Hexed by Kevin Hearne

After really getting into Kevin Hearne’s Hounded, the first of his Iron Druid series, with the cooler than cool 2,100 year old druid Atticus O’Sullivan I was eager to find out what Atticus had been up to since vanquishing Aenghus Og. Hexed is that tale.

The book picks up pretty much where Hounded left off. All Atticus really wants to do is run his book shop, train his gorgeous apprentice Granuaile and hang out with his wolfhound Oberon. However killing a god has it’s own problems. Mainly that everyone else seems to have a god they’d like taken care of, and once you have a reputation as a godslayer it’s pretty hard to shake.

Hexed is essentially the story of Atticus and his many friends and allies, among them his vampire and werewolf law firm, the native American trickster god Coyote, Granuaile, and of course Oberon, taking on a cadre of German witches who are in town to try and wipe out the coven of Polish witches that Atticus first encountered in Hounded.

Hexed is fun and the action keeps coming thick and fast. Occasionally in Hounded I felt Hearne infodumped a little on readers, he has to do it in Hexed as well, but he’s come up with a clever way of making it part of the story. Oberon, whilst a pretty extraordinary dog, is still a dog and has to have things explained to him, this is often how Hearne imparts necessary information without making it feel like he’s overdoing the infodumps. It’s a great way of doing it, and it allows readers some more time with Oberon, who I am sure is one of the series most popular characters.

At times it does feel like there’s a little too much story. The first action sequence mainly concerns some clean up from the first book. In the fight with Atticus, Aenghus Og brought a giant insect demon to our plane, and Coyote insists that Atticus do some extermination before it starts preying on his people, it seems strangely out of place in the book, which is mostly about the fight with the witches. It does however tell us that Atticus’ grumpy neighbour Mr Semerdjian may be more than he first appears, and has some definite reasons for wanting to keep to himself.

It then moves onto another action sequence concerning a group of Bacchants, if this doesn’t pay off down the track in another book, it’s going to appear rather unnecessary. It also kept making me think of the unpleasant maenad sequence from season two of HBO’s True Blood.

Scenes with Oberon and Atticus (the wolfhound has gone from dreaming of becoming the canine version of Genghis Khan to wearing tie dyed shirts, calling himself Peace Dawg and wanting to stick it to the Man), Granuaile, and especially, Atticus interaction with the witches are very successful, and the showdown between the two covens is fantastic. I hope he keeps the Polish girls around, I liked them.

If you liked Hounded, then you’ll like Hexed, it’s more of the same, but has some more of Atticus back story and Hearne has definitely improved as a writer. I’m looking forward to Hammered, where readers will hopefully find out exactly what’s behind Atticus’ animosity towards the Norse thunder god; Thor. Something Atticus agreed to in Hexed and the title of the third book definitely indicate that will be the case.

Hounded by Kevin Hearne

When Hounded; the first of Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid chronicles first hit the shelves last year, to be quickly followed by Hexed and Hammered, it created a bit of a stir. This technique had worked with a couple of epic fantasy trilogies, the most notable being Brent Weeks' Night Angel. I have to admit I liked what I heard about Hounded, and the idea of an ancient druid masquerading as a twenty something hip Irish lad in Arizona was pretty clever and appealing. Various things prevented me from reading Hounded until now.

I'm very glad I took the plunge, though. Atticus O'Sullivan, the hero of Hounded, and the Iron Druid of the series title is not dissimilar to Jim Butcher's wise cracking wizard Harry Dresden. On the face of it the two are vastly different. Atticus is over 2,000 years old and he seems to have a better handle on his magic than Harry Dresden ever has, he also runs an occult bookshop, not a magical detective agency, but they do have a lot in common. Mostly it comes from the pop culture references, which Hounded is littered with, and something that I've always appreciated about the Harry Dresden books.

The story is a lot of fun, too. The sword Atticus wields; Fragarach, is coveted by the Celtic god Aenghus Og, and he'll stop at nothing to get it. The easiest way is to kill Atticus, and it's going to take every dirty trick the druid has up his sleeve to get out of this one alive. Fortunately he's got allies like the Morrigan, a law firm composed of vampires and werewolves, a Hindu witch of great power and his wolfhound Oberon.

There's a lot of set up in Hounded, as you'd expect from the opener in an urban fantasy series. I actually kind of preferred Atticus' stories about his past, complete with references to Thor as a 'major asshat', and his interactions with the Morrigan, Flidais, the sexy possessed bartender Granuaile and of course Oberon (in fact I think Oberon is my new favourite urban fantasy sidekick) to the actual story about Atticus' fight with Aenghus Og and his attempts to hang onto his sword. Honestly, Hexed could be entirely about Oberon and there'd be no complaints from me. It's also kind of different for the wizard/witch to have a dog familiar rather than a cat, and it may appeal to me because I am very definitely a dog person.

The book has a few problems, at times some of the situations Atticus found himself getting into and out of verged on the farcical, and there was a feeling that the author was stretching credibility to breaking point and a little beyond on at least one occasion involving a shooting. Some of this is expected of a debut novel, and it was easy enough to get past, although it wouldn't want to become a trend.

Kevin Hearne's got me in and I'll be looking for Hexed once I've kicked a hole in the TBR pile. If you like Harry Dresden and you're looking for something to pass the time in between installments, then make the acquaintance of Atticus O'Sullivan.