway through Hexed, and how much do we know about the actual antagonist of the book? They’re a group of German witches. That’s it. What they really want, who are the members of the coven–Hearne doesn’t care! It’s not like there’s going to be some hack twist that some character we’ve already met is actually one of the evil German witches, it’s going to be cheaper than that! They’re going to appear without proper introduction and we’re meant to care as if we have any idea who these people are. Instead of building an interesting conflict, once again Hearne is having Atticus dick around until someone bothers him, except this time the conflicts that pop up are even less relevant because they’re not sent by the main villain.

Half of this book is setup. Religious fanatic organization, Coyote’s presence, the maenads, Laksha’s price of golden apples from Asgard? None of it actually matters right now. Half the novel is wasting our time with promises of what’s yet to come in a later book somewhere down the line.

Just think about that until next time.

Better Than You: 9
Did Not Do Homework: 14
The Kids These Days: 9
You Keep Using That Word: 23
Make It Easy!: 17
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 25

Comment [8]

Ready for more Iron Druid Chronicles? No? TOO BAD! This chapter’s sporking is shorter than I planned. I debated combining this with the following chapter for the sporking; the next couple of chapters are about the same length. But I considered the content, and realized that if I combined chapters, it would take me forever to get around to finishing it, as it’d be super long.

I hope you guys understand.

Atticus wakes up to find the Morrigan sitting on the bed next to him, naked, and he’s understandably terrified because the last time she was here in Chapter 13, she raped him. She assures him that she’s not there for sex, but that she returned with the iron amulets Atticus told her that she needed in order to make a copy of his magic one. He’s relieved and says he couldn’t “take another day like yesterday.”

The Morrigan laughed, genuinely amused, and it did not sound remotely malicious to me.

JUST SO WE’RE CLEAR, SHE RAPED HIM THE DAY BEFORE. SHE HAD ROUGH SEX WITH ATTICUS AND HE MADE IT CLEAR THAT HE FELT HE COULD NOT SAY NO. TE-HE, GENUINELY AMUSED

[Now that I’m thinking about this, I don’t know that much about Irish mythology. But. Like. Does the Morrigan having sex with Atticus to heal his ear make any sort of mythological sense? Or is it because, once again, Hearne read American Gods and thought about that one scene where Bast has sex with/heals Shadow in a dream? Just throwing that out there.]

I haven’t actually read that far into the series, but I’m pretty sure Atticus is clueless and the Morrigan is in love with him. Just sayin’.

Atticus refers to how Brighid stormed his house and lit his kitchen on fire because the Morrigan had been there, but the Morrigan says she never sensed any danger for him because he’s the protagonist and obviously hot goddesses would rather bone him than murder him, I guess.

Make It Easy!: 18

She does say that there’s danger incoming, presumably the Plot of the book (about evil German witches, remember?). It’s vague, and Atticus finds this amusing, because, reminder: characters switch moods entirely in the seconds between lines of dialogue based on what Hearne thinks is entertaining. Seriously, he wakes up terrified, is angry because her last visit almost got him killed, but now he’s “bemused.” Settle on something!

Looking back… wait a minute. The Morrigan can just… enter his house while he’s sleeping? The goddess of violent death can stroll in whenever she wants? Without waking him up or setting off a kind of alert? For a man who claims to be so clever that he’s prepared for everything, THAT seems like a massive gaping hole in his defenses, doesn’t it?

You Keep Using That Word: 24

And the Morrigan bought him extra sausage. For Oberon, I guess?

Atticus offers to make breakfast, the Morrigan agrees, and so he goes and does that. On the way to the kitchen he berates Oberon for not waking him up, but the dog says he’s scared of the Morrigan, especially because she’s seemingly in a good mood. It makes him suspicious that she’s up to something horrible, though Atticus tries to convince him not to worry about it, thinking the Morrigan is probably happy because she one-upped Brighid.

The goddess of war and violent death being happy isn’t a big deal! She’s just in a good mood. Nothing to worry about, guys! Chillax!

You Keep Using That Word: 25

The Morrigan talks to Oberon, surprising the dog, and she’s all nice to him, saying it’s an honor to be recognized by him. She pets him and Oberon’s all happy and wagging his tail, and it’s a pleasant breakfast. See? Talking to, as Oberon puts it, “the goddess of slaughter” isn’t a bad thing on a good day! It’s perfectly fine to let your beloved pet be happy and within reach of the literal deity of violent death what the fudge am I the only sane one in this equation?!

You Keep Using That Word: 26

They talk about the magic-killing amulet. Atticus tells her to wear it and cast spells to get used to it and find an iron elemental to get friendly with (by feeding it faeries for a few years) so that it does favors for you. The Morrigan asks where Atticus got the faeries to feed the elemental, and he says that he got it from the minions that Aenghus Og sent after him for years. She finds this amusing.

“Ha!” the Morrigan barked. “So in a way he was helping you all along to build the defense that enabled you to stand up to him.”

Did it? ‘Cause if I remember correctly, the magic iron amulet, the thing that gives Atticus a lot of power and the series its name… doesn’t actually have much to do with the Plot of the last book. It’s not as if he uses it to strike the final blow on Aenghus Og or anything like that. It’s only another thing that makes Atticus into an overpowered Mary Sue.

Then the Morrigan leaves. It’s not really described; the paragraph after that last quote opens with “When the Morrigan left…” I suppose that the goddess of slaughter leaving the protagonist’s house after learning to make a magic superweapon is not a big enough deal to have dialogue or description.

Atticus does some divination with Ogham sticks. It’s mentioned that Druids do this back in Chapter 2 of the first book, but it’s the first time we see Atticus do it, I think. One of the sticks he throws foretells death, and others say that he needs to magically protect his friend. Whatever, this is meaningless, and I don’t care. It tells us nothing we don’t know, and the first time it’s brought up in the first book, Atticus doesn’t take it seriously and tells us all the ways it can go wrong.

“Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune!” I cried with all the venom of Charlton Heston.

This line would be fine-ish, on its own, but it leads to a conversation with Oberon that, in this order, A) explains what the word ‘strumpet’ means, B) references the Black Eyed Peas, C) where the quote is from (Hamlet), and D) what the sentence means. Because of the Black Eyed Peas reference, I’m going to give it a

The Kids These Days: 10

Also the conversation is meant to be funny, I think? So!

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 26

And I strongly suspect that this entire tangent is meant to make Atticus sound oh-so-smart so:

Better Than You: 10

Anyhow Atticus puts a magic protective amulet on Oberon. This supposedly protects against “Fae magic, infernal hexes, several forms of old craft from Europe that the hexen might employ, and Kabbalistic spells.” It’s still vulnerable to other types of magic–Atticus lists “Obeah, Voudoun, and Wiccan craft, as well as most anything from the Indian and Asian traditions and the vast sea of shamanistic practice” but that he “had to put my money down somewhere.”

WHY? What does magical protection actually cost? As far as we know, it only costs the time to weave the spells. Why does he think that the German witches won’t employ Wiccan or shamanistic traditions? If I was an immortal evil witch, I’d certainly learn to expand my arsenal of spells in case I had to. It would certainly surprise chuckmuffins like Atticus if she immediately pulled out, Siberian shamanism. Or heck, just pull a gun. If Hearne bothered to explain the cost of these magical protections, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. As it is, I can only guess it means that he’s betting that no one will use types of magical attacks he doesn’t want them to. Which gives it another

You Keep Using That Word: 27

[deadpan] The man’s so clever, isn’t he.

He also gives a magic protection amulet to his apprentice Granny when she swings by to pick him up. He’s incredibly distracted by the freckles near her collarbone when he puts it on her, because the man cannot think of anything but having sex with Granuaile every time he lays eyes on her. Seriously, how does this guy even function in the modern world? It reminds me of that one guy I heard about (through the Internet, so take it with a grain of salt) who claimed he found women’s ponytails distracting–get it together! If you’re an adult man and you’re so turned on by little things like a ponytail, or freckles on a collarbone, that you cannot think straight, you have a problem. Seek help.

So I am currently reading Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher¹ and there’s a scene in which our heroes have to go to talk to an incubus (sex demon) who runs an underground sex club. Our protagonist, Grimsby, has a similar reaction to Atticus at this kind of distraction–though it’s much better written–in that he keeps trying (and failing) to think of something else and avert his eyes. The difference, of course, is that Grimsby is a young man walking past orgies and pornographic art, bombarded with this atmosphere. Atticus is over two thousand years old, and has a comparable reaction, except all he’s doing is seeing an attractive young woman not doing or saying anything sexual.

This isn’t relatable to anyone other than a hormonal teenage boy. This isn’t funny at all. It’s weird and gross and uncomfortable.

[And I find it incredibly strange that Hearne wrote Kill the Farm Boy with Delilah S. Dawson because they thought the fantasy genre was too much of a power fantasy for straight white males. That’s an interesting discussion to be had, but when contrasted with Iron Druid Chronicles it makes me scratch my head and wonder if Kevin Hearne has a clue how to write characters and themes.]

Atticus binds the amulet’s magic to Granny’s aura and casts a spell to make it visible to her.

“You’re going to let me watch you do some cool Druid shit?”

“Yep. But you should always remember to speak of such things with reverence and awe.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “You mean you’re going to initiate me into the sacred mysteries of Druidic craft?”

“That’s much better; well done.”

In a better book, this would get a chuckle from me. But it doesn’t work here because the way Granny talks about “cool Druid Shit” is exactly how Atticus always talks, even about Druid work. He doesn’t take anything seriously at all. The joke falls flat because of it.

So

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 27

Because she’s seeing through Atticus’s eyes, Granny calls this her “first out-of-body experience” which is an interesting way to put it? Because seeing through another’s eyes makes one uncoordinated, Atticus advises her not to move, so she sits back and lets him do his magic. She sees him weaving magic, which amazes her, and is surprised that it looks like Celtic knotwork, as it did in the last book. Atticus explains that Celtic art originally WAS magic, because it was meant to symbolize the “bonds between all living things”. I think this is supposed to make it seem as if Druid magic is like the Force or something, but considering how often he uses it to kill, that’s a lot less warm and fuzzy than you’d expect.

Only Druid magic looks like that with the magic vision, apparently. Other types of magic look different. Which is kind of cool, actually! So points for some worldbuilding there.

Granny is impressed and says so with swearing, and Atticus reminds her to use “Reverence and awe” so she corrects herself again.

Atticus ensures that she’s protected from magical attacks, though he warns her that if someone grabs her hair or blood, they can still use it against her. It’s tied to the amulet he just gave her though, so she has to keep wearing it for it to work. He assures Granny though that if she finds herself in a magically warded zone, she should be able to take it off just fine.

Then they walk outside and IMMEDIATELY get magically attacked. Her amulet and his own make it so they only get knocked over, but it’s there! I feel as if a novel with better pacing would not have had this happen right after the magical protections are established, but Hearne has farted away too much time with nonsense side quests, so he’s obviously got to get the ball rolling right the heck now if this is going to make any semblance of sense.

But then!! Atticus realizes!!! THAT HE HAS FELT THIS BEFORE! Because as it turns out, Atticus has faced this kind of magical attack before! Meaning he’s faced this coven of evil witches before!!!! He met them during World War II! And now he’s all angry because he’s wanted vengeance for decades and–

What.

No, seriously, what?

In case you’re confused, no, I did not skip a part of the book; this isn’t fully explained until a couple of chapters from now, but the book just NOW introduces this part of the narrative. We’re over halfway through the book, and not only has (once again) the protagonist not even met the main antagonist of the story, but we’re also suddenly getting a hint of backstory telling us that, despite no previous hints, IT JUST SO HAPPENS that Atticus has encountered them before in a part of his life that hasn’t been described at all.

CRAZY COINCIDENCE!! Isn’t that wonderful?

Make It Easy!: 19

This is hack writing! When we finally get the backstory, it’s like that time in the first book when we find out that Atticus is able to manipulate the Leprechaun because her husband was killed in the Troubles in Ireland. There’s no foreshadowing to this, it’s just there, brought up only when it’s immediately relevant to the story. Hearne could have been building it up this entire time, but instead he wasted the story with a fallen angel, and maenads, and being raped by the Morrigan. Just like with Hounded, Atticus is bumping into important but sparing plot points as they come up, only THEN bothering to explain things like motivations or backstory.

Did no one, in the editing process, stop and tell Hearne, “Look, you know that you should probably establish your main villains before this point? Their connection to the hero needs to be brought up at a point early on, not ‘right before he faces them’?” If they did, Hearne clearly didn’t listen! Again, this man was a high school English teacher, and yet he apparently never learned the basics of how to structure a story! Our hero fumbles around with future setup until the actual story lands on his head!

“Hearne’s first has to continue the Plot threads from the last book! He had to do that, or you’d complain about continuity!” If that was true, Atticus would have cleaned up the patch of Earth that Aenghus Og blighted; but no, he STILL hasn’t taken care of it, despite it supposedly being his sacred duty as a Druid. No, Hearne is throwing whatever he thinks is cool at you and hoping you don’t notice that he’s got no grasp of how to tell a story.

There was not a doubt in my mind that the witches who’d attacked me and my charges during World War II were the same ones attacking me now, and they called themselves die Tochter des dritten Hauses.

That’s how the chapter ends.

It’s supposed to make us think, “Wow! Another old enemy of Atticus! And he finally gets revenge on them!” Instead, it’s making me think, “Wow! Hearne is once again trying to make it so that our protagonist and antagonist have history without doing any of the necessary work to have it make sense!” You would think that if his lead was fighting Nazi witches, Hearne wouldn’t shut up about it. Atticus is far from modest–he will not shut up about how awesome he is or the awesome people he knows. The opening of the first book is him name-dropping a bunch of famous historical figures he hung out with (who are bound to be people the reader has heard of). So you’re telling me he talks on and on about riding with Genghis Khan for conquest and slaughter, but doesn’t like bringing up his time in World War II?

Let’s be real, Hearne probably made this up as he went along, and so he didn’t even think about the idea until now. I think it’s likely Hearne got this far, and then said to himself, “Crap! I need to give Atticus a reason to care about the Plot! Uh… Atticus ran into these witches in World War II!”

The next chapter is the first time Atticus fights the witches, and I don’t think you’ll be shocked to learn it ends anticlimactically. Then it’s another chapter or two before Atticus finally explains what his deal is with these witches? In a long sequence which halts the narrative, obviously.

See you next time.

Better Than You: 10
Did Not Do Homework: 14
The Kids These Days: 10
You Keep Using That Word: 27
Make It Easy!: 19
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 27

¹ Why yes, that is the son of Jim Butcher, of Dresden Files fame.

Comment [4]

The next chapter won’t be ready for a bit, so! Let’s talk about an excerpt from this post:

There’s another thing I appreciate about The Divine Comedy. People often says that books can’t have pop culture references, because in ten years, they’ll seem dated and nobody will understand them. The Divine Comedy is steeped in the pop culture of 1300 C.E. Even Dante experts can’t identify all the people Dante is talking about, but we have to assume that in 1300, his readers knew exactly who he meant. It doesn’t matter. The story is still timeless, because it has great visuals, great characters and beautiful writing.

[rubs forehead] Um. Okay.

Let’s rewind a bit if you’re new here. Rick Riordan is a writer of books aimed at middle schoolers¹ centering around mythology. Mostly Greco-Roman mythology, but he’s done spin-off serieses set in the same universe, one about Egyptian mythology, and one about Norse mythology. The first was the world-renowned Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and I am of the opinion that nothing he has written since has topped those original five books.

Part of my problem with his later books is that he tries too hard to address the fans, like referencing fan memes, hyper-focus on shipping², and, of course, pop culture references. I’ve talked about this before.

We’re going to focus on pop culture references for this one (again).

Now the above-quoted block is obviously a dig at critics who point out that Rick Riordan has, in his later books, relied increasingly on pop culture references. Thanatos uses an iPad. Thor references shows like Arrow and Jessica Jones. Jack sings songs by Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez. Coach Hedge sings the Pokemon theme song (which one is never specified). Percy refers to Frozen. And on and on and on.

He seemingly doesn’t realize that this is not the same thing as cultural references in The Divine Comedy. So let’s go back to The Intertextuality Talk.

Intertextuality is the idea of how texts relate to other texts, whether those texts be books, movies, shows, poems, songs, art, whatever. What I ultimately concluded in my first essay on the topic here on ImpishIdea is that if a reference does not add to the story or its characters, then it doesn’t need to be there. Pop culture references are a prime example of this, because very often they’re there not because they contribute anything, but because the writers want you, the audience, to know they consume pop culture.

I’m getting flashbacks to how the second season of the live-action Supergirl series had two or three references to Hamilton. Why? Because nothing says the writers know pop culture like when the characters stop the action and conversation to turn to the audience and say, “Hey, you guys like Hamilton, right? So do we!”

Okay, yes, sometimes pop culture references are used to establish or develop character traits, but they’re often very shallow uses that don’t work well. Think about how many “geek” characters reference Star Wars or Star Trek in television (especially in the early 2000’s), only to have every other character act like he’s a weirdo. This is downright silly nowadays, when just about everyone has seen at least one Star Wars film.⁴

Neither of these things are what The Divine Comedy is doing. Well, to an extent, yes, Dante Alighieri was showing off what he knew and developing characters. But The Divine Comedy is also a commentary on the times he was living in. That’s the key difference. When the poet refers to things going on in his home town in the poem, he’s not just throwing it out there to tell you where he’s from–he’s making comments about people and issues.

To pick a recent example: the movie Glass Onion makes reference to the pandemic and to plenty of famous celebrities. It’s not doing this because Rian Johnson is trying to show you that he also knows about important cultural events or figures. He’s doing this because he’s making a specific point about these characters, the Disruptors–who they’re connected to, and how they disregard pandemic restrictions to go party with a tech giant with little regard for the safety of others.

Political fiction does this all the time now, too. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is not using the War in Iraq and FOX News because it’s something modern that the audience has heard of. It’s using those as important parts of the story because it’s making very specific points about those things, their effects on American culture, and how they’re perceived by the general public. Maybe you disagree with the conclusions the author makes, as no doubt some of Dante’s readers would have disagreed with his own!

The souls that Dante puts throughout the afterlife aren’t there because “Hey, I know these things exist and I want you to know we read the same books!” They’re there because he’s making examples of them–bad examples in Inferno, and good examples in Paradiso. Bertran de Born isn’t in Hell because he wants you to know he’s read that guy’s work, he’s there because Alighieri is saying, “Don’t listen to this famous author, he’s a warmonger who caused more strife, which is against God’s law.” When he placed Thomas Aquinas in Heaven, it wasn’t to show off his knowledge but to illustrate how a scholar of great faith and intelligence made it to Paradise using intellect and reason.

And not all of Alighieri’s references are incredibly famous people! Some are people and events from his home of Firenze/Florence, Italy. Because he has opinions on those and wants to share with his audience where he thinks all of that fits in the cosmic scheme of things. Yes, it’s pretty ballsy to put people he knew in Hell or Purgatory, but again, he’s making a point.

Riordan is not doing any of this with the majority of his pop culture references. Yes, there are references to geography as the heroes go to different places and see different landmarks. But in terms of pop culture references, he’s throwing them at the audience to say, “Hey! That cool thing you like? Or don’t like? I know about it too! Isn’t this cool!” And while it’s fine when the book is published, these jokes aren’t going to work (assuming they did in the first place) ten years from now because they won’t make sense. A twelve-year-old in 2033 is probably not going to react the same way to a talking sword singing “Shake It Off” because the entire joke was that it was a catchy new pop song (that was already a couple of years old when the book came out anyway).

It’s not even really a joke. It’s just a reference.

[Also? Some of the television shows that Thor references in Magnus Chase, like Jessica Jones, are definitely not children’s shows, so I’m not sure WHY Riordan thought he should namedrop them?]

So it’s galling to me that Rick Riordan looks at the cultural references in The Divine Comedy and apparently pats himself on the back, saying, “Ah yes, I’m just continuing in that tradition when I do pop culture references.” No! No, you’re not! You’re making cheap references for quick laughs that have little to no bearing on characterization, plot, worldbuilding, or theme! And what’s more, you once knew the importance of not dating your work, as Titan’s Curse back in the 2000’s avoided naming the current US President for just this reason! And you’ve done plenty of reference jokes that don’t rely on pop culture to understand (or heck, even the original material). It’s just LAZY.

I promise you, though, however bad Rick Riordan can get about this, Kevin Hearne is a thousand times WORSE. But Riordan’s the one who made the blog post comparing himself to Dante Alighieri in pop culture usage.

In either case, it’s a cheap writing gimmick substituting the work of actual storytelling.

[waving angry butter knife at writers] Stop it. Stop it now.

¹ He has ALSO written crime novels for adults, but he’s not exactly known for those these days.

² The above-linked blog post even has him saying how he ships Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy, which is super dumb but I’ll explode with rage if I talk about that³. So we’re not doing that today.

³ Okay, but REALLY?! You look at a reflection at the state of human souls, specifically the part about sin and its damage to people’s lives and countries, in which our protagonist goes through the underworld observing damned souls gruesomely tormented for their sins in life,and you think, “This guy should hook up with his mentor!”?!? You have definitely been talking too much to Cassandra Clare! They’re not fighting through Hell, they’re taking a tour for spiritual enlightenment! Not everything’s a damn YA novel, where the characters prioritize their love lives over everything else!

⁴ This is a pet peeve of mine that I’m sure absolutely no one cares about, but if a character is really a nerd into niche subculture, why is he (and it’s usually a ‘he’) referencing Star Wars, Harry Potter, Star Trek, and so on? Because that’s the stuff the writer has heard of, and knows the audience has. Nerd characters with weird interests are more likely to send incomprehensible to non-nerds if they’re talking about things like Dragonlance, or House of Leaves, or Newton’s Cannon.

Comment [5]

I am very, very late, and I am very, very sorry. I had hoped to get this up sooner, but things happened, as things are wont to do. But I have a chapter up, and then Mondaybor Day is Labor Day (at least for my US readers)! That’s something to look forward to.

The last chapter ended with Atticus saying, “Wait! I’ve come across these witches before in World War II! I just didn’t know who they were back then!” If this is supposed to be a meaningful Plot Twist, it fails; it reads like Hearne pulled this straight out of his rectum without thinking of a way to tie this into the narrative more organically. And if you were wondering what Atticus was doing in World War II that made him the enemy of a German witch coven, well, you’re going to have to wait, because for once Atticus does not stop the narrative to awkwardly explain something.

[sigh]

So Chapter 18 opens with Atticus removing his binding on Granny’s vision and ordering her to stay in the house. While he goes chasing after the witches, Atticus gives some directions of where he’s going, and interestingly, he actually names the streets he’s on. I Googled this, and it turns out that these are real streets in a real part of Tempe, Arizona.

I don’t know how I feel about that.

Atticus realizes that her path will take her past the Leprechaun’s house (the elderly Irish widow who is his neighbor and talks like the Lucky Charms mascot), and that makes him worried, because he doesn’t know if the witches know that Atticus is friends with the unstable Irish neighbor. If they do, they may try to hurt the Leprechaun to get to him.

I used to try to protect all my friends in the early days, but gradually I realized that the very process of protecting them often painted them as targets–or pointed the way to where I was hiding. It became counterproductive to keeping my location secret, so I long ago fell out of the habit. Running after the witch now, I realized that the situation had changed and I’d failed to see it: I was no longer hiding, so my friends might as well be wearing sandwich boards that said, Hurt me to hurt the Druid.

Have you ever been so paranoid that you didn’t realize that you had a public life with friends that you regularly visited and talked to?

You Keep Using That Word: 28

This is such a bizarre way to characterize Atticus! He’s acting as if he now suddenly cares about other people, but remember that in the last book he demanded one of his werewolf allies go and sacrifice himself for his own quest, and then seemed offended in this book that maybe the werewolves are not thrilled about being used as his disposable mook squad. Atticus blatantly does not care about most of the people around him, other than what they can do for him. The Leprechaun is an exception because Hearne thinks she’s funny and therefore endearing.

Even if we accept this as character development, it still doesn’t mean much! “Atticus is a swell guy, he wants to protect the Widow MacDonagh!” Fine, he doesn’t want a little old lady he’s friends with to be painfully murdered by witches. What does he want, a Cookie for Basic Decency?

So once again, we need to confront the paper-thin myth that he’s paranoid. If he was really paranoid at all, if he was so concerned with not being found, he wouldn’t have built up such a network of friends! He wouldn’t be living in the suburbs of a college town! He wouldn’t be a business owner of a popular New Age store with valuable antiques on display! Remember, he can control plant life and wind, hunt by himself, and heal himself. He can be fully self-sufficient. Except he goes out of his way to live what most people think of as a really good life out in the open. This is all incredibly obvious, and now he’s acting like, “Hey, wait a minute, I haven’t really kept my life secret these past few years!”

This man is apparently Oh-So-Paranoid, and yet _this is just now occurring to him.

He’s an idiot.

Atticus considers drawing on more magical power to catch up with the witch, and then realizes that she’s running on the street. She’s thinking about how to fight, unlike how Atticus usually approaches things. Because she knows Atticus is a Druid who draws his power from the Earth, she is walking on pavement; if he follows, he’ll no longer be in contact with the ground and thus lose his power source. Smart, but again, if Atticus used any of his powers in a non-straightforward way (again, he can control wind when he wants to), she’d be screwed. Luckily for her at this moment, Atticus is an idiot.

Atticus decides that he’s going to get ahead by shapeshifting. He observes that around here there are no windows facing the street, so he throws off his clothes, and turns into an owl. The witch doesn’t notice him, and then sneak attacks her, clawing at her scalp and getting some hair for friendly witch Malina to use.

Give it a

Make It Easy!: 20

for the bit about no windows facing the street.

Of course, as he flies away, the witch throws another hex at him, which staggers owl!Atticus in mid-air, though doesn’t do much more damage because of his magical F-You Amulet. He crashes into the street pavement in human form (which is naked, reminder). The witch grabs him by the hair, and Atticus barely has any power left in his amulet to draw from, so he…

Instead of resisting and trying to tear free by lunging forward, I pushed into a backward somersault.

…a backward…somersault…?

Okay, I get that he’s an immortal, so he’s got time to practice gymnastics, I guess, but it’s a little weird that we’re meant to believe he’s worn out now when he can just… do a backward somersault. It also feels pretty contradictory to Atticus constantly telling us how “real” fights go down, though he’s constantly doing crazy unrealistic stuff in fights, so who even cares at this point?

Well, when he gets up, there are now TWO witches, which kind of freaks out Atticus. He doesn’t know where the second one came from, so conveniently Hearne doesn’t have to figure out where she came from either! Isn’t that handy?

Because they look different now, Atticus realizes that they must be visible on the normal spectrum, so he turns off his glamour vision to observe what the witches looked like to ordinary humans right now.

They looked like they wanted to be Pat Benatar. Or maybe Joan Jett.

I really don’t care about your stupid pop culture references.

To be fair, there are more details about their look, because they’re female characters and Atticus will always give you details about the appearances and wardrobes of female characters. Of course, he’s sure to explain to us that the witches aren’t actually as youthful as they look, because witches don’t have the cool immortality/eternal youth that a Druid has.

Because you need a reminder that he’s eternally young, and that his magic is so much better than everyone else’s.

Better Than You: 11

Police sirens are going off, signaling their approach, and he and the witches are trying to figure out what to do next, when

“Atticus? Is that yer naked bum what I’m lookin’ at?” the widow called from the porch.

Gosh, I hate this woman’s accent. Let’s apply the fix TMary suggested!

Is that yer Irishly naked Irish bum what I’m Irishly lookin’ at? I’m Irish!”

There, that’s better.

Atticus realizes that the witches could easily blast the shiz out of the Leprechaun, so he needs to create a diversion. What he comes up with is that he’d dropped some of the witch’s hair on the ground, so he picks it up, sticks it in his mouth, shapeshifts into a hound (using the last of his magical energy to do so) and runs towards his house. The witches, worried about what might be done with the hair, go after the dog instead of noticing the Leprechaun.

During the chase, Atticus wonders if the witches have any other spells other than the one killing hex that he’s seen them use. He points out that some witches can have a lot of spells up their sleeves, especially if they have time to prepare, but a lot of them aren’t really any good at upfront, in-your-face combat.

He chalks this up to a European thing? That “a lot of European witches” are the type who aren’t really good at combat unless they’ve prepared rituals, unlike Indian witch Laksha who can throw down with anyone. And I’m once again thinking that this is Hearne going with the idea that Asian people all know kung-fu, or some sort of martial arts, and that European combat was primitive and stupid. We had something similar in the final boss fight of the first book, in which Atticus tells us that Aenghus Og has only one sword fighting style, whereas he, Atticus, has learned martial arts in Asia.

Which martial arts? Y’know. Those ones. From Asia. The witches know them, too!

One day, there will be a rant about this, but given that right now I’m picking this as a vibe from a throwaway line, I don’t know if it fits here. [points at Hearne] But I’m watching you, pal!

The witches try a magical charm to pull the amulet off of him, which doesn’t work (it’s magically bound to him), but it does knock him over. Atticus picks up on the fact that they’ve picked up on the fact that they can’t just blast him, but they can wear him down and cause him a lot of inconvenience if they keep hexing him.

So he runs to his house! And he almost changes back right on the porch, but Oberon mentioned at some point earlier that Mr. Semerdjian, the nosy neighbor that Atticus hates for Reasons, was back home, and he notices that he’s watching through his window. So Attticus doesn’t turn back into a human because said neighbor would report him for indecent exposure or something.

[sigh]

I almost put a “LAUGH, DAMNIT” but I don’t know if this is a joke? I understand that he’s got a lot going on, so Atticus doesn’t want to be investigated for something stupid, but we’re really deciding that he’s making choices in the middle of pitched magical battle based on what he’s afraid his neighbor might report to the police. Lives are on the line here, Hearne! Or maybe not–the witches explicitly can’t even step on Atticus’s front lawn because of the magical protections there.

And you know what? I’m tempted to give it a “Make It Easy!” because right now, we could be having Atticus’s house besieged by the witches, his apprentice and dog trying to hold the lines, as he frantically tries to get in and his neighbor witnesses what’s going on, or something. How interesting would it be if Atticus risks exposure of the magical community in trying to make himself safe? Yeah, he wouldn’t care because he doesn’t care about anyone, but everyone around him would care and make his life difficult. But no, instead of exploring any of those angles, he gets in without a hitch.

But maybe it doesn’t deserve a point for that, because I’m projecting possible ideas? I don’t know. In any case, before he gets in the house, Atticus tells us he’s completely magically recharged though, just from sprinting across the lawn, so I WILL take a point for that.

Make It Easy!: 21

Remember in the last book when he recharged by sleeping in the yard overnight? He has to be in contact with the ground to recharge magically, but he just… manages it by running in dog form across the front yard? What the heck is this, then? Maybe it took extra power because he also had to heal himself more in the last book, but really, in this one, he’s recharged from running around the yard a bit?

Granny lets Atticus inside, and he turns back into a human and explains that the witches outside are from the coven that tried to kill them earlier. He then warns her to stay inside until he comes back. Because he’s leaving again! This time to go protect the Leprechaun from the witches. She seems a bit worried, noticing the wound he’s got from where he landed on the street, his skin all scraped, but Atticus dismisses it as it’ll heal.

Also! Remember, that when Atticus shapeshifts, he loses his clothes.

“Okay, sensei,” she said. “Nice ass,” she added as I closed the door behind me.

*LAUGH, DAMNIT:*28

O-kay, I get that using humor to deflate tense situations is a thing, but really? Is now really the time? The house is besieged by malevolent witches, and Atticus was just chased through the streets by them. And the apprentice’s comment, after getting a brief explanation of what’s going on, decides to compliment his butt.

What is this? What is the point of this? To build up their relationship? To be funny? You would think that if Atticus is really that invested in not seeing his apprentice in a sexual light, he would tell her off for making that comment. That would, of course, require Atticus to have some level of intelligence and maturity though, and he can’t even see her freckles without having sexual thoughts so here we are.

At least, shapeshifting actually takes some kind of toll on Atticus, which makes me feel slightly better about his overpowered-ness. It’s apparently “starting to hurt.” Not sure why, but it’s an interesting side effect.

So he grabs another of the extra amulets that the Morrigan left him, he turns into an owl, activates his magical camouflage and–hang on! He can cast spells in animal form? This probably isn’t the first time he’s done that, but now I’m thinking about it, and it’s a little weird? I’m not one of those people who insists that when fantasy characters turn into animal form, that they have to have an animal mind as well¹, but there should be some trade-off, I think? Except in Iron Druid, apparently a Druid can turn into an animal and still cast spells. Does that not strike anyone else as being a little too convenient for him?

I don’t use these counts enough anyway, here we go:

Make It Easy! 22

The witches have left the siege of his house, and so Atticus appears on the porch, turns back into a person, and again, remember that when he shapeshifts, he’s not wearing clothes so

“Whoo-hoo, Atticus, have ye come to give me a show? I think I have a couple of dollars in me purse inside.”

I hate the Leprechaun so much. Again, let’s apply the fix:

“Whoo-hoo, Atticus, have ye Irishly come to give me an Irish show? I Irishly think I have a couple of Irish dollars in me Irish purse inside. I’m Irish!”

I don’t know why it works, but it does make me feel a little better.

He covers himself and asks to go inside. When he does, he covers himself in a towel.

“Aw, why’d ye put away yer twig and berries?” the widow teased

STOP TALKING YOU STUPID STEREOTYPE

LAUGH, DAMNIT: 29

Atticus instructs her to lock all the doors because witches are on the way. He hands the Leprechaun the amulet and asks if she can put it on a necklace, and she goes to get one from her bedroom, although she says he better have an explanation for her. Atticus starts using the magic to “bind the metal of the locks to the jambs” in order to make it harder to get in. They lock themselves in the bathroom, and someone starts beating on the front door as he explains the situation as (and I’m paraphrasing) “There are two German witches trying to kill us, so wear this amulet. If it hurts, that means it’s working, so please don’t take it off.”

The Leprechaun asks why these German witches want to kill them, and his reply?

“The short version is that one of them’s having a bad hair day,” I said.

I would be mildly amused by this if I didn’t hate these characters.

The witches break in through the front window using… the patio chairs? Why can’t they just use their magic? I’m unsure. But they break in and try to open the bathroom door.

“Sie sind hier drinnen!” one called to the other.

Someone who knows German, tell me how good this is. Atticus, who knows German, should probably be able to tell us right away what this means. I don’t know, maybe we’re meant to figure out from context, which admittedly isn’t that hard.

Anyhow the witches start trying to bust down the door. Atticus tells the Leprechaun to hide in the tub, as he’ll take care of it.

Concentrating on the locking mechanism, already buckling after a couple of kicks, I began to whisper an unbinding on the metal

WAIT this reminds me! Druid magic works by speaking spells! I forgot about that, but this reminded me, because he’s using spoken magic to work the binding here. And he uses spoken magic when he’s casting spells in combat, like the Cold Fire spell. So going back–how does he cast spells as an animal? Animals can’t physically speak human languages, right? I guess the Morrigan can speak in crow form, and the Irish gods are just uber-Druids, but the first time she does in the second chapter of the first book, that a bird’s anatomy shouldn’t be able to form words.

What the eff, it’s not like Atticus’s magic has ever really been well-constructed.

He yanks open the door as the witch tries to kick it down (again, why not use magic to bust down the door???), and then punches the witch in the face. The second witch blasts him (with MAGIC). Atticus uses his towel to make an impromptu weapon. Which means he’s not wearing anything right now–

“Nice bum,” the widow said softly as I approached the doorway, and I almost laughed.

[headdesk]

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 30

Again, THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR THIS. They could quite easily END the Leprechaun right now, and have been knocking Atticus around, have torn up her house–and she’s cracking jokes about Atticus’s butt. We need to reinforce how these two different women (Granny and the Leprechaun) BOTH think Atticus has an attractive body in the middle of what’s meant to be an action scene.

I’m not saying you can’t put jokes in otherwise serious scenes, but Hearne just. Keeps. Doing it. And the jokes here are meant to lift up the protagonist in one way or another–to show off how clever he is, or in this case, how attractive he is to the opposite sex. I seem to recall that when jokes are cracked in fight scenes in Dresden Files it often highlights how ridiculous Harry is–sometimes while he’s being clever, and sometimes not.

Because he’s using this hammer home how awesome and hot he is, let’s give it a

Better Than You: 12

So Atticus whips a witch in the face with the towel, and he also makes an obligatory Douglas Adams reference because, you know, towels. Also apparently over five hundred people highlighted that reference on Kindle. They should just read Douglas Adams instead. He drops the towel and somersaults–

AGAIN? What is it with you and somersaulting?

The two witches argue about whether or not to retreat or work on killing him right now. NOW the German is translated for us, in case you’re wondering. But they’ve been knocked down, and so they think maybe it’s best to back down and try to kill him later. But also! Right now he’s unarmed and on his own, so this might be the best shot they have to kill him.

Of course I was alone. Did she think I had a posse or something?

I don’t know why he’s arguing about this? Atticus is acting like this is a stupid observation, but Atticus often goes into fights with at least one other person as backup.

Anyhow the towel doesn’t count as armament because he’s dropped it in the process of somersaulting, which is dumb, because it’s immediately after the sentence where he paraphrases Douglas Adams. He doesn’t even follow his own nerd advice in the following sentence! How stupid is this man?

It doesn’t matter, because IT JUST SO HAPPENS, GUYZ, that at that moment,

A blue BMW Z4 convertible switched off and Hal leapt out, his nostrils already flaring with the scent of blood in the air.

“Er ist ein Wolf! Das andert die Sache,” the brunette said. _He is a wolf! That changes things.

Damn right it does, witch.

And that’s the end of the chapter. One of his allies shows up to bail him out, and the next chapter begins with the witches running away, because they don’t want to fight a werewolf.

How convenient.

Make It Easy!: 23

The last chapter, this one, and the following one, could all be condensed into one, methinks. What the sequence actually accomplishes, Plot-wise, is introducing the witches and establishing that he has fought these witches before. There’s some character stuff about him going out of his way to help his friends. But all of that should have been established before we hit the (checks Kindle) 58% mark!

The witches are the actual Plot of the novel! Hence the title! And yet they just now arrived, and we still don’t know their names or goals! We’re only told that Atticus faced them before, and he only just found this out.

And to make it WORSE, when Atticus fights them, someone comes to bail him out of the fight just when he needs it (we’ll get more into the details of this next time). This might work in a better story–that he was only barely hanging on in this fight and has to be rescued, only to figure out how to beat them in the final battle. But this entire fight he’s managed to stay ahead. Yeah, he was running–while the witches stumbled around, no idea how to actually beat him.

Once again, this entire thing is a sequence meant to show off how awesome Atticus is. Even against an unknown enemy, he still beats them back, and one of his awesome friends shows up to save him–and make the enemies run off so they can be saved for the final battle.

Oi. This book is dumb.

Better Than You: 12
Did Not Do Homework: 14
The Kids These Days: 10
You Keep Using That Word: 28
Make It Easy!: 23
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 30

¹ Though it should, given that he’s apparently susceptible to animal mind control in the first book when he turns into hound form.

Comment [6]

Happy Halloween!

You may have thought, given how the last chapter ends with the fight between Atticus and two evil German witches interrupted by the arrival of Atticus’s werewolf lawyer Hal, that this would lead to an awesome battle sequence where a werewolf enters the fray. Well, I am sorry to inform you that Hearne wrote no such sequence, and that this is when the witches leave.

Make It Easy!: 24

The chapter opens thusly:

Dropping a werewolf into a witch fight is like dropping a tank into a snake pit. The snakes might have fangs, but the tank isn’t going to feel their bites.

Why?

[Also! Side note! Over two hundred people highlighted these sentences on Kindle.]

It seems as if the werewolf is the tank of the supernatural world in Hearne’s universe, and I don’t know why. Wolves are certainly powerful creatures, especially in groups, but in Iron Druid it’s as if you can’t beat werewolves without silver or something like actual god powers. This doesn’t make sense (to me, at least)–if you have offensive magic to blast people with, you would think that you could handle a large canine? I suppose that it’s explained that these witches don’t have that much in the way of varied spells, but the sentence here and a following passage imply that ALL witches’ spells are useless against werewolves.

I really hate always saying, “Hey guys, Dresden Files does this better,” but… look, Dresden Files does this so much better! There’s a friendly group of werewolves, the Alphas, and we’re told that when they turn into wolves, they’re very deadly, even against supernatural threats. But that’s because wolves are inherently dangerous creatures, moreso when empowered by human intelligence.

Here? Werewolves are apparently just immune to most magic, unless you have silver or a lightning bolt or something. They’re immune to the Bacchants’ magic, they’re immune to the witches’ hexes, and I don’t know why! Why would they be immune to offensive magic? This is especially annoying because the book went out of its way to explain why cold iron is effective against faeries (even if that explanation was dumb). Werewolves, though? They’re just immune to everything!

In case you needed this fight to be even more uninteresting, Hal doesn’t try to fight the witches. He “made no move to pursue them” as they ran away, only watching and “flashing his canines”. Atticus plans to chase, but remembers he’s not wearing anything, so he stays inside. Instead of turning into an animal, which is a thing he can do.

“Bloody curses,” I ground out softly. Then my voice rose in anger. “Curses in seventy dead languages, Hal! Why didn’t you stop them?”

“Curses in seventy dead languages”? Yeah, that sounds a sentence that someone would actually say in genuine frustration, doesn’t it?

I don’t know what to say. Give it a

Better Than You: 13

I guess?

Hal explains that the reason he didn’t interfere was because the pack leader, Gunnar, ordered that he not get involved in Atticus’s fights. Which makes sense, and it could be milked for drama: the werewolves being unable to help Atticus, and so he has to figure things out without his allies. But this reads more like Hearne wanted to bail Atticus out of the situation and only kind of thought about how he should connect the characters to it somehow.

Hal asks why Atticus is naked in an old lady’s house anyway, and he’s been trying to call his cell phone. While Atticus starts to explain, the Leprechaun comes out of the house and

“Well, that was quite an exciting bit o’fun, wasn’t it, me boy?” She gave me a smart slap on my rear and cackled.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 31

Hehe, isn’t sexual harassment hilarious?

Hal is appropriately disturbed, and Atticus finally explains what happened. Then Hal gets to explaining what he was trying to reach Atticus for. See, there were police at his shop, because one of his employees is dead: Perry.

No, not Perry?! Perry the Goth?!? We liked him! He was dumb as a box of rocks, but he wasn’t a bad guy! And the fact that Hearne thought ‘Goth’, as in the subculture, needed to be capitalized, means we in the Impish community imagined him as a member of one of the medieval Germanic peoples who sacked Rome.

Atticus seems kind of stunned; don’t worry, he’ll get a full reaction later. He works out that while one witch was hunting him in the neighborhood, the other attacked Perry at the shop in a “Simultaneous strike” before meeting up to chase him in the neighborhood.

Manannan Mac Lir take me for a fool.

DUH DOY!

So let’s get this straight: the ancient Druid, who is supposedly prepared for anything, never considered that a coven of enemy witches might split its forces to scout out and/or attack both his home and his place of work at the same time.

You Keep Using That Word: 29

Hal says he could track the witches by scent (though he can’t attack them because his Alpha’s rules or something), though Atticus tells him that since he has hair from one of the witches, he can track them himself. This assumes that the witches will all hang out together, especially since they know that he has a hair sample from one of them. But the villains being stupid is pretty par for the course in Iron Druid books; remember, the last book’s Plot had the villain render himself impotent in his elaborate revenge scheme.

The Leprechaun makes them sandwiches and tea, while Atticus tells Hal what’s going on. He declares that he needs to end this conflict tonight! He’s tired of the witches going after his friends. Except, I’m remembering that Atticus had a moment like this in the last book, where he declared he was going to take the Plot seriously, and it led to him walking around as if everything was normal until the baddies kidnap Hal and Oberon.

Now, despite the pack supposedly not helping him, he asks Hal to have people watching the Leprechaun’s house. Gunnar, the alpha who the other werewolves HAVE to obey, won’t like it, but Hal promises that if he has to do it himself, he will. Isn’t it great that this conflict between Gunnar and Atticus doesn’t get in the way of them doing what he wants on the sidelines, even though it isn’t resolved?

Make It Easy!: 25

Atticus tells Hal that he needs him to go with him to be a witness to the nonaggression treaty he’s going to sign with Malina’s coven. Why that needs to be done NOW, I don’t know, given that they’re clearly allies in this fight, though I guess I can’t fault him for wanting it in writing? Hal says he can do it later that afternoon, but earlier he has to be in court. He also encourages Atticus to go to the police and make a statement about Perry. He then tells Hal he needs a better alibi, because he leans too much on Granuaile for “I was hanging out with my girlfriend” as an explanation to the police. This time, he wants “something ironclad”.

Hal nodded. “All right. I’ll send a couple of reliable sorts over to kill time with her at your house. They’ll have a Lord of the Rings festival or something and testify you made the popcorn if necessary.”

…“a Lord of the Rings festival”??

Is the word you’re looking for ‘marathon’???

Did Not Do Homework: 15

Atticus admits he’d rather be doing that than what he has to do, and I feel very strange in that I agree with him! I’d much rather be watching The Lord of the Rings than reading his shenanigans.

Hal has one werewolf go watch over the Leprechaun, and three more to go to Atticus’s house later with Granny. Atticus declares that now he’ll go talk to the police, and Hal points out that right now, he’s only wearing a towel. Atticus replies that since he last left the shop by going on the roof and turning into an owl, his clothes are still there on the roof–he just needs to go get them. When Hal asks why he did that, our hero explains that he did that to escape the Russian rabbi, and then inquires if Hal’s dug up any information on it–he hasn’t, so we have to wait for later to learn/care.

They wait for one of the werewolves to arrive to accompany the Leprechaun before they leave. The werewolf in question is Greta, and we’re told this as if we’re supposed to know/care who that is. We ARE told that she “only just survived the fight” at the end of the last book, which makes me think that she probably doesn’t like hanging around with Atticus or doing him favors right now. Atticus, surprisingly, does not really think about this because he assumes everyone exists to serve his needs. Sadly, given the quality of this writing, they do.

Make It Easy!: 26

Hal tells Greta to take the Leprechaun for a drive out of town for the night. Leprechaun suggests going to Flagstaff, which has a steakhouse she likes, and werewolves like steaks, right? That sounds like a stereotype, but Hal gives Greta money for it, and the Leprechaun harasses Atticus some more before leaving.

Christmas isn’t all that far away, ye know. Would ye be likin’ a nice set of boxers this year?”

“Mrs. MacDonagh!” I said, embarrassed.

“What? Yer the sort that wears briefs, then?

Yadda yadda, she tells him that he shouldn’t be “goin’ commando”, and Atticus asks where she heard that term, and it’s on television from an episode of Friends. And she explains the context on the episode of Friends (I assume the explanation is correct, though I don’t know because I never care about the show), because we need to establish that Kevin Hearne has knowledge of a trendy modern show like Friends.

The Kids These Days: 11

Atticus says goodbye as Hal laughs at the entire conversation. Thus ends Chapter 19.

Hal drives Atticus to near his store, and he decides to fly up to the roof and throw his stuff down to Hal. Wait, isn’t the stuff on his roof his clothes and phone? He specifically tells Hal that he’ll toss down his cell phone to him, so not to drop it. Shouldn’t he just… shapeshift into an owl, fly up, turn human again, get dressed, and climb down? It can’t be that tall of a building, can it? Why is he tossing the stuff from the roof?

There’s a fun little moment where Atticus drops the towel, and Hal pretends he’s been blinded. Actually okay writing about their friendship? In this novel? What? He drops his stuff down to Hal, and presumably goes down and changes, though it doesn’t actually say, and then he checks his phone and calls Granny. She asks him if he’s going to get revenge for Perry the Goth, and then says “can I just tell you one of the many reasons I love you?” Atticus responds in kind, telling us again, as if we’re stupid, that this is their code for an alibi when they’re on the phone. The alibi is only the cover that was discussed in the last chapter though, that they’re having some friends over for a Lord of the Rings “festival” (again, the word they probably mean is “marathon”??), and they hang up.

So Atticus and Hal walk out of an alley to see the CSI guys taking pictures of Perry’s corpse. Because, of course, when you’re trying to appear completely innocent and unnoticeable at a crime scene of someone you know, you walk out from an alley, right? Okay, not knowing the geography of the place, it might be the easiest way to get there. It still SOUNDS a little weird though, doesn’t it?

Atticus is actually bothered by Perry’s death, as the guy never did anything to hurt anyone. He thinks that because the store is magically protected, the witch must have lured Perry outside to do the killing curse.

Perry would have looked at the black leather and stepped right out to ask how he could help.

Um, okay.

To Hearne’s credit, Atticus seems genuinely upset about Perry’s death, but this falls a bit flat because Perry hasn’t been developed as a character or in his relationship to the protagonist. We know almost nothing about his personality. Atticus tells now that Perry the Goth is a peaceful young man who wouldn’t hurt a fly (would make pillaging Rome difficult, I imagine), that he’s got a weird ear piercing, and that he’s easily distracted by attractive women. But we didn’t know any of this before! We know almost nothing about him, other than that he’s cheerful, he’s a Goth, and he’s a nerd who loves Monty Python! For all we know about Perry, he could have a unibrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, and lead a troupe of actors in a life of crime! All Hearne told us is that he’s a nerd and a Goth. The sympathy we’re supposed to feel here isn’t nothing, but it mostly falls flat–if Atticus really cared this much about Perry the Goth before his death, why hasn’t this been shown to us before now?

Detective Geffert, the one on duty here, who was also the Detective from Chapter 15, sees our hero and approaches. Atticus says he doesn’t have to pretend to be upset, as he really is upset. He doesn’t even respond the first time the Detective questions him.

“Mr. O’Sullivan,” Geffert tried again, “God knows how you must feel right now, but I need to ask you a couple of questions.”

It was a surprisingly considerate approach. I’d half-expected him to be belligerent and suspicious.

…why? I know that this is the same detective from earlier, whose name I didn’t bother to learn, but does he not realize that maybe the police officer would try to act nice to someone whose employee has just dropped dead?

You might be wondering what a homicide detective is doing here, given Perry was cursed, and so there’s no evidence or wounds that necessarily mean murder. Hal asks just that, and the Detective says he’s collecting evidence and asks where Atticus was when this happened. He answers that he was at home watching Kill Bill with his girlfriend. The Detective points out that he called Atticus’s number, and no one picked up (because it was on the roof of the store building with his clothes); Atticus’s explanation is that he never answers the phone because he’s tired of calls from telemarketers.

My voice had all the richness of expression of a cement block.

I think what Hearne/Atticus is going for here is that he’s in shock over Perry’s death? We’ll talk about this more in a bit.

The Detective asks how Atticus heard about Perry’s death then; Atticus says Hal told him, and Hal says that he found out because they have a police radio in the law office. There are some generic crime scene questions, like how long Perry’s worked at the store (two years–and yet he never noticed Atticus didn’t age when he’s pretending to be twenty-one?), if he had any enemies (none), that sort of stuff. He asks about other employees and regular customers, and then asks for tapes from the security cameras.

The Detective asks if there was anything “that might have hinted this was coming?” and, uh, Atticus gives us this:

Besides my divination that morning? No. A giant flock of guilt flew in and settled down upon my shoulders. “‘Not a whit,’” I said softly, past the tightening throat. “‘We defy augury.’”

“Beg your pardon?”

“‘There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’” I whispered, my vision blurring a bit, Perry’s still form losing focus.

The Detective is understandably confused by this, and asks what the heck that means. Although, because Hearne wants us to think that Atticus is smarter than any other man to ever live, the Detective thinks “providence” is a reference to the city in Rhode Island.

Better Than You: 14

The quote is from Hamlet, in case you’re curious. Act V, scene ii. Atticus pulls out Shakespeare quotes to prove he’s the smartest smart person a lot.

Better Than You: 15

You know, we’re not done here. Because while I am not a Shakespeare scholar, quick Googling confirms a couple of things: the line in Hamlet is an indirect reference to a quote from Jesus in the Gospels (Matthew 10: 28-31) about how God notices even the falling of a sparrow, and cares much more for His human subjects than for birds, so of course he cares about you. It’s also a quote about giving up illusions of control and letting God, or Providence, or whatever, take up the reins of your life.

None of this applies to Atticus (even aside from the fact that he’s obsessed with Shakespeare, a fact which makes no sense but I’ve covered that before). Okay, yes, he foresaw through divination that someone he knew was in danger. Everything else though? Atticus does not care about the will of God, or Heaven, or the gods, or what have you. It’s also a fairly explicit Christian reference in the play, and Atticus isn’t Christian!

Did Not Do Homework: 16

When the Detective asks more, he admits that it’s “a private elegy for the deceased”. The Detective notices that he’s talking a lot more eloquently than his cover identity would indicate, and he’s a bit distressed by that, coming up with a horrible excuse.

“Gotta develop the noggin along with the nunchucks, dude,” I replied in the same low monotone I’d used since I arrived. “I don’t just sell books, I actually read them too.”

The Detective is like, “Oh, okay,” but Atticus notes that he’s probably caught on to something. Especially because I don’t think he sells Shakespeare in the store.

Hey, can you imagine an ancient immortal who is skilled at blending in, and is so paranoid, that the death of a guy he kind of knew sent him into such melancholy that he let his cover slip?

You Keep Using That Word: 30

This man is over two thousand years old. You’re telling me because Perry the Goth died that he’s slipping up? I might let this pass if they were shown to be close, but that’s not what we’ve gotten at all! We had no reason to think that Atticus was this emotionally attached to Perry!

The Detective asks if he’s found his sword since they last spoke, and Atticus says he hasn’t.

The detective paused and wrote something down on his notepad that was significantly longer than “No.”

Alright, I found that a bit amusing. I like this detective guy.

The guy wraps up the questioning, the body’s taken away, Atticus closes the shop and calls his new employee, telling her what happened and that she should stay home for a couple of days. He bikes home, to find the Detective at the house already talking to Granny to make sure the alibi makes sense.

Also, Oberon makes a stupid joke about the Detective being “The Man” and how he “smells like mildewed socks and tuna fish.” I want to be clear in saying that thus far, the Detective has not actually done anything wrong, or even been particularly rude in handling this case in any of the chapters he’s appeared in.

Detective points out that he rode a bike home, but earlier that day he went to the store on foot. Atticus said he leaves the bike there sometimes because he likes walking home. The Detective also points out that he did recognize that what Atticus said earlier was a quote, so he talked to a dispatcher at the station who has an English degree and told him it was from Hamlet. Atticus tries to play it cool, though the Detective points out that he’s quite obviously hiding something, given the way he’s answering questions, and how the previous day when they searched the house he sounded like an idiot, only now he can quote Shakespeare at the drop of a hat.

My patience evaporated like a dewdrop in Yuma and my anger throttled my better sense. “‘Is’t not enough to break into my garden, and, like a thief, to come to rob my grounds, climbing my walls in spite of me the owner, but thou wilt brave me with these saucy terms?’”

…hoo boy.

Detective Geffert asks what that’s from, and Atticus says it’s from Henry the Sixth, Part Two.

The detective frowned. “How much Shakespeare have you memorized?”

“All of it. _Dude._” I don’t know why I sneered at him; it wasn’t smart to taunt him like that make busting me a personal crusade. Yet regardless of how wise it wasn’t, I held his eyes recklessly with a testosterone challenge flaring away in mine, and he saw not only that but confirmed the spark of intelligence he’d glimpsed earlier. Then he knew that I’d sold him a bill of goods the day before, played him and all his cronies for fools. His jaw clenched and his shoulders tensed, which Granuaile and Oberon both noticed.

Excuse me for a second.

[walks back while sipping apple juice out of a jug with a curly straw]

Alright, let’s analyze this.

Part of why Iron Druid Chronicles in general, and Atticus in particular, are so annoying is that the text keeps reinforcing this idea over and over and over and over again: Atticus is clever. He tells us and the other characters several times that his paranoia has kept him alive for centuries, and other characters remark that they’ve never met anyone as paranoid as Atticus.

Except, as we’ve covered dozens of times in this sporking, he’s not. The first book has several instances of characters appearing and telling Atticus that some villain was in town, gunning for his head, only for him to have an initial freakout and then go about his day as if nothing was wrong. He has no clue what’s going on around him, keeps trusting the witches while telling us that they can’t be trusted, and thinks it’s no big deal that the gods of every mythology, avoiding whom is the reason he moved to Tempe in the first place, all know where he lives.

More frustrating than that, though, is the moments in the story where Atticus/Hearne basically turns to the audience and says, “Look, I _know this is a stupid idea, but I can’t help it. I have to do something stupid.” He did this in Chapter 15 of the last book, and he’s doing it here.

This man is so dumb! How are we supposed to take any of this writing seriously? We’re told again and again that Atticus is clever, that he’s in control, that he knows what he’s doing. He’s an immortal mage who supposedly lasted for over two thousand years using his wits and cleverness, being good at blending in with others, and yet in instances like this, we’re told that A) he can’t hold in his grief for the death a guy he’s never show anything more than detached amusement for and B) he can’t help but deliberately provoke an armed officer of the law when he’s called out on his lies?

You Keep Using That Word: 31

I’m not done here! Atticus has effectively blown his cover in every possible way! He came to Tempe to avoid the gods, and yet they all know where he lives as of Chapter 1. He’s created a fake identity to be able to live in peace–except now for two books in a row, the police have realized that something is up with this guy, even if they don’t know what, precisely. And he all but admitted to this detective, to his face, that he’s lying to him about who he is and where he’s been, and rubbing it in the man’s face because he can.

Again, I want to emphasize: the Detective has done nothing wrong. He is investigating deaths, and the lead he has is a man who is obviously lying to him and obviously lied to the police about a death weeks ago (the events of the first book). If Atticus were a character written in a way remotely likable, his frustration would be understandable, though it’d also be mixed with wishing that he didn’t have to lie to a guy who was trying to do the right thing.

Yeah, we can have a conversation about the police and their abuse of power. Sure (just not in the comments because that’s heavier than I want to deal with on ImpishIdea). This doesn’t apply here, though–Atticus has never expressed problems with law enforcement throwing their weight around against anyone but him. His issues with the police boils down to “They question me and my obviously fake cover stories, therefore they are scum.” And this cop, Detective Geffert? He has broken no laws and not done anything outside of what he legally can to figure out the crime of the deaths at the nightclub.

Atticus’s attitude, of course, is that this man is filth because “How dare he not bend over backwards to do what I want him to?” After all, other characters like Hal and Granny do! He has no sympathy for someone who isn’t serving him. It’s like the attitude of someone who is mean to the waiter/waitress, up to eleven.

[Considering the werewolf pack leader, Gunnar, is also not doing what Atticus wants, I wouldn’t be surprised if he became a villain in a later book for Atticus to kill, and we’re meant to cheer him on over it.]

In a weird turn of events, Oberon of all characters is the one who says, “Hey, maybe that’s not such a great idea to sneer at the cops.” And no! It’s not! It’s really dumb to openly antagonize law enforcement officers! Atticus is still really clever, though, amirite??

Granny awkwardly interrupts to prompt the Detective to leave, because someone has to say something to diffuse the situation. The Detective agrees to leave, though he’s got one last point to make: the previous day, when part of Atticus’s cover explanation was that A) he has both ears, unlike the guy at the club massacre they’re looking for, and B) he has receipts from Target where he bought stuff? The Detective went to double check and looked at the security tapes from Target, and he is indeed there! But in the security footage, he’s missing an ear.

Atticus lies and says he had both ears then, though the Detective again says that he didn’t in the tape. Our protagonist shoots back that it’s “A low-resolution video in terrible lighting” (has he seen it himself?). He adds that his ear isn’t prosthetic, and offers to let the Detective prove it by pulling on it. Which he does, weirdly, though he leaves to go oversee an autopsy afterward.

Have you ever been so paranoid that you lied to a police officer, to his face, about something that he knows, and you know that he knows, and he knows that you know that he knows¹ is a lie?

You Keep Using That Word: 32

The last paragraph of the chapter summarizes that Atticus chilled with Granny and Oberon for the rest of the afternoon. Then Hal picks him up, and

Though I never thought I’d say it in my long life, I was going to make peace with witches.

Atticus had an agreement with the local coven at the start of the first book! They’d done each other a favor! WHY is he acting like this is so ridiculous? Why does he apparently hate witches so much that he can’t even imagine making peace with them?

I want an answer to this, Hearne! Why does he hate witches so much? None of the answers he’s given us make witches any less trustworthy than, say, the serial-killing vampire lawyer, or the Morrigan, who he regularly pals around with. And of course, it amounts to nothing, because despite constantly telling us that he hates them and they can’t be trusted, he keeps trusting them. If Malina really wanted him dead, she wouldn’t have to hex him, she has enough money and power that she could easily hire or enchant someone to throw a bomb through his store window. The fact that she hasn’t should be an obvious indicator that she doesn’t want him dead.

Ugh. Anyway, that’s it for now. Next time we’ll be introduced to a few more good witches, and, twenty-one chapters in, FINALLY get the backstory on the evil witch coven that has been antagonizing Atticus the entire book.

Have a happy Halloween, and wish me luck to survive National Novel Writing Month this November!

Better Than You: 15
Did Not Do Homework: 16
The Kids These Days: 11
You Keep Using That Word: 32
Make It Easy!: 26
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 31

¹ Double-check my math here. I may have lost track of this sentence.

Comment [3]

Merry Christmas¹ and happy New Year! ARE YOU READY FOR SOME EXPOSITION?!?

Because that’s what this chapter’s for. And I apologize, as this chapter is a bit of a long one.

Recap: after a recent attack by the evil German witch coven, and finding out that his longtime employee Perry the Goth had been murdered by the witches, Atticus arranges with his werewolf lawyer Hal to go ahead and sign his treaty of non-aggression with the friendly Polish witch coven in town, led by Malina.

This chapter begins with Atticus and Hal going to Malina’s condo, and all the members of her coven are also there. There’s a section of them all being introduced, starting with Bogumila.

“You may call me Mila in public,” Bogumila said. “The Americans stare if your name is too ethnic.”

I nodded with a half grin, and Hal–whose full name was Halbjorn–said, “I know exactly what you mean.”

You know how often I say my name to people in public? Not a lot! I mean, I get that it’s more conspicuous of a name in the Anglophone world than “Emilia” was in the last book, but I also think Hearne is being really judgmental of American culture here, considering I’m pretty sure that he just Google’d “Polish female names” and plucked these out for this book.

Also! This goes against Chapter Four of the last book, in which Atticus tells us that Americans don’t care about names, as long as you show off money (and it’s established in this book that the witches have wealth, live in an affluent neighborhood, and don’t mind showing it off, so I think they fit the bill). A comment that was super hypocritical considering Atticus buys expensive crap, sits on maps to lost treasures, and can throw away thirty thousand dollars as he did in Chapter 25 of the last book.

I’m going to give a

Did Not Do Homework: 17

because he can’t even keep this idea straight from his own last book. He’s judgmental in both cases, but can’t decide what he’s judgmental about: if Americans care about names or not? Well, do they, Hearne? Do they?!

Next introduced is Berta, who is in the kitchen. She’s overweight. That’s her personality.

Berta, a festively plump personage, was snacking as she prepared a tray of hors d’oeuvres

I mean, yeah, it’s nice that the overweight character isn’t evil or stupid or ugly. At the same time, so much of her role in this chapter is that she likes to eat. That’s all she does here; make quick comments while eating or talking about eating. It’s dumb.

Anyhow, there are three other witches: Kazimiera, Klaudia, and Roksana. And as I go through these introductions, I can’t…. There’s something here that bugs me, guys. Let me play you some bits, and I’ll try snipping around so that they’re not too lengthy (hence the ellipses/… you’ll read in these blockquotes–that’s me, not Hearne). This is from Bogumila’s introduction:

…a slim brunette who regarded me steadily with one large eye; the other eye was hidden behind a dark curtain of hair that occluded half of her face, and I wondered what I’d see if I peeked behind it. She nodded curtly at me, and the candlelight….shimmered across the curtain as it rippled gently with the movement.

Here’s Kazimiera:

Kazimiera was very tall and leggy, her tan skin and bright white teeth suggesting that she’d grown up on the beaches of California rather than… Eastern Europe.

And Klaudia:

Klaudia was the petite, waifish sort, with a pair of sleepy eyes and a set of pouty lips, her hair cut short and layered at the neck and her bangs teased around her face in a wet, languorous fashion, giving the impression that whenever you saw her, she had just finished having sex before you walked into the room and would now like nothing more than a French cigarette.

Finally, Roksana:

Roksana, had her thick hair pulled back so tightly from her face that it appeared to be a crash helmet, but after routing itself…through a silver loop at the base of her skull, it exploded into an untamed curly man. Her owlish blue eyes regarded me steadily through a pair of round spectacles. She wore a power suit with a white blouse, shoulder-padded purple coat and black pants

Do you get what I’m saying here? I’ve talked a few times about how when introducing a male character, Atticus will give a quick description, but when it comes to female characters they’ll get much more, telling you what they’re wearing, how their hair is styled, and essentially a note that Atticus finds them attractive.

Except for Berta, who’s only descriptor is “festively plump”.

Recently, TMary and I have been talking about this in the comments for last book’s Chapter 22 sporking, and we think that Atticus’s fixation/over-sexualization of women is supposed to be some kind of character flaw, but it’s not really treated like one? It isn’t as if he has gotten in trouble because of it in this book or the last one. At most, he’s slapped by the Morrigan in the first book, or he’s embarrassed by his hawt apprentice. And so we have a character who is introduced to five women, and he gives us descriptions that sound like he’s coming up with stereotypical attractive women: the shy but hawt one, the hawt beach girl, the sexy model who looks like she just had sex, and the hawt bookish nerd. Instead of writing these women as characters, he’s picked fairly basic… I don’t know, are these all stereotypes?

Except for Berta, who is “festively plump”.

[rubbing forehead] I need some apple juice.

I know that there are guys out there who think like this, look at women they’ve just met and instantly start analyzing how hot they are, but you would think a guy who is over two thousand years old would know not to objectify women on sight? You would think he’d have long moved past that? Also, in what universe is it remotely okay to look at someone you just met and say to yourself, “She looks like she just had sex”??

And after Klaudia’s description, there’s this:

I used to carry around a cigarette case expressly for the purpose of offering them to women like her, but that social custom lost its luster when people finally realized that offering someone a cigarette was the same thing as offering them lung cancer. Still, I patted absently where my vest pocket would be if I’d been wearing a vest

Is this a joke? I don’t care.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 32

The way this is phrased makes it sound like Atticus already knew that cigarettes caused cancer before the general public did, which, if true, means that he was offering people something he knew was harmful to them and didn’t care because it was the social custom.

Figures.

The witches all wear the same pointy boots? I don’t know why but I thought it was an interesting detail that I don’t mind.

Atticus introduces Hal to the group in a way that gives us no dialogue, and he pulls out the treaty and the quills to sign it. Each witch uses the quill to sign in their own blood. Atticus explains that he argued against signing in blood during the negotiation period between books, but Malina insisted because it was more binding and was an actual magical contract because of it. He eventually agreed, though he’s hesitant right now because it feels weird.

Signing it would contradict centuries of what I considered “best practice” in denying witches the opportunity to snuff me.

Hey, do you guys remember in the last book, when the evil witches sent someone to his house to steal a sample of blood that acted as assurance so they couldn’t hex him? And Hal says that he doesn’t think they found it, but he wasn’t sure? And Atticus’s reaction was to say, “Don’t worry about man, I’ll check on it later!” And he never checked on it ever?

Regardless, the witches have never shown hostility to him, have been more than gracious considering how much Atticus hates women witches, and so there’s no reason not to sign this contract. His irrational hatred of witches in particular is on display here, but he’s trying to spin it as “his usual paranoia.”

You Keep Using That Word: 33

Atticus is a hypocrite, a liar, and a complete idiot.

So he signs, and everyone is happy.

Berta clapped and said with a grin, “We should celebrate. Who wants chocolate and schnapps?”

Her personality is that she’s jolly and fat. That’s it. In this chapter alone she brings up eating at least three timeless.

As they sit there eating chocolate and cookies (that Berta baked), Atticus–hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a freaking minute! Everyone in this room is remarkably chill and jolly here, and they’re at war! Remember, members of this coven have actually been killed fighting the evil German witches! These witches? Some of their friends have died in this conflict. And they’re not really shaken up about this at all? What’s up with that?

[What’s up is that Hearne isn’t interested in writing emotions in his characters if it doesn’t serve Atticus.]

Alright, so Atticus asks what’s the deal with these evil German witches anyhow, and why they hate this coven anyway. So there’s a long info dump! The original coven, led by Radomila (who was evil for no good reason in the last book), met in Warsaw during World War II. After that, the group went to Bulgaria to escape Nazi invasion.

“Bulgaria?” I frowned. “But that was an Axis power as well.”

Malina explains that Czar Boris of Bulgaria only joined the Axis in the war to stop the Nazis from invading, and he didn’t put any of his troops in the fighting, and refused to go invade Russia like Hitler wanted. He also didn’t send tens of thousands of Jews to the Nazi concentration camps. To Atticus’s astonishment, Malina says that Radomila’s coven is to thank for that, as they cozied up to Boris and acted as his advisors.

[raises hand] Uh, hi. Um. Look, I’m kind of glad the good witches were anti-Nazi, and all, because Nazis are garbage. That being said, I’m a little uncomfortable with A) bringing the Holocaust into the narrative so lightly, and B) suggesting that resistance to the Holocaust by a prominent historical figure was actually the credit of these fictional characters that Hearne made up. It’s like, “Hey, want to know why my characters are the good guys? [shoots finger guns] They told Boris to sneakily go against Hitler.”

I don’t know, it feels weird, like an easy way to make your immortal characters sympathetic is to have them fight Nazis and save Jews in World War II. Like, yeah, hooray, you’re condemning the Holocaust, that’s great. Though the way it’s written here, it feels really cheap–the people being systematically exterminated by genocidal fascists are being reduced to… not even a statistic. It’s like a good deed done to prove one’s goodness. They’re not really people in this scenario, they’re numbers to indicate that these characters, Malina’s coven, were on the Right Side of History.

It doesn’t make much sense. One of them even states later in the conversation that saving Bulgarian Jews was one of their main aims. Okay, well then, why weren’t they doing anything about the Polish Jewish community? These witches are originally from Poland; what was going on there?

[Hot take: this would have worked better if Malina and members of her coven were of Jewish descent. Though that would require some effort on Hearne’s part.]

The answer is that Hearne quickly Google’d people who saved/spared Jewish people in the Holocaust and hastily decided to give credit to his own characters instead of historical figures. Which, you know, is also pretty problematic: this guy who went against the Nazis? Yeah, no, it wasn’t his idea, actually these witches. Half of whom we blew up in the last book.

We should talk about that! This scene makes the last book super weird in the way it drew the lines. Remember, Malina’s coven is a break-off of the coven that actually did this. Which means all the evil witches we saw in the last book? One of whom had her head imploded? Another was decapitated and her head used as a trophy? They were also witches who opposed the Nazis in World War II (one of them, Emilia, joined the coven after Malina saved her from being raped by Nazis, if you remember).

Anyhow, Boris died, which Malina claims was an assassination by the evil German witches hunting them now. Atticus protests that he knows “a little bit about his death”, and that he only died of heart failure. Given that Perry the Perky Goth dropped dead without a mark on him because the witches made his heart stop, you would assume that “Oh so paranoid” Atticus would figure out that it’s a possibility. But remember: Atticus is an idiot.

You Keep Using That Word: 34

So Witch Roksana reminds him that it’s a thing the German witches can do, and in fact their preferred method of murder. It’s a spell that “causes a small area of tissue” on the heart to die, causing death. It’s only then that Atticus puts together that the heart-failure hex is what happened to Perry the Goth. Berta explains that it’s really the only thing that the witches know how to do without a demon backing them up.

Also, when she’s saying this, Berta is talking “around a mouthful of cookie.” She’s “festively plump”, remember?

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 33

Hearne, typing on his computer: I have to put food in this character’s mouth, in case readers forgot that she’s fat! That’s her one character trait, after all!

[Then again, she’s the one in Malina’s coven who actually has a personality trait, so maybe I’m being too harsh.]

Roksana points out that unfortunately, there are plenty of demons willing to help evil witches. This is a throwaway comment, I’m sure.

Atticus, quite rationally, wonders why the evil German witches wanted Boris of Bulgaria dead. It’s because the witches wanted Bulgaria to invade Russia. Our protagonist then asks if that means these witches are Nazi witches, and Malina refutes this, claiming that this coven is far older than the Third Reich (despite them having “Third House” in their name), and merely used the Nazis as tools for their own ends. Mainly: invading Russia.

“What? You’re suggesting he launched that entire bloody stupid offensive due to their influence?”

Welp, apparently so. The evil German witches tried the same in World War I with Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. When Boris didn’t invade Russia, they hexed him to death, and Bulgaria was never successfully invaded. The German witches are still mad about the whole thing, though, and are out to kill Malina’s coven because of it. Why did it take them so long? [shrug] I dunno.

Atticus asks the real question here, which is: why did these German witches want the Germans to invade Russia so badly? One of the witches tells Atticus/us that there’s a group of witch hunters based in Russia that has been hurting this German coven for a while. These guys dislike witches in general, but they hate die Tochter des dritten Hauses because of their demonic associations. The German coven hoped that if the Nazis took over Russia, these witch hunters would be taken care of, especially since “Himmler was obsessed with the occult”. This is true, by the way.

If you’re an attentive reader, you, like Atticus, are probably thinking of the Rabbi in Chapter 16 who is Russian and evidently part of a religious group that hunts evil. Atticus doesn’t say that, though, and only expresses surprise that Stalin didn’t stamp out these witch hunters. He asks if they know what they’re called, but no one in Malina’s coven seems to know.

The ladies all shook their heads slowly yet in unison. It was a creepy effect. I wondered idly if they practiced such maneuvers.

Ima

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 34

Because this is just a weird joke thing and I don’t know what to do with it.

The reason Malina’s coven knows all this is that back in World War II, they actually captured one of the German witches and interrogated her for information. This also adds to their mutual enmity because, well, the German witches didn’t quite like that.

Atticus says that the die Tottentots des drippen Haagendaas were apparently very influential among the Nazis, and wonders if they were the ones who came up with the horrible racism and antisemitism that defined them, using a demon or succubus to make them go for it.

“Not that we know of,” Berta said, a few crumbs of her third cookie spraying from her mouth as she talked.

Get it? Berta’s fat and likes to eat!

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 35

I need an apple juice.

Berta points out that the Nazis appear to be as they were in real life–not influenced by witches, but just really sucky, hateful people who took power and murdered millions of people. I think, to Hearne’s credit, this works better, because trying to take real-world atrocities and ascribe them to “Those evil monsters/demons/whatever” always feels a bit cheap.

One of the witches, Klaudia, mentions that dice Tottenham despacito Haugens specifically targeted Kabbalists, and this makes Atticus interrupt.

“Kabbalists!” I exclaimed. I slapped my forehead. “So that’s why he didn’t die.”

“Who didn’t die?” the witches all said in polyphonic harmony. They were like a Greek chorus.

This moment would work, or come closer to working, if he was referring to an event that we actually saw in this book or the previous one. But alas, no–he’s referring to an event decades ago in his backstory that he’s about to tell us about. Meaning… this is awkward, unfunny, and falls flat.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 36

[Petition to make “Awkward, unfunny, and falls flat” the tagline of this book series?]

Atticus explains that he figured out earlier that he’s run into these witches before in World War II when he deflected their hex (he doesn’t explain how his amulet did that though because, for once, he shows some level of paranoia; shocking, I know).

Berta stopped chewing and looked at me with widened eyes. “Really? Where were you?”

Get it? She’s chewing food! Because she’s fat!

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 37

Atticus answers that he was in the Atlantic Pyrenees while guiding a Jewish family to Spain, so that they could take a train to Lisbon, and then a boat to South America and safety. You might be thinking, “Wait, that sounds remarkably out of character for Atticus.” And you’re right! We’ll get to that in a minute, don’t worry.

[Also, I don’t know how accurate this is to Jewish refugees at the time? Wikipedia says that there were Jewish refugees that went from Spain and Portugal to the US, UK, and Latin America, but I haven’t done a deep dive into the subject. I’m willing to bet Hearne hasn’t either.]

And immediately after that paragraph, two paragraphs after the last “Berta likes to eat” “joke”—

Berta held up her hands. “Stop right there. This sounds good,” she said, and hauled herself off the couch. “I’m going to make popcorn.”

Hehe, she “hauls herself off the couch” instead of just standing up like a normal person. To get more food! It’s because she’s fat!

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 38

This isn’t funny! Hearne has written an overweight female character and is constantly going on about how much she eats! Even if this was acceptable (which I am compelled to tell you, it’s not), it’s like the most basic joke he could think of, and he keeps repeating it! This is hack writing! And again, the sad thing is, aside from Malina, she’s the only witch with a semblance of a personality here. I wrote this sporking chapter, and I couldn’t tell you the others’ names or what they looked like. The only good thing here is that Berta’s at least not presented as a bad person because of her weight; it’s still really uncool that he’s written a female character whose one trait is that she’s fat/likes to eat.

So against their protests, Berta makes popcorn, and Atticus, in telling a story, actually feels a bit of kinship with the witches because “One thing that’s never changed in two millennia is that people love to hear war stories–at least, stories in which their side wins.”

You do know people like tragic war stories, too? We have plenty of those floating around. And that’s not new. Check out Song of Roland or Y Gododdin for starters. Those are poems/stories about noble heroes who died and lost their big battles against their enemies.

Did Not Do Homework: 18

Another thing I want to point out is that Berta points out that telling a story is going back to Atticus’s roots as a Druid, because they were renowned as bards. And I want to insert again that Hearne has a really weird idea about what druids are even supposed to be? We’ll get into this more some other time, but having read a bit more into Irish myth this year, I feel like Hearne missed the mark significantly. Druids are supposed to be the scholarly class of Celtic societies, the bards, healers, poets, and astronomers; above all, they were like wise men, holy men. They were later mythologized into wizard types, but even then… Atticus is instead based more off of an RPG idea of what fantasy druids are supposed to be. Telling stories should be his thing, which is maybe why this book is written in first person perspective. And yet the man apparently spends all his time running his store, watching movies, and hanging out with his dog.

This actually makes a lot more sense if you discover, as I did, that the reason the main character is a Druid is because Kevin Hearne, when brainstorming the series, wanted his main character to talk to his dog and ‘druid’ is what he came up with. Yes, really.

Atticus realizes, though, that he has to explain a bit to us, the audience, before he launches into his story. Atticus had wanted to take part in more of World War II, and he’d earlier actually tried to enlist with the British army. But the Morrigan told him not to, and because Atticus does whatever the Morrigan tells him (except that time he doesn’t). That’s how you write an immortal wizard’s character motivation, right? He does stuff because he’s told to. That’s why he took the magic sword McGuffin from the last book, and that’s apparently why he didn’t fight the Nazis on the battlefield.

[Although given his powers and his avoidance of drawing attention to himself/having fake identities throughout history, you’d think it would have been better to just, like, go kill Nazis instead of enlisting in a specific army?]

“Do you know how many battles there are for me to watch over throughout the world right now?…I cannot be worrying about you every bloody moment and making sure you don’t step on a mine or get bombed by the Luftwaffe. Stay out of the war, Siodhachan, and don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself–specifically, attention from the Fae.”

I’m sorry, I think it’s a little messed up that Atticus decided that he couldn’t be a soldier in World War II because the Morrigan told him she couldn’t protect him.

[rubbing forehead] Okay, hang on, so you’re saying, the Morrigan is in charge of all battles everywhere? Look, the world works on the idea that the gods manifest in ways to believers, right? The Irish gods are specifically different than that, though, because they’re essentially super-Druids that got deified. So unless there were unexpectedly a few thousand people around the world who happen to be Irish pagans in the early to mid-20th century (no), the Morrigan shouldn’t be in charge of that. Maybe she’d take an interest, but it’s not her job. Even if it was, there are a bajillion gods of war from around the world who can also help pick up the slack. This explanation makes no sense based off of what we’ve been told, and so I’m giving another

Did Not Do Homework: 19

And hey, it’s remarkably handy that the Morrigan was always looking out for Atticus and calling the shots, keeping him safe and also taking any agency out of him as a character, even in the backstory. I’m feeling less than generous.

Make It Easy!: 26

Anyhow, Atticus doesn’t tell any of this Morrigan stuff to the witches because he “didn’t want to imply that I had any sort of relationship with the Morrigan now” (and by that I presume he doesn’t want to tell other people the Irish goddess of war and violent death is transparently in love with him). Whatever! He starts the story explaining that he spent a lot of time hiding from Aenghus Og, and avoiding doing anything overtly magic so he didn’t draw attention to himself. Apparently, though, his conscience–

–stick with me here. Apparently his conscience wouldn’t allow him to sit on the sidelines in World War II, so he… okay, no, you’re right, let’s talk about this. Because Atticus is a man who has spent all of history schmoozing up with the biggest name celebrities of the time and having a rip-roaring good time slaughtering people in different wars because he felt like it. He specifically dismissed the Crusades as nonsense he didn’t want a part of, and so he was happy to kill people as part of Genghis Khan’s army for funzies.

We could make long lists of infamous historical atrocities, massacres, and antisemitic pogroms that Atticus skipped out on, that his “conscience” didn’t care one single wiggly chicken about. What did he think when the streets of Jerusalem ran red with blood during the First Crusade? Where was Atticus when Cromwell was slaughtering the people of Ireland? The Reign of Terror? The Atlantic Slave Trade? The Thirty Years War? I don’t know, and I’m fairly certain neither does Hearne. And you know why?

Because Average Joe on the Street is not familiar with them. History in Iron Druid Chronciles is based off of what you know in history if you failed middle school history. That’s why Atticus is saving Jewish families in World War II. Not because this is the best use of his abilities, but because again, Jewish victims of the Holocaust are props for Atticus to make himself look like a better person.

Better Than You: 16

I’m tempted to say he should have just… marched into Berlin and slaughtered/incapacitated the Nazi regime, but he does give the excuse that he didn’t want to draw attention to himself with magic. Then again, he says he avoided attention by not doing magic for two thousand years, and he definitely forged his magic iron amulet doohickey in that two thousand year timeframe, so I don’t know what he’s talking about.

The families under my care arrived in Spain faster and healthier and more reliably than those of any other smuggler

Oh, give me a break.

Better Than You: 17

Of course Atticus was SO MUCH BETTER at protecting Jewish families then anyone else who was working at it.

He goes on to explain that he only failed getting one family out of France, and that he thought the father of the family was a scientist, but appears to have been some kind of Kabbalist, as he had “traces of magic in his aura that I didn’t take the trouble to examine”.

Have you ever been so paranoid that you detected magic on someone else and never bothered to check what it meant?

You Keep Using That Word: 35

Basically, they were jumped by six witches, who whammied them all with their heart attack spells. All of them died except Atticus (because of his amulet), who faked his death by turning invisible as he fell over because he expected gunfire or something, and the father, who was protected by Kabbalistic wards. And then the witches shot him full of bullets, so it’s a moot point.

Atticus is also… weird about explaining how this guy cried over his dead family, and then was shot to death, and then shot full of more bullets.

Atticus stayed silent and watched as this guy got shot full of bullets. You probably guessed that, but Atticus avoids fights where he has any chance of losing. He explains that unlike now, when he’s immune to death, he can only heal, but given he’s got stealth and healing powers, and a sword, and so I think he could do a lot of damage.

The witches noticed that one of their victims disappeared, and were confused by it. They leave one witch at the scene to investigate while the others wandered off. Atticus killed her with his sword and then booked out of there. He never saw those witches again, but he assumed they were a special magic ops unit for the Nazis or something. It wasn’t until he encountered them again in this book that he found who they really were.

One of the witches asks what happened to the witches he met today, and if he managed to kill any of them. He did not, but shows that he got hair from one of them, which should help them track and/or kill them.

Hey, have you ever been so paranoid that you didn’t immediately tell your allies the crucial piece of information that gives you an advantage over your enemies? You waited until after you have a lengthy conversation of backstory?

You Keep Using That Word: 36

So Atticus asks if the witch’s hair would help them track the witch, and every member of Malina’s coven nods and says “Definitely.”

That’s where our chapter ends.

So let’s talk about this. I’ve made it abundantly clear that I think this entire Plot is… badly written. Let’s recap the Main Plot of the book for a minute, without the side quests of maenads, Coyote, cops, or the priest and rabbi:

-Atticus is about to sign a nonaggression treaty with the witches of Tempe.
-Then Atticus is suddenly attacked by random witches’ hexes.
-He suspects the Tempe coven, only to find out by talking to Malina that it’s another, unrelated German coven that hates the Tempe one and decided to kill Atticus for… Reasons.
-He goes on with a bunch of side quests and BS until the evil witches actually attack him a little over halfway through the book.
-During this fight Atticus realizes that he’s met these witches before, in an incident we’ve never heard of, long before the events of the book.
-In the fight he grabs a lock of hair off one of the evil witches.
-He goes to Malina’s coven to sign that nonaggression treaty, in which we’re finally told the backstory of these witches, and how Atticus fought them before.
-Atticus shows the hair he grabbed, and thus a way to beat the witches.

We are, according to Kindle, almost seventy percent of the way through the book, and just now we drop a massive exposition bomb on the audience. This isn’t a mystery that the characters have been wondering about; Atticus was told that these evil German witches want him dead for Reasons, and then, over halfway through the story when he actually fights them, suddenly says, “Wait a minute! I’ve met them before!” and then spends another few chapters NOT telling us about it.

Again: Atticus didn’t discover he has history with these characters until Chapter 17 and doesn’t explain until this one, Chapter 21. That’s four chapters in which he barely gives any indication as to what the previous encounter was like. It doesn’t read like a reveal of something we were wondering, it reads like something Hearne made up on the spot and awkwardly inserted into the story.

And you can do that in a first draft! But then you need to go back and make sure that there’s foreshadowing leading up to it. Given Atticus supposedly hates and distrusts witches so much, it wouldn’t be hard to do–throughout this book, Hearne could have made mention to different encounters Atticus has had with malevolent witches throughout history, along with a creeping sense that something was familiar about these attacks.

Instead, at the end of Chapter 17, Atticus tells us he’s met them before, and then doesn’t give us details. In this chapter, he awkwardly refers to this event in the backstory (“So THAT’s why he didn’t die!”) and feeds us a story out of nowhere, that doesn’t make sense with the character as he’s been presented so far, but does make him sound more sympathetic and awesome.

This isn’t how you write a story! You don’t drop the idea that the protagonist and the antagonist have encountered each other before, and then spend four chapters not talking about it, only to drop random exposition in there that feels so out of place that it should be for a different character or different story entirely.

Anyhow. Join us next time, as we… what are we doing, anyway? [checks book] Uh, recruiting Atticus’s bloodsucking lawyer and getting ready for the final battle. For the next couple of chapters.

Okay, then. It certainly doesn’t feel like we’re gearing up for the final battle of a fantasy book, does it? That’s how Iron Druid rolls, I guess.

Better Than You: 17
Did Not Do Homework: 19
The Kids These Days: 11
You Keep Using That Word: 36
Make It Easy!: 26
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 38

¹ “But Christmas is over!” [slaps] Shuddup! There are twelve days of Christmas!

Comment [6]

So, I recently re-read Obsidian & Blood by Aliette de Bodard. It’s a historical fantasy murder mystery trilogy set in the days of the Aztec Triple Alliance. I don’t think it’s a series that’s going to challenge your understanding of the world in any meaningful way, but it’s fun and with a surprisingly deep world, built on tons of research and mythology. I’m very fond of the trilogy, in part because I love Nahuatl mythology and I take whatever bits of representation I can find.

[Disclaimer: the series is not written by an indigenous Mexican, nor by someone who is a scholar in the field. The author stressed repeatedly that despite the research she did, her books are not reference texts, as she took certain liberties, and she cites on her website and in the novels what sources she used for further research.]

I thought about something, though. The culture of Obsidian & Blood is an imperial power, one that practices brutal colonialism, human sacrifice, and slavery. No one in the story apologizes for it; almost no one sees it as a bad thing, except for a couple of people who are victims to that imperial power. The narrative doesn’t do much to frame this as a bad thing.

Hm.

Let’s start with this: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is a game, an interactive medium of storytelling, while Obsidian & Blood is a book series. One has you taking an active role to push the story forward. So it’s more frustrating that in order to move the story forward, you have to not only witness, but take part in, colonialism and pillaging to experience what the story has to say. There’s a difference between reading or watching something taking place, and a game telling you, “Raid this monastery to get supplies to build your village,” or “Burn this village, because the locals have been helping resist our efforts to conquer their land.”

Yes, this is an actual mission in the game.

More frustratingly, though, is how the game frames these actions. As put by Brett Devereaux, in comparing the game with another, Expeditions: Viking:

It even presents you with a choice in the end of focusing more on integration with your neighbors in England or taking a more violent path, as opposed to Valhalla, which pretends that those two routes are effectively the same – that you can improve and integrate with this society by conquering them.

The game repeatedly tries to have the Norse protagonists depicted as, aside from a few exceptions, generally wise, gracious, and generous folk who have nothing against the people around them. They’re completely tolerant of different cultures and religions! If only those pesky English would stop bothering them. Except the reason the Norse characters arrived in England was conquest, and one of the first things they do is burn a monastery and use its spoils to help build their town. But never mind that! Many of the story moments that involve negotiations have the Norse explaining that they only came invading because they want to live peacefully, and the English need to stop being so prejudiced against people not of their religion or nationality. If only they let the Norse and their puppets rule, there’d be peace.

Late in the game’s release cycle, they added a free DLC story in which your character finds that someone has been dressing in your clan’s colors and raiding around England, framing them for pillaging the local settlements. Eivor has to go find the real perpetrators and eliminate them to clear the Raven Clan’s name. Except this is a thing you’re already doing, and there’s no indication as to why this act is a stain on their honor. They’re doing the same thing, but it’s bad raiding because the Bad Guys are doing it.

Obsidian & Blood makes no such pretensions in the morality of its protagonist. The viewpoint characters are enthusiastic about sacrifice and war, but the text does not try to tell you it’s a good thing in modern terms. It does not frame Tenochtitlan as a multicultural society accepting of outsiders–it’s not. Foreigners are viewed with suspicion or disdain. There are no assurances to the audience that the culture’s faults are actually good, like that they only do violence to those that deserve it or are dishonorable. Nope, to them, honoring the gods means a good blood sacrifice, and if people don’t like that, they’re subverting the will of the gods. The books don’t try to draw parallels to modern day issues like immigration or intolerance, because these are things that the people of the Mexica at this time would not comprehend in the way that we talk about them today. That’s not saying that they were primitive or backwards, only that it’s a culture completely different from our own, with different concerns.

There’s a scene in Master of the House of Darts in which our lead, Acatl, meets a merchant who absolutely despises the gods and refuses to worship them. Acatl is both horrified and flummoxed by this: even if you don’t like the gods, he reasons, that doesn’t change their status in the order of the world, and you must worship them and recognize their power. That this merchant he’s talking to lost quite a lot when his city was sacked, and that he saw one of the gods laughing at it, doesn’t mean much to Acatl. The gods must be honored.

The biggest issue in this comparison, though, is the modern perspective. One of the defenses I’ve seen for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is that, “This is the Norse invasion from their perspective. Of course it’s sympathetic to their point of view!” Except it’s kind of not; the framing device of almost every Assassin’s Creed is modern characters reliving people’s memories in history through a machine called an Animus. And it’s incredibly noticeable that absolutely no one in the modern day framing story of the game has anything to say about living through the memories of someone trying to conquer and colonize another country by burning their holy places, raiding their settlements, and slaughtering their leaders. The modern characters are apparently completely fine with this; worrying when you consider in-universe problems like the Bleeding Effect, where people using an Animus have trouble distinguishing the thoughts and memories of people they’ve lived as in the machine and their own.

Obsidian & Blood does not have that in it. There is no flash-forward to modern day. There is no framing device that has modern characters looking back. The story is entirely in the past in the Mexica Empire¹. And that works better for the story, because a modern character would not get beyond a lot of the things that happen as part of everyday life. Some of the readers can’t get past the stuff that happens in the books. There are a surprising number of Goodreads reviews by users who are shocked by the amount of human and animal sacrifices in the story, even when the author admitted she toned it down from what would realistically be going on. Even toned down, it’s still there because it has to be–removing it all from the story would be dishonest.

You’ve heard the expression, “Warts and all”? Obsidian & Blood is like… “Warts and all, but the warts are a smaller. They’re still there, but they’re smaller.” Whereas Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla in its approach to Norse society and conquest is, “Warts? What warts? Oh, that’s just a few bad actors–other than that, there are no warts!”

Maybe I’m overreacting, but I think this is a dangerous thing to do with a real-life society, especially with societies that are outwardly built on conquest and colonialism. We have way too many people in the world today who look up to historical societies as models of how the world should be, when those cultures acted in ways that are monstrous to others. Like, yeah, sure we can admire things like Norse or Aztec mythology, or art, or literature. And we can find interest in these cultures. But if we paint them as being flawless paragons of morality as a contrast to our modern world, then we run into lots of problems. We don’t grow as people if we don’t recognize the faults of people in the past. Understand those cultures in context, of course, and comprehend that they don’t have a modern mindset; still, understand that it’s a different culture.

That’s what Aliette de Bodard set out to do with Obsidian & Blood. Instead of saying, “These are just like the people of today! You could hang out with them, no problem!” she said, “No, this is a different culture, with wildly different customs; now let me show you how.” She probably figures that you can see the differences in morality from our society by yourself, without highlighting, nor does she feel the need to scrub them away completely and paint an idealized picture of the past.

And in most cases, I think that’s what historical fiction should be doing.

¹ Although the series using actual historical figures makes the reader raise the weird question of how this world even works. We’re told, and we SEE in the books, that the world works according to Aztec mythology. There needs to be a Reverend Speaker (read: Emperor) to maintain the power of their patron god and prevent the world from being invaded by star demons. How this works when we know a hundred years from the events of this book there won’t be one, or any of the other rituals necessary to keep the world from being invaded by monsters and ghosts, is never really explained.

Comment [3]

Happy Leap Day!

I should correct an earlier statement: we are actually much closer to the end of this book than I previously suggested. I was basing my estimates off of the Kindle percentage of the book completed, but actually looking at the chapter count, and re-reading the material ahead, it turns out that there are twenty-five chapters and an epilogue. This edition comes with a short novella and a preview of the next novel, though, which is why the Kindle says we’re only 67% percent of the way through the book.

No worries, though, because we’re not going to spork that extra material! We’re only going to do the actual novel Hexed. And with that in mind, we’re almost done! After this, it’s two more chapters and an epilogue. Hooray!

Atticus begins the chapter by calling Leif, the literal blood-sucking lawyer, to ask for his help. Leif, if you remember from earlier, said that he doesn’t want to talk to Atticus unless he’s willing to help him kill Thor. When he tried calling earlier, Leif hung up the instant that Atticus said he wasn’t going to do it. So this time, Leif asks the question as soon as he answers the phone, and Atticus tells him he’ll help. Leif, in a bit of a funny moment, assumed he would say no and automatically hung up, only to call back.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but did you say that you have changed your mind?”

See, there are little moments like this that are kind of amusing. But Hearne doesn’t realize that most of the time, so he instead over-does it by throwing in over-the-top jokes, or making stupid jokes at inappropriate moments like battles, or having the characters cackling their heads off at something that’s only maybe mildly amusing.

Leif asks what it is that Atticus wants, and our protagonist explains that he needs help killing evil witches. Leif is underwhelmed, because that doesn’t sound like a big deal to him. Atticus points out that they’re outnumbered ten-to-one, and Leif is still wondering why this is something that requires vampire backup.

“They’re pretty mean and they might be dressed like the Go-Go’s. I’m talking Aqua Net and those shirts that hang off one shoulder and everything.”

“It sounds atrocious, Atticus, simply heinous to the nth degree, but I have no idea to what you are alluding.”

I got nothing, folks.

The Kids These Days: 12

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 39

To be clear, I don’t know to what Atticus is alluding, either.

Alright, I’m going to nitpick Leif’s dialogue. Yeah, it’s bad and stiff and awkward, but it’s supposed to be. The idea (as explained in the first chapter) is that Leif, the immortal vampire, hasn’t caught up with modern society and still speaks in old-fashioned English¹. But if he’s a Nordic vampire, shouldn’t the fact that he’s speaking English at all be pretty impressive? If he’s so, “I can’t move on with the times,” shouldn’t he speak with an incredibly obvious accent of the kind Hearne is fond of doing terribly, or pepper in Norse words into his dialogue?

Did Not Do Homework: 20

Maybe he couldn’t figure out a way to make that funny.

Atticus also points out that some of the witches are pregnant with demon babies. Did I mention that before? No? I don’t remember. That’s A Thing that’s happening in this book. And apparently a witch with a demon bun in the oven has super nega evil magic or something. You’d think that demons, beings that are evil by nature, would actually weaken someone when they’re in the womb, like slowly killing their host? That’s my take, anyhow.

Whatever. Atticus tells Leif to call up his ghoul friends to eat the corpses of the bad guys they kill. He has a clean-up crew of ghouls on speed dial, remember? He apparently kills enough people that he found it handy. Our hero’s friend, ladies and gentlemen.

Leif asks when they get to the part when they kill Thor. Atticus explains that he’s going to Asgard later in the year (because he has to get some of Idunn’s golden apples for Laksha–though he doesn’t tell Leif that), and that when he gets back, they’ll plan on going in on a quest to kill Thor, so get his Thor-killing squad together for then. Leif asks for an oath to make sure, and Atticus says,

“Dude, I’ll even pinky-swear.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll give you my oath. Just come pick me up in your batmobile.”

[rubs forehead]

The Kids These Days: 13

And hey, shouldn’t the word ‘Batmobile’ supposed to be capitalized?

Did Not Do Homework: 21

Of course, Leif doesn’t get the reference (he assumes that it’s a very rude joke about him being a vampire), and the chapter ends with Atticus swearing that he’s going to make him read comic books. Which he doesn’t even need to do? Atticus (and Hearne) always seemed the sort that made fun of people who read comic books. His entire cover towards the cop was that he was a dumb nerd who watches anime! Wouldn’t it be more in-character for him to suggest watching a movie? Especially as Atticus is established in this very book to have a large film collection in his house?

Onto Chapter 23!

Chapter 23 begins with Leif arriving at Atticus’s house with a steel breastplate, because with it he won’t get staked. Which is surprisingly smart for a character in this book, methinks. Atticus seems a little surprised that he’s not wearing more of a Renaissance outfit other than the breastplate, and that’s dumb dumb–Leif’s a vampire. The main weakness, because it’s based off of pop culture, is a stake through the heart. The rest of him isn’t in need of such urgent protection.

Atticus points out that Leif is still vulnerable to the hellfire that the witches will be using, which, uh… yeah. That’s not a vampire thing, Attie. That’s a ‘being alive’ thing. I’m a little unclear if it’s meant to be a sort-of joke, with the way the conversation is written, but either way it’s still dumb. Atticus gives Leif one of the magic amulets to protect him (Oberon’s, because Oberon is not joining this fight and so won’t need it), so that he’ll be protected from hellfire.

“You’ll feel the heat, but it shouldn’t burn you.”

???

Atticus, heat is what causes burns. You’d think a guy over two thousand years old would know this. How does this amulet thing work? That you feel the heat but it doesn’t burn you? Does that mean you’ll be in pain from extreme heat, you just won’t suffer physical damage? That’s still incredibly bad!

Did Not Do Homework: 22

And by now you guys know that I hate doing this, but… [sigh] Dresden Files did this better. There’s a scene in one of the books where the protagonist Harry magically shields himself from fire, but because he didn’t account for the heat, his hand still gets horribly burned, and he’s crippled in that hand for the rest of the book (and spends some of the next couple of books recovering, even with wizard healing). Hearne, on the other hand, seems to be working under the assumption that as long as you’re not on fire, heat can’t hurt you.

Or something.

Leif is eager to get this show on the road (you and me both, man), but Atticus says he has a couple of things to do before that. The first! Well, hey, do you remember from Chapter 3 that Atticus’s neighbor Semerdjian mentioned he had a rocket-propelled grenade in his garage? Welp, Atticus thinks it’d be a good idea to go look and pick some of those up for the final battle.

This is actually a little weird, because in the last book, Atticus never even considers using firearms to solve his problems, despite the fact that it’d make things easier. The only time it really comes up is when the Leprechaun asks him why he doesn’t buy a gun to defend himself against Bres (this is after he feeds her an obviously BS story about how they were enemies after he stole a family heirloom or something), with Atticus claiming that he didn’t get a gun because he’s Irish.

But whatever! He wants to get some explosives this time! And by that, we mean he’s going to steal them from his neighbor. Yes, I am sad to report that Mr. Semerdjian, the neighbor who hates Atticus for entirely legitimate reasons, wasn’t given explosives to make him secretly awesome with a mysterious backstory or reveal hidden depths, it was so that out of nowhere the protagonist would have an easy supply of explosives.

Make it Easy!: 27

[rubs forehead] This series is on so many urban fantasy recommendation lists, and for the life of me, I can’t tell why. One of these days, I’m going to write an urban fantasy recommendation list that doesn’t include this series.

Stealing from someone’s house isn’t so easy, though, at least when he’s in the house! Which Mr. Semerdjian is. Leif can tell without turning to look because “his nostrils flared” and Atticus confirms that he’s watching through his front window–

Wait a minute, hang on, how does the super vampire sense of smell tell him that Semerdjian is in his house from across the street? It’s not super-hearing that tells him that the guy’s moving around in there; the text specifically says that his nostrils flare when he tells Atticus that he’s in his own house at that moment, which Atticus confirms by saying he’s peeking through his blinds. How is this a smelling thing?? How does that work? For that to happen, wouldn’t Mr. Semerdjian have to have a window open nearby or something, and the wind would have to be blowing in the right direction?

I strongly suspect that for Hearne, “super senses = limited clairvoyance”.

Atticus’s plan is for Leif to go over there, mind control him with vampire powers, and make him open the garage so they can take stuff, then mind wipe this incident.

“If he has military weaponry in there, we should report him to the ATF.”

I sighed in exasperation and pinched the bridge of my nose. Who would have thought a bloodsucking lawyer would actually care about the law? “Okay, but only after we take some to play with.”

Alright, so I know that I’ve said this about most of the characters Atticus has a conversation with, but: does Leif actually have a character? The man has a ghoul crew for cleaning up bodies on speed dial, he kills carpenters with hammers because he hates Thor that much, but now he’s a guy who cares about the legality of owning military-grade firearms? This doesn’t make sense. At least, not from a good writing perspective. For the setup of a stupid little joke, though, it makes… well, not ‘sense’ but there’s something resembling reasoning here. Characters don’t talk and act in a way that’s consistent, they do so in a way to make gags and/or make Atticus look smart.

LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 40

You can almost hear the laugh track playing in Hearne’s head as he reads it in his head.

And hey, if Leif is really so old-fashioned, formal, and out-of-date with how he speaks, wouldn’t he say the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, instead of just ‘ATF’?

Whatever. Mr. Semerdjian is watching them across the street, peeking through a couple of blinds. Somehow, from the porch across the street, when Leif whips his head around, he’s able to mind control of Mr. Semerdjian in seconds. I thought that needed eye contact? I don’t know because we never actually establish the rules for vampires in this setting other than, “Hearne follows pop culture.” Either way, across the street, on a porch, through a small gap in a window is very iffy if you ask me.

Make It Easy!: 28

Our protagonist and his vampire friend walk across the street and into Mr. Semerdjian’s garage to find his car and also several weapons: a bunch of RPGs, frag grenades, automatic weapons, flak jackets, and “handheld surface-to-air missiles.” When Leif asks the mind-controlled guy what those are all there for, he explains that it’s for the coyotes. Not, literal coyotes, or the Native American trickster who appeared earlier in the book, for the men who smuggle people over the border with Mexico. Apparently Mr. Semerdjian supplies them with weapons to fight against the border patrol.

HWAET

I don’t… what the… HUH?! Atticus’s neighbor is supplying people fighting the US border patrol? With explosives? With missiles?! What the wiggly piggly am I reading here? From what I’ve seen of Hearne’s beliefs, in this book and on his blog, I think we’re supposed to view this as a joke. But an antagonistic douchebag of Middle-Eastern descent who’s secretly helping criminals blow up border patrol agents sounds like something out of an insane, reactionary, anti-immigrant screed.

“Watch out! Your obnoxious, nosy Middle-Eastern immigrant neighbor might be betraying his fellow Americans by supplying explosive weapons to criminals, helping illegal immigrants sneak in and blowing up our brave law enforcement!”

What am I supposed to do with this, Hearne? Again, I suspect that’s not what you meant, but it’s what you wrote! It’s quite obviously what you wrote! A suburban elderly Lebanese man who sells weapons to help illegal immigrants get into the country! Does an editor not go over these things? I know this book was published over a decade ago (2011), but Unfortunate Implications existed then, too!

Right, so Leif is interrogating the mind-controlled Mr. Semerdjian, and Atticus is grabbing weapons left and right. Remembering that sometimes the witches of die Tiktoker des drippen Haugwarz use handguns, he also grabs a flak jacket–

…wait, what is a flak jacket, anyhow?

TO THE GOOGLE-MOBILE!